Hardly anyone actually lives in one, but interest in tiny houses — defined as homes of 500 square feet or less — appears to be surging as architects, bloggers and a new A&E reality show, “Tiny House Nation,” take up the cause, Bloomberg reports.
While A&E says “Tiny House Nation” is out to document an “exploding movement,” the number of tiny houses in the U.S. is, “well, tiny — just in the thousands per unofficial industry surveys,” Bloomberg’s Nina Glinski reports.
Most homebuilders are going for bigger — the median-size single-family home constructed in 2013 was a record 2,385 square feet, up 3.4 percent from 2012, Bloomberg reports. But Glinski says there’s been an uptick in sales of plans and tiny house listings, and that interest in the homes — which can be built without taking out a mortgage — is building online.
Freelance writer Laura LaVoie says she was one of a handful of tiny house bloggers in 2010. Now there are hundreds. Postings on online marketplace Tiny House Listings are up from 2011, and the site’s Facebook fan count is up 3 percent in the last week alone, to 182,000, Glinski reports. Source: bloomberg.com.
