Tag: Tumbleweed Tiny House

Col. illustrates diverging RV worlds

Just how muddied the RVing waters have become can be seen later this month in Colorado, where two unrelated events will illustrate the growing complexity of what was once a recreational niche. The first is The Great American RV Show, set to run Aug. 17-19 in Colorado Springs; the second is the opening of the Love’s Travel Plaza & RV Park in Canyon City, tentatively scheduled for Aug. 24.

The Great American RV Show traditionally features scores of travel trailers, fifth wheels and motorhomes, not to mention factory representatives, manufacturers and dealers, all offering Incredible Deals as they try to move last year’s models out of inventory. This year’s version, however, for the first time will include—tiny homes. As in, not RVs but small cabins on trailers. As in, little houses that don’t necessarily conform to RV standards but are too small to be covered by national standards for manufactured homes. Which could be a problem, for any number of reasons.

Why an RV show would diversify its portfolio this way isn’t exactly clear—if tiny homes, why not houseboats, for example—although it’s noteworthy that the factory and showroom for the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, one of the industry’s leading manufacturers, also happens to be located in Colorado Springs. But a spokesman for AMP Expos, the organization behind the RV show, explained the change by recasting the show as “an exceptional event focused on sustainable living.” Or as he further elaborated, “We believe that by showcasing the possibilities and benefits of alternative housing options, we can inspire individuals to adopt more sustainable lifestyles and contribute to a more attainable future.”

RVing, in other words, should no longer be viewed as merely a recreational pursuit. It is instead just one segment of a much broader spectrum of “alternative housing options” devoted to “more sustainable lifestyles.”

It’s debatable whether tiny homes, cute as they are, can support “sustainable” lifestyles in any meaningful sense. As I’ve written before, they’re neither RV fish nor housing fowl—too heavy and cumbersome to be readily mobile, yet too small and limited to provide adequate housing for most people for any extended period of time—and never mind their exorbitant cost. But there’s no question that they fit right into the trend of RVs becoming housing of last resort, no matter how unsuitable they are for that purpose, as the continued high cost and inadequate supply of conventional housing leave growing numbers of Americans scrambling for any kind of shelter at all. It can be argued, therefore, that the Great American RV Show is just adapting to a changing reality—although in that case a name change also is in order. Maybe to The Lesser Attainable Future Show.

Meanwhile, the other end of the RV spectrum is being embraced by Love’s, a nationwide chain of more than 660 truck stops and convenience stores in 42 states, with more popping up all the time. Recognizing that the pandemic-driven demand for RV sites was rapidly exceeding supply, Love’s started adding small RV parks to its existing locations a few years ago, most with 15 to 30 spots and only basic amenities, and now has nearly 40 such mini-parks around the country. Apparently they’ve done well enough that Love’s is doubling down: the Canyon City park will have more than 100 full hook-up sites and the standard restroom and laundry facilities, but also a dog park, pickleball and basketball courts and several gazebos.

Best of all, nightly rates at all the Love’s parks range from $37 to $48, or roughly half the going rate at most commercial campgrounds.

One of the more interesting things about the Love’s move is how it’s being viewed by management. While AMP Expos is reframing RVs as part of a broader housing spectrum, thereby diluting the RV concept, Love’s is moving in the opposite direction. “It is not an ‘RV park,’ it is intended for campers,” the Canyon City travel plaza’s general manager, Dave Paulson, told a reporter from the Cañon City Daily Record. “We are really dedicated to providing a great place for people to come and camp for a couple of weeks or a month and enjoy all the great things Colorado has to offer.”

The undefined distinction Paulson draws between campers and those who stay at ‘RV parks’ presumably comes down to length of stay: nobody is going to “live” at a Love’s, where 28 days is the max, although relatively few RVers stay in one place that long. But as more people seeking “alternative housing options” crowd into conventional RV parks, gradually transforming them into trailer courts and tiny home/park model subdivisions, the Love’s alternative will provide a much-needed relief valve for everyone else—and underscore the importance of a business staying focused on core competencies.

One final thought: as Love’s continues its expansion, it may within a few years become second only to KOA as the country’s largest RV park chain. Interestingly, Love’s then will have occupied the niche KOA tried to secure with its controversial brand segmentation, the lowest-tier KOA Travel campgrounds shouldered aside by dozens of newer, lower-priced competitors from a company that sells gas, doughnuts and coffee.

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How do tiny homes make any sense?

