Photograph by Vito Di Stefano

A movable home, not a mobile home.

Welcome back to Unreal Estate. This week, we’re going try something new. Instead of peeking at the biggest and most expensive house I can find, let’s get cheap and go small — really small.

A couple of months ago, I put out a call for readers to share their efforts to create more affordable, sustainable housing in and around San Diego. That led me to Ellen Stone, founder of Tiny Home Central, who shared her approach to making accessory dwelling units (ADUs) more affordable: movable tiny homes. “Traditional ADUs can run $250,000-300,000 to put in, which maybe not a lot of homeowners can afford to risk tacking onto their mortgage,” Stone explains. “With movable tiny homes, we’re coming in closer to $75,000.”

Maybe before getting too deep in the weeds, I should explain a bit of the terminology here. An ADU is basically any extra unit that’s added to a single-family lot. It’ll be smaller than the primary home, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be “tiny,” which is good, because the term seems to evade a formal definition. “‘Tiny home’ is kind of a larger umbrella term,” says Stone. “Under that definition, you can have apartments, standalone cottages — all it speaks to is size. It’s not regulated at a federal level, but there are a handful of organizations weighing in that generally define the term as being less than 400 square feet, though some will go as large as 600 or 800.” When it comes to movable tiny homes, which are built on a trailer chassis that serves as the home’s foundation — as opposed to a concrete slab — San Diego defines them as having a living area between 150 and 430 square feet.

Creative design makes room for a servicable starter kitchen in a 170-square-foot living space.

Photograph by Vito Di Stefano

Stone is quick to shoot down my comparison to parking an RV in a backyard and calling it an ADU, and when I read the city’s requirements, it’s clear why. Traditional building materials such as dual-paned windows, sloped roofs, and integration of residential-grade utilities are all mandatory, and go well beyond the construction standards for most factory-built trailers. “The permitting process is almost as strict as traditional construction. You have to submit as many as seven different forms to the city for approval,” Stone says. That is part of the reason her organization exists: to shepherd potential tiny homeowners and hosts through the design, permitting, and construction process.

“The reason I’m focusing on movable is there are different ways to make things work, depending on the players involved,” she continues, explaining that the owner of the tiny home doesn’t necessarily have to be the owner of the land where it sits. “You can have someone who wants to own their own home but needs a place to put it — this is a huge issue, as there aren’t enough places to permanently park tiny homes. A homeowner could do improvements — a parking pad, utility hookups — and an owner could move in and rent the land. Or a [traditional home] owner could purchase the unit and rent it out ready to move in.”

Stone says site improvements, which include pouring a concrete pad upon which a unit can be installed and connecting utilities, can be done for as little as $15,000 on a flat lot. Her own site prep cost closer to $25,000, which she attributes to a need for grading and excavation before the pad was installed. Then there’s the cost of the home itself, which can vary wildly based on the size (the largest permissible units are nearly three times bigger than the smallest), amenities, and who’s doing the work. “There’s an ongoing program at Urban Corps of San Diego where they’re paying for the construction labor through grants to provide training for building trade students,” Stone tells me. She supplied the material budget for her own unit, the students performed the build, and by following that formula, a complete house can be built for as little as $30,000, not including the aforementioned site improvements and permits.

Stone’s tiny house, measuring eight-and-a-half by 20 feet and clocking in at just 170 square feet of living space, was the first to be installed under San Diego’s guidelines last September. She’s been renting it to a college student since then. “It sounds impossibly small, but because of the creativity in design and layout, it’s really quite doable,” Stone says. It does indeed sound diminutive, but then she shares some photos of both the construction process and the completed installation. There’s a full bath and functional-looking (especially for a college student) kitchen in addition to sleeping space, and an outdoor deck provides extra living area that’s usable for most of the year in our generally hospitable climate.

Still, despite the cheap price and seemingly low barriers to entry, movable tiny homes haven’t caught on. “It’s still slow to launch, which is why I’m trying to expand awareness of this type of permit, because most people don’t even know it exists,” Stone says. In lots of places, the permit doesn’t exist — San Diego is the only city so far to adopt guidelines for movable tiny home placement, though Stone says talks are already ongoing to expand the program to Lemon Grove and unincorporated areas throughout the county.

Even as more people learn about and incorporate tiny homes into neighborhoods, Stone understands they won’t be for everyone, and that they’re not a magic-bullet solution to the region’s housing crisis. “This is a way to fill in gaps. It’s not going to make a huge difference in our affordable housing situation on its own, but it’s a tool that we can use that isn’t being utilized enough right now.”

She concludes our conversation with an invitation to TinyFest, a trade show happening March 16-17 at the Del Mar Fairgrounds, at which exhibitors will pitch all manner of miniscule living solutions — from “vanlife” to permanent structures to, yes, movable tiny homes. I’ll take it as an opportunity to explore other ways San Diegans might be looking to bring lower-priced housing online. Hopefully, I’ll have something else to report in the coming weeks.

That’ll do it for today. In a couple weeks, we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled mansion-gawking. In the meantime, if you’ve got a line on unique ways of providing housing that normal people might be able to afford, the tip line remains open.

A backyard | San Diego

Current owner: Ellen Stone | INSTALL price: $55,000 | Beds: 1 | Baths: 1 | House size: 170 square feet