Western Morning News (Saturday)
Is this the answer to housing crisis?
Could a house on wheels – but not a caravan – offer the perfect solution to the affordable homes shortage? Edward Church asks the question
THE builder of a tiny house on wheels who is selling it for a fraction of the cost of a regular home believes it could solve the Cornish housing crisis.
Set on a five-wheeled trailer with a wooden frame and metal exterior, the house – which currently sits in a field in Falmouth – has everything you find in a regular home.
The exterior, save the bottom half metre or so, could pass for a normal – albeit quite small – house from the front.
Inside it has a fully-functioning bathroom, two bedrooms, fullywired electrics, living room and kitchen. The house even has the decor of a regular show home, with references to a family framed on the wall and trendy-looking dangling light bulbs imitating a chandelier.
The crucial difference, of course, is its lack of a garden... oh, and the fact it’s mounted on a trailer which can be towed to wherever its owners want it.
On sale for £50,000, it’s a lot cheaper than a stationery house and its creator reckons units like it could solve the ongoing Cornish housing crisis which has seen record numbers of people unable to afford to buy, or even rent, in the county where they were born.
Electrician Chris Metcalf spent more than a year building the trailer into the mobile home its polished Rightmove listing shows.
He said his is not an original idea – and that the ‘tiny house’ movement is a real thing which began in New Zealand.
“I built it over the course of about a year, it took a bit longer as I only had about two weeks of furlough,” Mr Metcalf said. “As there are no actual regulations for tiny houses on wheels technically this and other tiny houses on wheels would fall under the caravan regulations from a planning perspective.
“This house in particular has plenty of space on the roof for a full solar panel system and space in the front cupboard for batteries. You could also add a rain water collecting water tank and be completely off-grid.
“Obviously, it’s a whole lot greener so you don’t have to dig up the land. It’s a popular world and it’s starting to take off. Wales and Scotland have changed their laws to give green housing more of a chance.”
As well as being the end of a long effort for him, Mr Metcalf said he thinks houses like this are the future for Cornwall: “I think it’s such a shame that the greenbelt land is being totally destroyed by these mass developments of houses not much bigger than rabbit hutches and being sold at ridiculous prices that locals can’t afford.
“That’s okay with planning, whereas something like tiny houses on wheels or creating a tiny house village as such could be a possibility with far less damage to the land.”
Having stayed in the house for a week, to prove it was liveable, Mr Metcalf has now put it up for sale.
“It’s just a bit bigger than what legally counts as a caravan,” he said. “But it is basically a caravan. We have the first viewings for the house soon. This is definitely one of my more random projects. And more expensive.”
He said it might be something he could try to turn into a business, depending on how the sale of this first one goes.
Despite his description of it as “a caravan of sorts”, Mr Metcalf added that it certainly has more to it than any other mobile home he’s seen.
Since listing the house on a local buy and sell page, he said his Facebook had “exploded” with interest in the property.
On the post, Mr Metcalf said it would need to be taken to its new forever home by the person who bought it – but that it could make a fantastic house or holiday let.
Mr Metcalf videoed his journey building the tiny house, and uploaded it to YouTube. In the video, he can be seen putting together virtually the entire project himself. Starting out with just the trailer base and several planks of wood, he transforms it into the house it is now.
Kirsty Sugden, of estate agents Martin and Co, is selling the house. “You could put it in your garden, use it as a teenagers’ den, put the in-laws in it.
“You’d need your own land, but it’s fantastic. It’s one of a kind. This is the kind of property you could stay in all year round. I think it’s a really cool idea. There’s a shortage of properties in the South West at the moment. Families who might want extra accommodation, but don’t want to or can’t buy a bigger house or move home – this would be ideal, especially if they want that extra space, or somewhere to work from home on their own land.”
Monday: Judi Spiers channels her inner Casey Jones and gets to drive a steam train