Tiny House Design Build Video Workshop Live

Posted on April 15, 2011 by

I finished the ebook on how to design and build a tiny house. I wanted to include the best pictures I’d taken but realized that just wouldn’t be practical given I’d taken over 1,000.

So instead, I narrowed it down to the best 350 of them and made a video presentation out of those. I narrate exactly what I was doing and what to pay attention to when you’re on that step.

People had been asking for plans. I’d gotten a copy of the Popomo plans you get for free if you get the Small House Book from Tumbleweed. I didn’t think doing plans like that would have been all that helpful given I didn’t use formal plans when I built mine.

What I’ve included are my Google SketchUps – a couple of trailers, one with all the framing in layers and a few on different design options – where to put doors, lofts, how to place it on a couple of different trailer sizes. I’ve included other helpful diagrams and my hand drawings as well.

I posted a preview of one of the videos on roof framing on the site too if you’re interested:

Tiny House Design Build Video Workshop

PS. I also included my entire parts list among other items. Go check it out.

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Tiny House Moving Issue

Posted on March 9, 2011 by

I heard back from the buyer. To quote her comment:

Hi Louis,

I made it – round trip – 75 hours – 2900 miles – $850 gas. Top speed 60 mph for about 10 minutes once (radical sway) average 45 mpg, except the whole part from San Antonio to El Paso where I could only get up to 35 for most of it. (22 year old GMC ) Thanks to all the patient truckers – Flashers on the whole way ;)

The house & I both arrived in California relatively unscathed. The only construction issue I noticed was the vinyl siding overlaps should all have been to the rear. I duct taped the flapping part & kept rolling. Later I realized I should have stopped at a Wal-Mart or Home Depot and paid them $$ to Pallet Wrap the whole house. That would have prevented any problems from wind / dynamic forces, and kept all the pieces intact. The little flap became irrelevant after I hit a cone in a construction zone near Casa Grande, which pretty much wiped out the siding on that same corner. So – by the time I was out in Quartzite Arizona- with loose/missing siding and not even to the area of wind advisory yet… I went to Plan B.

Riviera KOA campground on the Colorado River has RV storage, which they kindly allowed me to use quoted $20/week. I parked it there, and headed home. I will go back Saturday with my kids, some hardware & tools, fix the siding, and stay at the river for the weekend.

*Whew* Enough Relaxing for me- Back to work!

What I recalled in building the tiny house was that it didn’t occur to me to install the siding to face the wind until the third or fourth row on the first side. That’s why there was flapping. That’s the kind of lesson learned I’m putting into the ebook.

It might be worth thinking about adding more robust bumpers on the front corners for transport in the future.

Posted in Planning | Tagged | 5 Comments

Tiny House Is Sold

Posted on March 8, 2011 by

The buyer came and picked up the tiny house on Saturday and the wire transfer cleared this morning.

It was supposed to rain overnight before the date of transfer so I moved the house to the driveway to be sure it would have solid ground to move out from. I was a little surprised to see a mid-sized SUV was able to push and pull the house to it’s next staging area.

There was an issue in transporting the tiny house that I’ll post about next. It was due to a mistake I made in building.

And I’m halfway through writing the designing and building a tiny house ebook.

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Tiny House Is Pending

Posted on February 28, 2011 by

It was quite an interesting auction. There were over 200 people watching the auction and the end result was within $100 of the auction in January.

So it would seem $4,750 was the price. Ebay confirmed it twice.

The last hour saw 5 bids from two folks that bumped up the price $500.

The deposit has already been paid and now we’re arranging delivery to California.

During the week it was listed, three people retracted their bids stating they’d entered the wrong amount. The bids were specific numbers, not that there was an extra zero or something. I guess there’s not an option to put that you just changed your mind.

Since I spent over $6,000 building it, you might be wondering how this turned out for me. I think I should recoup the loss as a capital gains loss on next year’s taxes. Plus, I’ve started looking at this as the price of my education in architecture.

This was a much better experience (and cheaper) than any year in college could have been. And I’m still anticipating that this project will have been the main factor to have gotten me into graduate school for architecture next fall. I’m waiting to hear back next month.

In talking to various interested parties, I’m now of the opinion that the market for tiny houses is in offering plans to do-it-yourselfers. It just seems there are way more people interested in building their own tiny house than in buying an already built one. I figure that’s also how you end up with 200 watchers and 2 bidders in the last full hour of an auction.

Or perhaps I just missed the market on the low side of affordability. I really started to question the overall market once I learned that Tumbleweed only builds one house per year but makes a good income selling plans and books.

If you’d followed the Tumbleweed newsletters, you would have noticed that last year they weren’t able to sell the one they built. There were a number of announcements regarding hosting it as a vacation rental which is also a great idea.

So for now I’m nearing completion of the book that will focus on the nuts and bolts of designing and building a tiny house for DIY folks. Shafer’s book is the gold standard on tiny houses but there’s a lot of stuff that could have been included and I’ll do my best to cover that.

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Second Chance Offer And Tax Answer

Posted on February 21, 2011 by

I’ve relisted the tiny house on eBay… this time with no reserve.

It looks like in the 12 or so hours since I listed it, it already has 20 bids up to $1,575.

If you recall, there were a total of 23 bids last time around so this time will probably be better. It’s kinda nice to see the highlighted phrase, “Your item will sell.”

Check out the listing here:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260741023786


In other news, I also spoke to a tax attorney this past week. The way it’s working for me is that I have two different things going on.

I have all the expenses associated with building and marketing the tiny house which are a business expense write off for 2010. And then I have the tiny house and any capital gains or losses once it’s sold.

