Robert Lanter lives in a 600-square-foot house that can be traversed in five seconds and vacuumed from a single outlet. He doesn’t have a coffee table in the living room because it would obstruct the front door. When relatives come to visit, Mr. Lanter says jokingly, but only partly, they have to tour one at time.
Each of these details amounts to something bigger, for Mr. Lanter’s life and the U.S. housing market: a house under $300,000, something increasingly hard to find. That price allowed Mr. Lanter, a 63-year-old retired nurse, to buy a new single-family home in a subdivision in Redmond, Ore., about 30 minutes outside Bend, where he is from and which is, along with its surrounding area, one of Oregon’s most expensive housing markets.
Mr. Lanter’s house could easily fit on a flatbed truck, and is dwarfed by the two-story suburban homes that prevail on the blocks around him. But, in fact, there are even smaller homes in his subdivision, Cinder Butte, which was developed by a local builder called Hayden Homes. Some of his neighbors live in houses that total just 400 square feet — a 20-by-20-foot house attached to a 20-by-20-foot garage.
This is not a colony of “tiny houses,” popular among minimalists and aesthetes looking to simplify their lives. For Mr. Lanter and his neighbors, it’s a chance to hold on to ownership.
This seems like the worst of both worlds — we still get massive suburban sprawl that prevents walkable cities and the density needed for good public transport, but without the perks of a larger house.
Would it kill them to intersperse some retail space for a grocery store, café or conveince store?
They can’t because of zoning laws.
Zoning laws aren’t the only thing holding back these things. Their just a tool used to create literal divisions between classes. Areas can remove our change zoning until the cows come home. But without the political and financial will to create environmentally sound, affordable, and community focused housing all you’ll get is the exact opposite of your original goal.
Having read this the other day, it seems the lots for them are smaller so it’s still better than typical suburban sprawl, but yeah not by very much. It’s like duplexes, just without the shared walls.
At the same time, I totally understand the logic of the buyers. Condos and apartments really aren’t the same as having your own property that nobody really has say over but you. You can’t make big changes to a condo without approval of the building owner or whatever even though you “own it”, you share walls, and have no yard.
It’s just one more piece to the puzzle, it’s not meant to be -the-solution, just one of many.
Condos and apartments really aren’t the same as having your own property that nobody really has say over but you.
For a normal-sized lot, I agree — but based on the photo in the article, the lot is basically nonexistent. There’s barely enough room for a lawn chair. This feels more like wanting the outward trappings of a detached house without any of the tangible benefits.
I mean, isn’t that basically what a townhouse is?
Yes, except these have none of the advantages of townhouses (higher density, lower construction cost) and to make up for the cost of those shortcomings they are far smaller than a typical townhouse. These houses are the residential version of Elon’s Hyperloop — something that looks cool at fist glance but gets increasingly nonsensical the more you think about it.
Except this doesn’t even look cool at first glance.
At least these things are able to physically exist and function (though still not a great option), unlike Hyperloop.
I don’t like either one of them, but I feel like the distinction should be made.
They got rid of side yards but have halfway decent back yards, according to the info in it, to smoosh them all together.
But also I’m down for that too. I hate mowing my lawn. I don’t use the lot for much, so what do I care if it’s tiny?
If they had gone for proper rowhouses, they could’ve increased the size of the homes and kept the back yards, all for the price of sharing a wall with your neighbors’ houses. Or maybe not even that, as there are rowhouses that have individual walls separated by a few inches while all sharing the same foundation.
all for the price of sharing a wall with your neighbors’ houses.
Too high a price.
Understandable, but they could’ve built detached rowhouses and got like 50% more space by getting rid of those gates to the backyard and building up to the edge of the lots. And if developers didn’t cheap out on the construction (asking for a lot, I know), it wouldn’t be an issue anyways. I live in a condo that’s a duplex built in the 70s and I hear people out on the street, noise from a nearby construction yard, and gunfire at the range a quarter mile from here far more often than I hear my neighbor.
Its not just noise.
- pests (mice, roaches, etc)
- fire hazards
- autonomy on upkeep and maintenance
- water damage
- neglect/malicious destruction
- insurance
- cooking smells
- noising foot stomping
These are some of the kinds of things your neighbor can do that will affect your life or your property when you share a wall. Even 6 feet or a couple of meters separation between houses can save you from every single one of the things I listed above.
Maybe have one big communal courtyard in the middle
I’d definitely prefer that, personally, but I think that would be a tough sell in most of the US at this particular point in society. Especially when most construction of new homes isn’t really urban so people don’t feel the space confinement the way they would in a more urban setting (they just look past the row homes and go “well that field could be housing so I don’t want this”), and with the sprawling layout of suburbs, they would feel super out of place to the point where I bet NIMBY mentality would prevent it.
