Packing And Moving Has Never Been Easier
Modern Tiny Living Designs And Builds The Ideal Portable Tiny Houses For Your Lifestyle Straight Out Of Amish Country
When contemplating Amish country for most it brings to mind a simpler life with freedom from the distractions of our modern technical age. It is no wonder that Modern Tiny Living chose Columbus, Ohio as their base of operations. After all, the impetus for most downsizing to tiny homes, is for a simpler life with more freedom.
“If you are looking at the industry as a whole, we operate different than our competitors that I have found. Most in the tiny house industry are contractors or builders that saw the trend growing and thought, gee I should do this. How we operate is we are building out of Amish country. We have teams of people that work on our framing and teams of people that work on our finishing work, and teams of people that work on our electric and plumbing. We have that niche of Amish craftmanship, but we also have a niche that we are able to produce more homes at once, generally, than our competitors”, explained Dan Hamilton one of the four owners of Modern Tiny Living.
While there is no set definition for what exactly a tiny house is, there are several companies producing them. Modern Tiny Living focuses on building all of their houses on trailers, which limits the width of the house to the trailer width. “Most of our models are between 150 and 400 square feet”, stated Hamilton.
One might think that there would be little difference in a tiny house on wheels and a travel trailer, however, Hamilton was clear that these tiny homes are not your ordinary travel trailer. “There are people that live a transient life style such as military or traveling nurses, people that may be moving every six months to a year. They get tired of packing up boxes so it makes a lot of sense for them to just take their home with them. The difference in a tiny home and an RV is that tiny homes are meant to be portable, but not necessarily going to a new campground every week. If you are traveling across country staying somewhere new every week, it would make more sense to go with an RV.
The big difference is the wind resistance and the weight. Also, most tiny houses, when you’re parking, would have a bit more set up involved than RV’s. Most attach to some sort of deck and make it more of a home”, explained Hamilton.
Modern Tiny Living is a custom builder, which means you shouldn’t expect to go up to a lot and pick from different floor models. Each customer goes through an interview process to determine the best design for their individual tiny home. “The first thing they do is have a 15-20-minute conversation with our architect. He will ask a whole bunch of questions such as: Are you thinking of lofts? Do you have pets? How many people will be living in the house? What climate zone are you in? etc. The client will pay $300 and the architect will do a concept drawing. After the drawing is done, I will have a call with the clients and go over any likes or dislikes from the drawing. We figure out what types of materials and what kind of finishing they like and from that point, I get an estimate for them and put together a down payment. The typical cost for a fully finished home is from $50-85,000”, Hamilton stated.
Tiny homes continue to be a growing trend across the nation. Hamilton explained that there are a wide variety of customers from baby boomers to millennials. Their reasons for wanting tiny homes range from freedom and flexibility to reducing their carbon foot print and doing something for the environment. Regardless of the reasons for going tiny, Hamilton claims the industry is booming. “It is still going extremely strong from our vantage point. I can’t say what other companies experience, but we are growing at a tremendous rate”, claimed Hamilton.
With tiny homes becoming more popular, municipalities and states are having difficulty determining how to regulate and control the industry. “It’s still kind of the wild west, because it’s so new. It’s taking a while to get all that set up. I do believe there are people out there lobbying and there will eventually be code for tiny houses and locations allowing tiny houses”, Hamilton explained.
Whatever happens with regulations, it seems safe to say, tiny homes are here to stay.
Jared Langenegger
A graduate of New Mexico State University with B.S. in wildlife and fisheries science, Jared spent 15 years working in fisheries and parks management. He enjoys camping, fishing, hunting, painting, and wood working.
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The Mohican Tiny Home from Modern Tiny Living is a 20' home on wheels that has been named one of the ?Top 25 Tiny Homes in the United States by VacationIdea.com. It screams high end craftsmanship, careful architecture, and livability.