A tiny village for tiny homes
Dan and Cindy Hamilton are building big dreams out of tiny homes.
The Dublin couple own the tiny-house building company Modern Tiny Living, one of hundreds of new enterprises seeking to capitalize on the current buzz for living small.
In a huge step for the yearold company, the Hamiltons plan to launch Cedar Springs Tiny Village next month in New Paris, about 100 miles west of Columbus. The Hamiltons describe Cedar Springs as Ohio’s first tiny-home community.
The community will feature 30 lots for tiny houses, complete with utility connections, on the shore of Silver Lake. The village is designed to address one of the biggest challenges of the tiny-home movement: where to put the homes.
“Many municipal codes don’t allow tiny homes, and these homes need water, sewer, electricity,” said Chris Galusha, president of the American Tiny House Association.
The Hamiltons were selling health and nutrition products when a friend suggested they consider the tiny-house business. They partnered with a central Ohio architect, Bruce Faris, and arranged for an Amish company to build a model home, which they have shepherded to tiny-home shows for the past year.
Fueled by a bevy of television shows — including “Tiny House, Big Living,” “Tiny House Builders,” “Tiny House Hunters,” “Tiny House Living” and “Tiny House Nation” — interest in micro homes has grown. (An HGTV crew recently filmed Modern Tiny Living for an upcoming episode of “Tiny House, Big Living.”)
Despite the attention, it’s impossible to say how deep the audience truly is for living in a house of less than 400 square feet — smaller than a two-car garage.
“I don’t think it’s a passing fad,” Galusha said. “I think it will remain an affordable housing option in America.”
Television has helped spread the tiny-living gospel but has also made it hard to separate the serious from the curious, noted Dan Hamilton.
“We want people to use the houses, not people who just saw it on TV and got excited about it,” he said.
Modern Tiny Living advertises five models on its website, but Dan Hamilton said most of their homes are custom built for buyers.
The homes are the maximum allowable (without a special permit) road width of 8 1/2 feet wide, 13 feet high and 20-, 24- or 28-feet long. The result is a 170- to 238-squarefoot rectangle, plus a sleeping loft. All homes are on wheels and can be pulled by a large pickup truck.
Modern Tiny Living homes include hardwood floors, wood-plank “shiplap” interior siding, full-size appliances, tile bathrooms, metal roofs, spray-foam insulation, quartz countertops, SmartSide engineered wood exterior siding and a washer/dryer combo.
Those sorts of finishes push the price to $50,000 to $80,000, depending on size and details.
Hamilton sees the audience as those who want to combine custom-home-quality finishes with the portability of a travel trailer.
Hamilton said Modern Tiny Living has sold 12 homes and is building five more for customers. A few buyers rent out their homes, and five or six plan to live in them full time, he said, but most expect to use them as weekend or seasonal retreats.
“The most common site is someone’s back 40,” Hamilton said.
Cindy Sue Gepfert of Grandview will be the first occupant of Cedar Springs Tiny Village. For $450 a month, she plans to park her Modern Tiny Living home at the village.
For Gepfert, her $50,000 tiny house represents a movement toward simplifying her life.
“I’ve been on this journey five years,” said Gepfert, 59. “At this point in my life, I want simplicity and not being so attached to a home. Most of my life is spent outside the home, at work, or being with friends and family, in the community.”
Gepfert plans to divide her time between her tiny-home retreat in New Paris and an even smaller studio apartment she is moving into in Grandview Heights.
Bill Sweet, a real-estate agent who has spent his life in the small town of New Paris, wonders how deep the market is for full-time tiny-house living. “How quickly would you get tired of living in a 200- or 300-square-foot box?” he asks.
But Sweet believes Cedar Springs’ proximity to Dayton, Cincinnati, Columbus and Indianapolis will make it attractive for those seeking a weekend getaway.