![]() Where are you going to park your tiny house? So make sure to check your local ordinances before you get started. In some places, it’s illegal to build a home smaller than a certain square footage. The square footage required also depends on which county or city you’re planning to build in. Buildings are generally required to be more than 70 square feet in size, but in some areas they are required to be at least 1,000 square feet. This can throw a loop in zoning regulations. On the other hand, small homes on foundations fall under the same building code as residential homes. It may even sound good if you dream of the off-grid life.īut that flexibility comes with a catch: If you build using an RV code, it will be a lot harder to get residential status if you and your family want to put down roots with your living space later on. Why does it matter? If your small house has wheels, it may fall under the recreational vehicle code, which is far less stringent than the code required for a house on a foundation. “The house has to be put on a foundation for it to be an actual house.” “There’s a lot of confusion in the community,” says Andrew Morrison, who builds tiny houses and co-wrote the National Tiny House Building Code. Which one you pick will largely influence where you’re allowed to live, so it’s important to know what’s what. Tiny living also comes in two different forms: movable (on wheels) or stationary (on a foundation). So how can you make sure your own small house isn’t an outlaw? Let’s go over some of the most common issues in planning, zoning, building, and living in a home that’s tiny, but still has just the room you need.įirst, a quick primer on the tiny-house movement: To officially be considered tiny, the house has to be 400 square feet or less (excluding lofts), according to the International Code Council. The law often sees tiny houses as ambiguous little islands floating somewhere between camper vans (aka recreational vehicles), mobile homes, and traditional single-family residences. So it’s easy to get confused about what’s legal and what’s not. Why not trade big house living and all that space you have to maintain for living in your own tiny house? Can I put a tiny house on my property?īut before you and your family start plotting your new, full-time tiny-house living, it’s important to remember that these cute creations still occupy a gray zone. It’s a new house movement whose time may have come.Īfter all, for most of history, families lived without huge living rooms and spare bedrooms. For some of us, downsizing to a tiny home is the dream-the ultimate minimalist lifestyle, a chance to try living closer to nature, with none of the stress of paying off a mortgage for the rest of our prime years.
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