1y ago

The Great Compression: Thanks to soaring housing prices, the era of the 400-square-foot subdivision house is upon us

Thanks to soaring housing prices, the era of the 400-square-foot subdivision house is upon us.

Robert Lanter lives in a 600-square-foot house that can be traversed in five seconds and vacuumed from a single outlet. He doesn’t have a coffee table in the living room because it would obstruct the front door. When relatives come to visit, Mr. Lanter says jokingly, but only partly, they have to tour one at time.

Each of these details amounts to something bigger, for Mr. Lanter’s life and the U.S. housing market: a house under $300,000, something increasingly hard to find. That price allowed Mr. Lanter, a 63-year-old retired nurse, to buy a new single-family home in a subdivision in Redmond, Ore., about 30 minutes outside Bend, where he is from and which is, along with its surrounding area, one of Oregon’s most expensive housing markets.

Mr. Lanter’s house could easily fit on a flatbed truck, and is dwarfed by the two-story suburban homes that prevail on the blocks around him. But, in fact, there are even smaller homes in his subdivision, Cinder Butte, which was developed by a local builder called Hayden Homes. Some of his neighbors live in houses that total just 400 square feet — a 20-by-20-foot house attached to a 20-by-20-foot garage.

This is not a colony of “tiny houses,” popular among minimalists and aesthetes looking to simplify their lives. For Mr. Lanter and his neighbors, it’s a chance to hold on to ownership.

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65 comments

This seems like the worst of both worlds — we still get massive suburban sprawl that prevents walkable cities and the density needed for good public transport, but without the perks of a larger house.
- Would it kill them to intersperse some retail space for a grocery store, café or conveince store?
  
  They can’t because of zoning laws.
- Having read this the other day, it seems the lots for them are smaller so it’s still better than typical suburban sprawl, but yeah not by very much. It’s like duplexes, just without the shared walls.
  At the same time, I totally understand the logic of the buyers. Condos and apartments really aren’t the same as having your own property that nobody really has say over but you. You can’t make big changes to a condo without approval of the building owner or whatever even though you “own it”, you share walls, and have no yard.
  It’s just one more piece to the puzzle, it’s not meant to be -the-solution, just one of many.
  
  Condos and apartments really aren’t the same as having your own property that nobody really has say over but you.
  For a normal-sized lot, I agree — but based on the photo in the article, the lot is basically nonexistent. There's barely enough room for a lawn chair. This feels more like wanting the outward trappings of a detached house without any of the tangible benefits.

Single-family home?
That's some propaganda spin isnt it
- "Single-family home" is a direct quote from the article.
  I understand single bedroom home, but they're framing it as a family home
- While I totally agree that there’s no way a family is living in a tiny one bedroom home and the term is deceptive, “single family home” is the zoning term.

This would be fantastic if it were arranged in a mixed-type development to include apartments, small homes, larger homes, and commercial. Plopping a bunch of little houses into a single space is just piling the less advantaged on top of each other so you don't have to look at them.
- Thank you, I came here to comment something similar myself. The real issue is the land these properties are on. If they're crammed next to each other like sardine cans, you're not giving them the opportunity to say have a yard and a dog. The idea of having a backyard barbecue at a place like that is likely out of the question as well.
  The size of the house itself is perfect for some people, like me and my partner for example, but the size of the property likely is not. I'm okay with living in a small space, but I'd also enjoy having a small amount of privacy as well as a yard to grow vegetables and native flowers. Further, my partner needs a service animal desperately, but she needs a medium sized dog like a lab or a retriever to stay balanced, but we understand its unfair to try to live with a dog that size in a tiny apartment without a yard and the nearest park a few blocks away. As a service animal, its quality of life matters as well.
  If we're just sardine-canning these places, they may as well be apartments or condos anyway.

I'm glad this option exists for buyers. There are people that happily exists in the space of a 1 bedroom apartment, but prior to this had no option of owning their home without getting a home much larger than their needs. This mean these people were stuck either buying way more house than they needed, or at the whims of landlords and markets rising rents.
Ownership is so important because it (for the most part*), locks the cost of housing down to a mostly predictable 30 year rate.
yes property taxes increase over time, yes home maintenance costs can increase and roofs wear out, yes HVAC replacement costs are now on the homewoner, yes home insurance rates can rise over time
- The issue is not the size but the price and rate of the loan. You could've always got a plot this size and built a kit house for 75k in the past.
  
