These days, there's a lot of talk about so-called "tiny houses."
We actually have several tiny house colonies here in town, and I know quite a few people have put tiny houses in their backyards as studios or ADUs.
And while tiny houses might represent one particular approach to solving the issue with the affordable housing shortage, it's also a bit of a joke. Actually, more than just "a bit."
I say "joke" because what you're essentially offering people — in terms of housing — is that they can either have an unaffordable house that is really bigger and far more expensive than they can afford or even want, or they can have a glorified shoebox that is actually somewhat overpriced for its size and features.
Most tiny houses are somewhere between 200 and maybe 350 square feet (18.6-32.5 sq.m), which is truly tiny. And then the next option up from that is the average size of new constructed homes, generallly run 2200-2400 square feet (200-225 Sq. m).
When Mrs. Denmarkguy and I started looking for a place to downsize to, we ran into a brick wall because it turned out that what we were looking for — which was also known as a "starter home" 40 years ago — didn't actually exist anymore.
I'm talking about a house that is somewhere between 800 and maybe 1300 square feet, has a couple of bedrooms, and maybe 1 1/2 bathrooms and works perfectly for a retired couple that no longer have kids living at home.
But there are virtually no homes being built in this size range, and if you want something in that size range, at all, your only option pretty much is to buy a manufactured home.
We explored the option of trying to find an older home from before the "size bloat" really took hold... but the problem is that most of those are being bought up by private equity firms who knock them down and build something larger... or upgrade the smaller house to something bigger and less affordable.
Now, the general idea with "free market capitalism" is that the market determines a place where demand and supply meets. But there is a fundamental problem with that when the supply side of the equation is being controlled by the need to make a profit rather than a need to meet market needs.
Of course, we eventually ended up choosing to stay in our oversized house that is much more than we really need simply because it's already paid for, and we were unable to find something that was actually what we were looking for because it doesn't get supplied to the market anymore.
Economists correctly — to some degree — point out that we're so much better off because we have bigger houses with more rooms than we had 40 years ago but it ignores the fact that nobody is asking whether people actually want all those bigger rooms in those bigger houses, with that bigger price tag. There's just a hidden assumption that bigger is always going to be better and it's left at that.
But I can't imagine that I'm alone in not wanting to retire to just another McMansion!
More isn't necessarily better!
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2026.09.02 01:44 PDT
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