Perhaps if that was a more normal option here, but it’s pretty uncommon for now.
I agree, but I was surprised to see on the Wikipedia article for townhouses/rowhouses examples of what are apparently recent suburb developments of townhouses in the US. Things might finally be shifting back to some semblance of logic. Though, developments like the one in the article are valid evidence to the contrary…
That would be great! I’d love to be wrong about this one.
I really dislike the “shove them in smaller boxes” idea this seems to have to it, similar to the tiny house “movement” (which actively makes me uncomfortable for a variety of reasons), but in areas that don’t have basements or whatever, where it’s a house on a slab no matter how big, where people just have this “must have freestanding structure to fully own it” mentality (which in a lot of cases is legit, but if we planned for it could easily be handled). This is an option.
Just my own curiosity, and you seem fun to talk to; where you are from, are your foundations accessible spaces, or are you in a slab foundation swampy area? I ask because I’m from a “has basements” area, where the foundation of the house actually adds space to it. I assume most row houses have basement spaces, because you tend to find them in densely populated areas that existed before modern conveniences like refrigeration and roads. So maybe you’d need a basement to store preserved goods. I doubt there’s space on average to have that in the main space right? (Legit asking, idk, maybe space isn’t right, but root cellars have different conditions, cooler.)
But I lived down in Texas for a while and a lot of their land you can’t build basements on because it’s really flood prone, so it’s literally just floating concrete slabs on land with houses atop. Honestly if you are going to put houses on that, you might as well do it this way and maximize the space between them with native shade plants to use up the moisture.
Agreed. Just build an apartment at this point.
Single-family home?
That’s some propaganda spin isnt it
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“Single-family home” is a direct quote from the article.
I understand single bedroom home, but they’re framing it as a family home
“Single family home” is a legal description, not propaganda the author made up.
So it’s propaganda the government made up.
I think the idea of building a stand alone building of 200sqft had just never been considered.
Which tells me it wasn’t well thought out tbh
It’s opposed to multiple family duplex or apartments
It’s a shed.
“Single familiy” is standard real estate and legal terminology. It means “a structure intended to be occupied by one family”. As opposed to “multi-family”, which means a structure designed for 2 or more families, like a duplex or an apartment building. The word “family” does not imply a specific number of people or bedrooms. A married couple with no children is still a family. Heck, for reasons of occupancy, one person is a family.
While I totally agree that there’s no way a family is living in a tiny one bedroom home and the term is deceptive, “single family home” is the zoning term.
This would be fantastic if it were arranged in a mixed-type development to include apartments, small homes, larger homes, and commercial. Plopping a bunch of little houses into a single space is just piling the less advantaged on top of each other so you don’t have to look at them.
Thank you, I came here to comment something similar myself. The real issue is the land these properties are on. If they’re crammed next to each other like sardine cans, you’re not giving them the opportunity to say have a yard and a dog. The idea of having a backyard barbecue at a place like that is likely out of the question as well.
The size of the house itself is perfect for some people, like me and my partner for example, but the size of the property likely is not. I’m okay with living in a small space, but I’d also enjoy having a small amount of privacy as well as a yard to grow vegetables and native flowers. Further, my partner needs a service animal desperately, but she needs a medium sized dog like a lab or a retriever to stay balanced, but we understand its unfair to try to live with a dog that size in a tiny apartment without a yard and the nearest park a few blocks away. As a service animal, its quality of life matters as well.
If we’re just sardine-canning these places, they may as well be apartments or condos anyway.
I’m glad this option exists for buyers. There are people that happily exists in the space of a 1 bedroom apartment, but prior to this had no option of owning their home without getting a home much larger than their needs. This mean these people were stuck either buying way more house than they needed, or at the whims of landlords and markets rising rents.
Ownership is so important because it (for the most part*), locks the cost of housing down to a mostly predictable 30 year rate.
- yes property taxes increase over time, yes home maintenance costs can increase and roofs wear out, yes HVAC replacement costs are now on the homewoner, yes home insurance rates can rise over time
The issue is not the size but the price and rate of the loan. You could’ve always got a plot this size and built a kit house for 75k in the past.
I’m not sure where you live, but most of the areas I know about in the USA that isn’t true.
Single family home building permits usually require a minimum plot size as well as a minimum square footage.
