I Bought A $3,000 TINY HOME

What's up everybody? I'm Stephen here with Tiny House Listings and this is the first video of a new series that I'm starting that just kind of goes to show you the affordability of a tiny home. Uh, and in this video I'm going to show you a tiny home that I actually just purchased. And I'm going to give you the story, the background, and how everything's going to go down and just run some numbers with you along the way. Um, just a forewarning, this video series is not for everyone. if you're not handy or if you're not willing to be or if you're not the DIY type. Um, and I get that's going to be most people and I fully understand that and I recognize that. But if that is something that you're willing to do, acquire some tools, acquire some knowledge, or just kind of go for it. Um, this video series might be for you. And if you're someone looking for super affordable housing, which is what this will be, um, stay tuned. So, now I just want to quickly go through some of the specs of this and give you the backstory. And, um, we'll just go from there. So, just real quick, if you're coming to this video and you don't know who I am, I'm Stephen Herold with Tiny House Listings. I'm one of the few people who've been around the Tiny House movement since the beginning. We're on my 16th coming up on 17th year that I've been doing this. And I own Tiny House Listings, which is the marketplace for tiny homes. Over 20,000 homes have been bought and sold through that platform. And in 2022, I started building tiny homes. And um we built a couple hundred of them now. And um so I've been around the whole tiny house movement, seen it since the beginning, watch it grow, watch it go through changes. And um so anyways, that's just a quick backstory about me before you get into this video series. So I love to find deals on marketplace and I came across this tiny home. I saw it and I had some exchanges back and forth with the owner. We negotiated the price to what I thought was an absolute steal. And I think you will too when you uh see a little bit more about this tiny home. Uh but anyways, in this whole video series, we're going to go through the build of it because right now it's just a shell and we're going to take you through the whole process. We're going to show you numbers just give you an idea of how cheaply you can own a tiny home if this is the route you want to take. So anyways, this tiny home is actually in my front yard right now and it's 16 by8. As you can see, it has some nice wood accent on the front. It has metal. As we go around and I show you more information, you'll see that it still definitely needs more work. It has the mobile home style axles which are great. Uh if you don't plan to move a lot, these will get you wherever you want to go. So, you can see as you move around to the back here, the metal has not been completed. The home's been wrapped. Got a nice wide window here on the outside. On this back side, you can see it's not been wrapped either. The home did come with all the metal. When I take you inside, it'll um you'll see more of that, but you can see on the back there's like a bump out. I thought about doing a storage type situation on here off the back. We'll go inside really quickly. Again, as you can see, this home's very basic for now. 16 by8. There's the metal that came with the home. And that'll be enough to finish the exterior. As you can see, nice double window out the back. Couple windows. The front window is broken. Not a huge deal. You can see there's glass there on the floor. Not a big deal. There's the wheel wells. Double window. Definitely going to have to put in some good insulation in here. Right now, the idea is to have the bathroom on that end. Kitchen over here. Uh we'll have an entertainment system set up here. Bedroom/ living area down here, but that could definitely change. That's just preliminary. Quick idea. Let me get on this end so I can show you the other end. [Music] So, the idea is the vision for this tiny home is to see how affordably it can be done. And we're going to be finding a lot more marketplace deals uh to finish this out. That would be maybe uh new insulation that was left over from a previous construction project uh locally. Uh if we want to replace that window in the back here that's broken, um interior siding, we'll figure out a way to get that in there um affordably. maybe used kitchen cabinets or new kitchen cabinets that were left over. Maybe someone did a local um a project or like a revamp to their kitchen flooring. Same situation. So, just a quick backstory. I was on marketplace looking at some deals and I came across this one. I'm in North Carolina and this one was in South Carolina. And so, I saw it and it was they were asking $4,500 for this tiny house shell, which of course, as you know, is a steal because this thing's already 50% there. And um I talked him down to 3,000. So, which I thought was an absolute deal. So, I had Gabe, who works for Tiny House Listings, go to uh South Carolina and pick that up for me and brought it here to my front yard. And um so I'm really interested to see what we can get the price at for the build of this home. I'm thinking under $10,000, but we'll see. And again, I fully acknowledge this is not the uh route or the uh approach that everyone is going to want to take with a tiny house. Most people are not going to be willing to have the tools or use the tools or get the knowledge or DIY. I realize that we've actually done surveys over 90% of people say they never intend to build their own tiny home, which is totally fine. I completely understand that and this is probably not for you. And if it isn't for you, maybe you'll just find some entertainment value from this. Uh but if it is for you, maybe it'll inspire you to go out and find a deal for yourself or maybe you have a builder build a shell for you and you finish it out yourself. Um but another thing too is we also are planning to make this one fully certified as we go. So, we don't know if we're going to use Pacific West Associates, which is who we already use, or Noah. We'll definitely go one of those two routes. And that'll be really good because most RV parks, tiny house communities will not let your tiny house in uh unless if it's certified. And the reason for that is their hands are tied. The local jurisdiction they're in want to see some sort of certification. Otherwise, it could be a fire hazard. It could be a danger to a lot of people. And I fully get that. Um I used to go against that, and I didn't think it was the best idea, but I understand now why it's done. But anyways, I'm excited to see how this project turns out. And maybe by the time you watch this video, the other videos will be along. So, we'll have a playlist. But until then, stay tuned. Thanks for watching. We'll see you in the next video.