Meet Erika: When her twin sister and long-time roommate bought a house with her boyfriend, Erika had a choice to make — either she could keep working in the job she hated to afford an apartment alone, or she could move back home and build her very own tiny space.
As you can guess, Erika chose to go tiny, and spent 2 years and 3 months creating her completely unique tiny house on wheels, spending a total of $35,000. She admits now that the $9k she spent on the trailer was far too much, but she was completely new to tiny homes and didn’t know better at the time. Despite spending more than she could have, she is now completely debt-free due to her decision to go tiny!
She documents her tiny life on her blog here, and on Instagram. Right now she’s parked on her parent’s lake-side land in Upstate New York — and what a spot it is!
This little 18-foot THOW in Wisconsin was built by an experience carpenter and welder. He’s selling it for $35,000 or best offer, and may be able to deliver for a fee.
The metal-clad tiny house has a removable deck and awning. When you walk inside you’ll find the living room with a futon that folds out into a full-size bed. There’s a wood stove in the corner to heat the place. The kitchen has a gravity-fed sink. a two-burner cook top, and a refrigerator.
In the bathroom there’s a shower and DIY composting toilet, and above it is the main loft bedroom with an octagonal window. You can contact the seller here.
We hear it all the time…Why do tiny houses cost so much?
Folks on the coasts or in big cities (who could easily pay $400-900K for a home) typically understand it, but if you are from a more rural spot where you can get a regular home for $70,000, the cost of tiny house can seem exorbitant.
In order to help you see where all that money goes when a builder creates a tiny house for you to purchase ready-made, I’m relying on a great breakdown from our friends at Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses. Then we’ll compare that with a DIY-ers cost breakdown.
Rock Mountain starts by laying out its goals: an 8×16 tiny house with average finishes should cost $35,000, while a larger one with great finishes should cost $80,000.
This is a 345 sq. ft. tiny house built in 2012 by college students Ashley Haugstatter and Michael J. Zella in Endicott, New York.
The two built the house together. It cost them about $35,000.
Ashley just shared an update in the comments about where they are now, and I thought you’d be interested:
Hi everyone! I’m the girl in the video, this is our beloved tiny house 🙂
Our original hope was to have a tiny house on a trailer to take with us, but due to the zoning laws, we found this to be our best option. $35,000 includes the land, the home, all of our landscaping, retaining wall, driveway paved, etc. We didn’t skimp on finishes, but we didn’t go super pricey either.
We did indeed build it just the 2 of us, which is why it took a while. We worked 10-12 hour days for about 2 1/2 months. It was grueling, but so worth it! It was actually costing the 2 of us ~$12,000 EACH for room and board at Binghamton, per year. So with my having 3 years left and Michael having 2, it didn’t make sense to stay on campus. Plus the accommodations at school are less than stellar. And we couldn’t have our puppy at school 🙂 We also saw renting as a waste of money — the cheap rentals are in the downtown area that we wanted to stay away from, and the newer nice rentals were way overpriced. We did end up selling the house and got all of our money back. We have re-invested and now have built another lakefront home on Oneida Lake in Syracuse where we moved following graduation. I’m a nurse in a Pediatric ICU here and Mike is a Mechanical Engineer at Carrier. We would have stayed, we both had good paying jobs offered to us, but I wanted to work in a PICU, and there are none in Binghamton.
The desk did go underneath the loft, across from the clothes. It was a perfect set up! It really couldn’t have fit our needs any better. The outdoor area was also great for having people over. I do miss it, but our new house by the lake is also beautiful! I am so happy that we had the experience though. It was an amazing place to live for 4 years.
Please enjoy, learn more, and re-share below. Thank you!
How These College Students Built a $35k Tiny Home!
