Farmer wants a tiny house
Great returns on tourism trend for rural lodgings
Landowners are discovering that the new “Byron Bay weekend” is in fact a rural setting, with a few cows, sheep, llamas and a farm experience for city dwellers looking to reconnect with the countryside. And farmers are cashing in on this tourism trend with luxury farm stay accommodation that can attract great rates for a night, or up to two weeks.
Tiny houses are leading the way for farmstay accommodation, including exceptional two-storey, high-end, luxury abodes, to simple designs and even domes and pods.
“The tiny homes in themselves are an attraction,” says Phae Barrett, organiser of the Australia-wide Tiny Homes Expo, where tiny houses are displayed by builders for people to come and look-see-try-buy.
“Coupled with a great view, some countryside charm and a knowledgeable host, it’s a perfect scene for a vacation trend that is charging across Australia.”
Airbnb currently lists more than 700 farms in Australia ranging from a traditional farmstead estate, to a yurt in a cow paddock.
Interestingly, tiny homes are also listed as a whole unique category on the popular platform, due to the explosive interest people have shown in living in a tiny house.
The rise of the tiny house industry has flourished amid multiple crises, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, floods, fires, cost of living, housing crisis and interest rate increases.
Subsequently, builders of tiny homes have gone from just a handful in 2018 to many hundreds in 2023, the aforementioned Expo tripling in size within just two years.
“Many people like to try out living in a tiny house before buying one, and agritourism, where land owners can offer a unique short-stay in a tiny home, are highly sought after,” Barrett says.
There is even a Parkmytinyhouse website where people who have bought tiny houses are looking for “hosts” to offer a small parcel of land for longer-term rentals, some offering up to $200 a week for a plot of private land to park their house discreetly.
Most tiny homes also go hand-inhand with being off the grid, coming with solar power, water tanks and waste management systems – so they really are plug-in and go solutions – needing little else from the land owner other than decent access from the road.