Tiny home – tiniest budget
Despite having no experience in construction, this 28-year-old returned from her OE keen to become a tiny homeowner on the tiniest of budgets. Stephanie Ockhuysen reports.
HAZEL Gray has found a way to get a tiny foothold on the property ladder for just $45,000.
The 28-year-old is putting on her tool belt and building her own tiny home – despite having no prior experience in construction.
Around the country there are about a dozen tiny home building companies which charge anywhere between $100,000 and $150,000. Gray’s on track to meet her budget of just a fraction of that.
‘‘I wanted the challenge and to be able to figure out building skills on my own. Eventually I’d like to build my own conventional house and this is an experiment.’’
Gray discovered that conventional lending models weren’t available to her, as she couldn’t access KiwiSaver or a mortgage.
‘‘I’ve heard of people getting vehicle loans but the interest is really high so I’ve just been saving as I go and doing it in bursts.’’
This project was the main reason Gray moved back to New Zealand in March after three years in London.
The carpentry classes she attended in London to gain familiarity with the tools had not proved overly useful.
However she has learnt a lot from friends and YouTube, and the BRANZ House Building Guide has been like her bible.
‘‘It’s not as big as it sounds, it’s totally doable, even without building skills, you just talk to the right people and read the right materials.
‘‘I’ve been pretty staunch about wanting to do as much of it as I can myself and the sense of satisfaction is enormous.’’
Gray’s budget even factors in her regular commute from Hamilton, where she lives and works part-time as a speech therapist, to Taranaki, where the tiny home sits in a paddock on her dad’s property.
She gets five days off a fortnight to travel down to work on it and estimates she has spent $1500 on petrol so far.
As property prices soar, tiny homes have become a popular alternative.
There are professional providers such as Katikati-based Build Tiny, Facebook communities have sprung up, and the Netflix series Tiny House Nation has helped the movement gain prominence.
Gray hopes to have the 4.2-metre-high home, which weighs roughly 3.5 tonnes, liveable by next Christmas.
The house will have all the mod cons of a regular home, just on a smaller scale.
There’ll be a lounge, a big kitchen because she loves cooking, a breakfast bar, a bathroom, and loft bedroom. She just needs to figure out where to park her motorbike.
‘‘I designed it to be just big enough for me but then a friend told me to do it for two because I have tall friends and it was lucky because a couple of months ago I started seeing a guy who is 6 foot 3.’’
Building consents around tiny homes were an area of contention, Gray said.
Some councils treat them as buildings requiring full building code compliance, and others as vehicles, under the Land Transport Act.
As a result, one tiny home builder, who didn’t think he needed building consent because the structures were moveable, was fined $8500 for building five ‘‘small dwellings’’ on a property in Blenheim.
‘‘The theory is because it’s on wheels you sort of skate around any building consents. If you haven’t built it to code, or you can’t prove that you’ve built it to code, they can serve you a Notice to Fix and you need to move it, essentially,’’ Gray said.
‘‘I’m building as close to code as I can and taking photo evidence along the way.’’