Any supplies I actually used get rolled into the cost basis for the capital gains calculations. I could have also depreciated the trailer for the year but then that would have to be recaptured when it sold. I take that to mean it would have been a reduction in the cost basis and thus lower tax write off for this year.

If I were going to be building these on a regular basis the situation would probably be different. I know for example that you’d need an auto dealer’s license if you wanted to sell five or more in a year in Texas.

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Tiny House Contract

Posted on February 14, 2011 by

The buyer I had lined up fell through. During the process I drew up a bill of sale based on a few samples I found online. I’m posting it here for anyone else to use as a template. Of course check with your local laws and practitioners.

Unless another buyer steps forward this week, I’m going to re-list the tiny house on eBay on Sunday. The top bid was $4,700 (reserve not met) so I will consider offers less than $10,000 at this point.

Now that the weather is nicer, we’ve cleared the holidays and there won’t be a reserve, I expect the winning bid to be more than last time.

I’m still working on the plans. It’s going to be an all inclusive how to design and build your own tiny house manual. That’s what several potential buyers have told me they were planning to do instead of purchasing a fully built one.

Download the Tiny House Bill Of Sale

Posted in Announcements, Planning, Regulation | Tagged | 2 Comments

Accounting Error, Reduced Price

Posted on January 28, 2011 by

I based the $15,000 asking price on the tiny house was based on a summation of all the expenses I’d incurred since I began building the tiny house almost a year ago. Those expenses came out to $8500.

What I hadn’t considered was that included a number of tools I purchased, mistakes I made and supplies I didn’t end up using at all. Earlier this week, I went through all my receipts to create a supply list for the plans I’m compiling.

Turns out that including all the 10% discount cards I used at Lowe’s, I only spent $6000 on supplies that I actually used. That makes a big difference.

Another consideration is that the highest big I got on eBay was $4700. Granted, that was about two weeks ago which could be one of the worst weeks of the year to try and sell anything – people have generally already allocated the month’s budget and are still recovering from the holidays.

The other thing is that I’d set a reserve of $9999 on it. I know fewer people would bid on it even though there were 23 bidders. I’m figuring even more people will bid on it if there’s no reserve because you know you’ll actually get it.

So here’s the plan now. I’m reducing the asking price to $10,000. If it still hasn’t sold by the end of February, I’m going to put it on eBay again WITHOUT a reserve.

As an aside, I’ve applied to a few architecture grad schools for the fall. If anyone knows someone on the UT faculty, I’d appreciate if you could put in a good word for me. They’re one of the top 5 architecture schools in the country and have a great sustainable design program that I’d like to do. They’ll be reviewing applications in February.

Posted in Announcements | Tagged | 14 Comments

Jim Bruno’s Tiny House Documentary

Posted on January 21, 2011 by

Jim Bruno shot some video of me after the open house last month. He’s done some great editing work and put together a short documentary film you can see on Vimeo.

We did it in an interview format where he asked me questions regarding my tiny house and the tiny house philosophy in general.

Click the image to see the video.

UPDATE: The video was featured on Jetson Green today.

Posted in Philosophy | Leave a comment

Tiny Houses and Capital Gains Taxes

Posted on January 20, 2011 by

I was investigating the consequences of selling the tiny house and ran across something.

If the sale of the tiny house is treated as a capital gain, then I need to consider whether it is a short term or a long term gain. According to the Turbo Tax site, you must own the asset for over one year to be considered a long term gain.

A short term gain is taxed at the 35% rate while a long term gain is taxed at 0-15% depending on your tax bracket. So if the tiny house sold for $15K, we be talking about a tax liability of $2275 (assuming cost basis of $8500) if I sell it before February 22nd or $975 if I sell it after.

That kinda seems like a good reason to hold on to it for another month to let it become a long term asset. And until I sell it, I can continue to depreciate it as business property. When I either sell it or move in to it, I’ll have to stop the depreciation.

Posted in Regulation | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Weekend Update

Posted on January 17, 2011 by

It was a mostly disappointing weekend.

Saturday morning I rented a truck to take the tiny house down to the Austin Home and Garden Show. The truck didn’t make it once we got off the driveway. I was able to get the truck backed up to the house but without the traction of dry ground, it wasn’t going anywhere.

It continued raining and by the time we realized we weren’t going to be moving the tiny house, the truck was stuck. We used boards, plywood, bricks, logs, and spent 3 hours trying to get the truck to just move its own weight back to the driveway.

The guy staying on the property had a come along winch and we used that to pull the end toward the driveway enough for him to be able to use his truck to pull us out.

After 3 hours of sogging it out in the mud, we had it in our minds that the rental place was partly responsible for renting us a truck that couldn’t pull itself out of the grass.

Now that I’m rested, I realize we shouldn’t have rented it in the first place given the weather. But Saturday, I tried arguing our case with the rental place to no avail.

Then Sunday, the eBay auction ended. Despite 23 bids, 150+ watchers and 3000+ page views, the top bid only ended up being $4700. I’d set the reserve at $10,000 so I’d at least recoup the cost of building supplies and a token amount for labor.

That said, I’ve had several calls but no one has made an offer yet. I realize that it often takes months to sell real estate and that January isn’t a good month for it. Nevertheless, I’m willing to entertain offers for less than the original $15,000 at this point.

If it doesn’t sell in the next month or so, my wife and I plan to move in to it when our lease ends the following month. That may end up being a blessing in disguise in the long run but this weekend wasn’t what we’d been expecting.

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