Here’s Los Angeles which wouldn’t allow what you’re describing even with newly implemented reductions from 2005:
“The Small Lot Subdivision (Townhome) Ordinance is an amendment to the Los Angeles Municipal Code. The ordinance permits small lot developments in the form of detached townhouses. To accomplish this, the definition of “lots” was amended to specify that the 20-foot street frontage requirement would not apply to an approved small lot subdivision. Parking requirements were also amended; small lot developments are not required to provide parking spaces on the same lot, as is the case with all other residential zones, but are still required to provide two garaged parking spaces per unit.”
OPs article house would fail from the bolded part.
Just for the opposite end of the spectrum, here’s rural Ohio:
“Maximum building height: Forty-five (45) feet. H. Minimum main building size: 1500 square feet.”
So OPs article house would fail on minimum house size.
The issue is not the size but the price and rate of the loan.
As far as the price ($145k) and rate, what the person in the article paid and their rate is likely close to the same as I paid for both in 2004 (for an admittedly slightly larger house).
If anything OPs article buyer paid less. The inflation adjusted I paid in 2004 would be $220k today.
If you’re still claiming that someone could have bought the land, the kit, paid the labor, and was able to obtain building permits to have this house in the past, I’m going to ask you to provide some data to back that up.
Nothing wrong with small houses or apartments. But usually they are in urban areas and you have other spaces. My smallest house is in a very urban area and so it’s really just a sleeping pod. Walk out the front door and you have restaurants, shops, parks, everything. You have community areas with sports, pools, green space, etc.
A suburban hellscape with a trailer sized house is never a good thing. America has a knack for finding the absolute worst of both worlds while charging more per person and trying to spin it as innovative and game changing for the better.
It is such a strange “worst of both worlds” approach to things.
There is nothing wrong with a tiny house. For single people, or couples who don’t want kids.
Where I take issue is the severe lack of fucking land and space. they squish them up against each other leaving you with no privacy between you and your neighbors. If they had a neighborhood full of these homes, and each one on varying sizes of land from half acre to acre, that would honestly be wonderful for me.
Yeah, I thought the whole point of a tiny house was to live outside, and your house is for cooking and sleeping!
When my sister’s tiny house was in Texas, they lived on a huge stretch of land, and the closest neighbor was another tiny house with a horse. They didn’t need curtains. Now they moved back to our home state and their neighbor is 25 feet from them :(
If this means being able to own a house earlier in life then absolutely go for this. There’s no greater theft of your ability to build wealth than rent.
That doesn’t seem right if the taxes on a house in the area you where you work are higher than rent.
Sure, but I’m not aware of anywhere where property taxes would be so high that they would be higher than rent. That doesn’t really make sense, landlords have to pay property tax so how are they making so much profit if it’s higher than rent?
Renting an apartment is cheaper than buying a house. If there are no small houses but there are cheap apartments you end up with this problem. Sf bay area housing is a time.
How is this better than condos in a 8 story building?
This is in comparison to larger houses, condos are a different topic.
Pls just build more medium density apartment buildings with 3 bedroom units
Sure thing! Only $6000/month and they’re the cheapest ones available. Also, the 400sq ft ones are $6000/month because fuck you.
🥲
It’s 55 m^2 or a normal size apartment. Smallest apartment allowed in Europe (at least where I know such legal limits exist) is 25 m^s.
In some countries I think is 40sqm. But my first flat (built before such regulation) was 28sqm. When I moved in with my gf her flat was 100+sqm. All that walking around when I forgot something in a room was exhausting! 😂
It’s 55 m^2 or a normal size apartment.
yup; exactly the same size as mine
It’s actually called The Great Go Fuck Yourself, and it’s what the rich and propertied are saying to the rest of us. There’s only one answer.
Oh I like this. It encompasses the views so well. I mean NIMBYism is part of it, but the GGFY nails the overall sentiment so much better
There’s only one answer.
Bend over and spread?
Just build a fucking apartment block you cowards!
But the shadows! The neighbourhood character! The traffic! The views!
They tore out an entire line of trees along my street so they could pack a dozen new houses into a lot originally fit for only four.
Legitimately would have been better if they’d just built a mid-rise block and kept the green space, rather than turning half the street into a giant mud pit.
Motherfuckers have to have their own yard even through it’s 3x10 feet
Fuck that, if I achieved that open freedom you’d have to cart me away dead before I gave that up
Why don’t you peope just build…upwards?
The house I rent in Tokyo now is 54 m^2 plus some loft space. I can reach out and touch my neighbors’ houses from two sides. Also, what’s a yard? All in all, it’s been fine for two of us and I have one room as my office. I think people want a lot more space than they actually need.
That said, affordable housing in general is a big problem in the US.
Reminds me on medieval houses in Europe. This on is in Amsterdam
These look even more narrow and way dumber. You could fit more, larger houses into the same space without the massive air gaps between them.
