We laughed when we saw it. Steve, Savannah and I were cruising a quiet neighborhood one recent Sunday, armed with lock box codes to check out some possible new flips. It’s one of those older neighborhoods, houses lined up on either side of the one-way street. But there was a break in the line at #222. Instead of a front porch mere feet from the sidewalk, there was an expanse of front lawn. And set way back was the tiniest little house I’ve ever seen!
It didn’t look real. It looked like a house a little kid would draw – a square with a triangle roof. A front porch with two upstairs windows like eyes.
It didn’t look real. It looked like a house a little kid would draw – a square with a triangle roof. A front porch with two upstairs windows like eyes.
“Noooo let’s go innnnn!” Savannah is 6. Of course she’d want to go inside the doll’s house! But I kind of wanted to see it, too. It was so… cute!
At first we were afraid to go in, because it looked like somebody lived there. There were curtains in the windows. There was stuff on the enclosed front porch. We were about to move on when the neighbor approached us from across the street. “Are you buying this house?”
He assured us there was nobody there. A woman in her 90s had been taken away to a nursing home last summer after she fell in the yard. She had lived there since the 1930s. He heard she’d passed on, and her heirs were selling the house. Steve found the realtor lock box on a back door, and we went inside. Good thing the neighbor told us nobody lived here – because it felt like someone was home! The eat-in kitchen was set up with a little table and chairs, as if someone had just cleaned up the breakfast dishes. There were even doily placemats! It was such a perfectly preserved 1950s kitchen. I knew we’d have to upgrade it for a flip, but I felt kind of bad about that. I wish there was more of a market for retro, but that’s way too niche for our purposes.
Nice high ceilings. The tiny house didn’t feel so tiny inside. It just felt like home. Nana’s house. She loved this house so much, I could see and feel it. Sure it was a little out of date, but so very well maintained! A small living room with a half-bath off the side. Up the stairs to two small bedrooms and a full bath. The house was solid. Mechanical systems in the tiny no-frills basement were all recent upgrades. Plumbing, electrical, gas heat – all fairly new. The roof looked good. Those ugly awnings would have to go and the aluminum siding seemed a bit dingy but nothing that couldn’t be remedied. There’s a nice long driveway – off-street parking is a premium around here. The yard is large enough for a backyard cookout – and I could envision some sweet landscaping in that big front yard. Somebody needs to talk me out of gnomes, though. For some reason I’m envisioning gnomes.
Is there a market for such a small house?
I looked around and thought, we could make this so CUTE! Sure it’s small. Sure it’s only a two bedroom. I asked my husband, the realtor, “are people buying 2 bedroom houses?” He assured me they are. Who would buy a small 2 bedroom house? Empty nesters looking to downsize. A young couple looking for an inexpensive, yet nice, home that won’t be hard to maintain. A single working parent with one or two children tired of renting looking for something affordable. Ok, the market is there. And then of course there is the “Tiny House Movement.”
I’m not sure this quite fits in with the Tiny House trend. The hottest thing on the internet, some of these Tiny Houses look like the sheds for sale outside Home Depot. And a lot of them are on wheels – Home Depot shed meets the Trailer Park? I don’t get it, but the yuppies are paying top dollar for them. (Do they still call them yuppies? I’ve heard the term “Muppies” as applied to upwardly-mobile members of the millennial generation.)
I’m wondering, though, if there’s a quick market for a very small but newly updated home with a great kitchen. It has a mere 900 square feet of living space and only two bedrooms, but it has more than one bathroom, and everything is new and modernized. Because it’s such a small house, the utility costs will be minimal. Taxes will be lower. The purchase price will be lower than average, and that means so will the mortgage!
I think back to the last apartment I rented before I bought my first home. It was maybe 500 square feet – a nice, modern one bedroom with an open plan kitchen/living room. Just one bathroom. I lived there alone until Steve moved in. Since we collectively had four cats and a dog after he moved in, we thought it prudent to buy a house. We found a half-double in Pittston (now one of our best cash-flowing rentals!) that had 936 square feet of living space. To us, that was huge! Our daughter was born while we were living there and that was the home for our little family until she was 2 ½. So our Tiny House is comparable in size to our first home, except it’s a single family house with a driveway on a quiet side street, as opposed to a half-double with on-street parking on one of the main arteries through Pittston.
This is definitely not our typical flip, but I don’t think it’s going to be a tough sell. The key is to make it look appealing, inside and out.
My top 3 renovation wishes for flipping a Tiny House
1. The exterior needs to be brightened up. Those awnings will have to go. The house will need to be power washed and we’ll probably need to brighten up the aluminum siding. We’re not going to reside it – too expensive. We will vinyl side the porch, which has been left with the original wood. I’ll want to paint the window trims to make them pop – maybe a nice burgundy? That will look nice with red flowers in hanging pots off the porch. And in flower boxes.
2. The front yard needs to be appealing. That chain link fence out front needs to go. The yellow grass needs to come in bright green in the spring. That’s a big, impressive front lawn! Maybe I’ll go on Craig’s List and see who’s selling off some landscaping features, like garden orbs. I’ll try to stay away from gnomes – although I see them out there whenever I look at the place!
3. The kitchen absolutely has to sell the place. I loved the retro kitchen Nana left behind. It changed my mind about the whole house – when I walked into that kitchen, I thought, “I could live here!” It’s a good space. Modernized, it will be spectacular! My sister, who is an urban-dweller and has lived in her share of small apartments, tells me it is essential to have counter space directly adjacent to the stove. She says the top issue in her small spaces was a usable kitchen layout.
But where do we put all our stuff?
Another issue in Tiny Houses is storage space. But we do have that new shed in the back yard, and the yard is big enough to roll in one of those tiny houses on wheels the yuppies are buying besides! And anyway, the whole trend of Tiny Houses is based on the desire to downsize one’s possessions, right? Right?!
So I’m a little scared that I got it wrong, but my instincts are telling me this house is a winner. As long as we can make it super appealing without over-improving and pricing ourselves out of the market, I think it just might be a home run!