  I'm not sure where you live, but most of the areas I know about in the USA that isn't true.
  Single family home building permits usually require a minimum plot size as well as a minimum square footage.
  Here's Los Angeles which wouldn't allow what you're describing even with newly implemented reductions from 2005:
  "The Small Lot Subdivision (Townhome) Ordinance is an amendment to the Los Angeles Municipal Code. The ordinance permits small lot developments in the form of detached townhouses. To accomplish this, the definition of “lots” was amended to specify that the 20-foot street frontage requirement would not apply to an approved small lot subdivision. Parking requirements were also amended; small lot developments are not required to provide parking spaces on the same lot, as is the case with all other residential zones, but are still required to provide two garaged parking spaces per unit."
  OPs article house would fail from the bolded part.
  Just for the opposite end of the spectrum, here's rural Ohio:
  "Maximum building height: Forty-five (45) feet. H. Minimum main building size: 1500 square feet."
  So OPs article house would fail on minimum house size.
  The issue is not the size but the price and rate of the loan.
  As far as the price ($145k) and rate, what the person in the article paid and their rate is likely close to the same as I paid for both in 2004 (for an admittedly slightly larger house).
  If anything OPs article buyer paid less. The inflation adjusted I paid in 2004 would be $220k today.
  If you're still claiming that someone could have bought the land, the kit, paid the labor, and was able to obtain building permits to have this house in the past, I'm going to ask you to provide some data to back that up.

Nothing wrong with small houses or apartments. But usually they are in urban areas and you have other spaces. My smallest house is in a very urban area and so it's really just a sleeping pod. Walk out the front door and you have restaurants, shops, parks, everything. You have community areas with sports, pools, green space, etc.
A suburban hellscape with a trailer sized house is never a good thing. America has a knack for finding the absolute worst of both worlds while charging more per person and trying to spin it as innovative and game changing for the better.
- It is such a strange "worst of both worlds" approach to things.

There is nothing wrong with a tiny house. For single people, or couples who don't want kids.
Where I take issue is the severe lack of fucking land and space. they squish them up against each other leaving you with no privacy between you and your neighbors. If they had a neighborhood full of these homes, and each one on varying sizes of land from half acre to acre, that would honestly be wonderful for me.
- Yeah, I thought the whole point of a tiny house was to live outside, and your house is for cooking and sleeping!
  When my sister's tiny house was in Texas, they lived on a huge stretch of land, and the closest neighbor was another tiny house with a horse. They didn't need curtains. Now they moved back to our home state and their neighbor is 25 feet from them :(

If this means being able to own a house earlier in life then absolutely go for this. There's no greater theft of your ability to build wealth than rent.
- How is this better than condos in a 8 story building?
  
  This is in comparison to larger houses, condos are a different topic.
- That doesn't seem right if the taxes on a house in the area you where you work are higher than rent.
  
  Sure, but I'm not aware of anywhere where property taxes would be so high that they would be higher than rent. That doesn't really make sense, landlords have to pay property tax so how are they making so much profit if it's higher than rent?

Pls just build more medium density apartment buildings with 3 bedroom units
- Sure thing! Only $6000/month and they're the cheapest ones available. Also, the 400sq ft ones are $6000/month because fuck you.
  
  🥲

It's 55 m^{2 or a normal size apartment. Smallest apartment allowed in Europe (at least where I know such legal limits exist) is 25 m}s.
- In some countries I think is 40sqm. But my first flat (built before such regulation) was 28sqm. When I moved in with my gf her flat was 100+sqm. All that walking around when I forgot something in a room was exhausting! 😂
- It’s 55 m^2 or a normal size apartment.
  yup; exactly the same size as mine

It's actually called The Great Go Fuck Yourself, and it's what the rich and propertied are saying to the rest of us. There's only one answer.
- Oh I like this. It encompasses the views so well. I mean NIMBYism is part of it, but the GGFY nails the overall sentiment so much better
- There’s only one answer.
  Bend over and spread?

Just build a fucking apartment block you cowards!
- But the shadows! The neighbourhood character! The traffic! The views!
  
  They tore out an entire line of trees along my street so they could pack a dozen new houses into a lot originally fit for only four.
  Legitimately would have been better if they'd just built a mid-rise block and kept the green space, rather than turning half the street into a giant mud pit.

Fuck that, if I achieved that open freedom you'd have to cart me away dead before I gave that up

The house I rent in Tokyo now is 54 m^2 plus some loft space. I can reach out and touch my neighbors' houses from two sides. Also, what's a yard? All in all, it's been fine for two of us and I have one room as my office. I think people want a lot more space than they actually need.
That said, affordable housing in general is a big problem in the US.