Much care, ingenuity, and craft goes into building tiny homes, and this indeed can be quite inspiring, like the house pictured here built for $10,000 from mostly recycled materials. However, after a few months, much less a few years, living in a tiny home might get more than a bit confining and feel like camping out. Also, almost uniformly, those building and living in them are in their twenties, a fine time to be adventurous. However, money is a primary reason for living in a tiny home. Young people, depending on where they live, may barely be able to afford rent, much less buy a home. So they improvise.
This tiny house is in New Zealand. A couple who travels considerably lives there. He’s in construction and presumably they built it themselves, sited on a friend’s land that has water hookups, which cuts way down on costs.
Their home is currently located on a friend’s plot of land and hooked up to his water line. But the couple are planning on making the home completely off-the-grid in the near future. They have already installed solar panels, and creating their own, DIY greywater filtration system, which is not quite enough to take care of all their water needs.
Zoning requirements for tiny homes in the U.S. very widely so it’s best to build in an area that has few or none.
The ultimate in simplicity though is land without specific zoning requirements. There are still many townships and counties—mostly rural—that have no zoning laws. You can live in any size house on a foundation as long as it meets the state building codes, or even in any tiny house on wheels in some locations. In fact, some jurisdictions still don’t have building codes, which makes it even easier to build the tiny house of your dreams! One caveat, just because there are no building codes doesn’t mean you should skimp on your build. Make it safe, make it healthy, and make it as high quality as you can.