Let me state at the outset that I love the idea of tiny homes. In a society still besotted with outsized everything, there is something satisfyingly modest and efficient about these little houses on wheels. They’re cute. They’re snuggly. The pictures of new ones marketed by the Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. look remarkably well finished and appointed, with clean lines and good lighting. They’re adorable–and way too expensive and in oh-so-many ways completely impractical.

What got me going on this line of thought was the email I received a couple of days ago from Tumbleweed, promoting its sale of a 2020 Elm model that apparently (“bank-owned,” the pitch asserts) was repossessed, which is never a good sign. This 26-foot version can be had for $15,000 off its list price, which translates to $770 a month after an $11,000 down-payment–or $983 a month if you can’t come up with a down-payment of more than $1,000. This latter option, it should be pointed out, may be why this particular little house is back on the market.

Before you start day-dreaming about having your every own home for as little as $770 a month, consider some other numbers. The first is that the loan you’d be buying is for 25 years at 7.75% interest. That interest rate is at least 250 basis points higher than a regular mortgage because tiny homes have questionable appreciation value: they’re more like cars, in that respect, than actual real estate. Moreover, it’s questionable whether a tiny home will even last 25 years, which means that when the loan is all paid off you may be left with nothing more than an immoveable shack.

Here are some more numbers: the 26-foot Elm has 204 square feet on the main level, plus an additional 73 square feet in the sleeping loft–which, as the name denotes, is not tall enough for a short person to stand upright. With an after-discount price tag of $99,879, that works out to $489.60 per square foot if you disregard the loft, $360.57 per square foot if you throw in the munchkin footage. Either way, that’s easily twice the cost of building a, you know, real house.

But, you may reply, a tiny home is so much more than a house–it’s portable, a modern version of a nomad’s tent or a gypsy (sorry, Roma) caravan. Which is true enough, provided that you also have a 1-ton truck to pull the thing, since it weighs 12,200 pounds. Add the cost of such a tow vehicle and now you’re looking at a total price tag that would cover virtually any Class C on the market and quite a few Class As–and those come with holding tanks, which tiny homes don’t have, further limiting their functional portability.

The other thing that most Class As and Class Cs have that you won’t find in tiny homes is slideouts, not to mention a helluva lot more storage space. In fact, for all their good looks and typically fawning press, tiny homes are, well, tiny. At eight feet from port to starboard they’re only two feet wider than a standard prison cell, and without the ability to push those walls out you may feel just as confined. Do a virtual tour of one of these units and think about where you could put tools, books, sports equipment or crafts supplies, and you’ll quickly realize that anything that can’t be digitized wouldn’t remain a significant part of your life.

For all that, look for more of these Lilliputian dwellings to pop up at more and more RV parks and trailer courts. Tumbleweed, for one, is also promoting “tiny house hotels” to campground owners, offering bulk discounts of up to $6,000 per unit when ordering five or more. Could be fun to visit, if not so much to live in long-term.

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Just lookin’ for a home . . .

While most people, I suspect, still view RVs as–well, as recreational vehicles–the truth is that a growing proportion of all that rolling stock is being used for permanent housing. Sometimes that’s because RVs are mobile and their owners are seeking a gypsy lifestyle. More and more often, however, it’s because they’re relatively cheap and therefore available as default housing for people one step from homelessness.

One set of clues about this development comes from U.S. census data, another from manufacturing statistics from both the RV and manufactured housing industry associations. What the latter show is that for decades after World War II, low-cost housing in the form of mobile homes was cranked out by the tens of thousands, eventually peaking at nearly 580,000 built in 1973 alone. The average cost for a new house trailer that year was under $9,000–compared with an average $32,500 for a site-built home. No wonder, then, that by 2001 slightly more than 7 million house trailers dotted the American landscape, with roughly one-third of them concentrated in mobile home parks.

But by then, the leading role of house trailers as the cheapest form of housing was already being eclipsed by the RV sector: in 2,000, for the first time in U.S. history, RV production exceeded that of mobile homes, 300,100 to 250,400. And while RVs come in various shapes and sizes and even today are bought more often for recreational purposes than for residential ones, the production gap grew wider every year thereafter. By 2020, only 94,400 house trailers rolled off the production line, compared to 430,400 RVs. This year, more than 600,000 RVs will be produced, and even more are projected for 2022.

With RVs priced, on average, slightly more than half of what it costs to buy an average mobile home–$42,617 vs. $78,500 in 2020–and only a fraction of the median U.S. home price of $374,000, it’s easy to see why people with little money might start looking to RVs as housing alternatives. Indeed, the U.S. Census Bureau, observing a slow but steady decline in mobile homes in its biennial housing surveys, in 2015 made up much of the difference by adding a new housing category labeled simply “other,” defined as “boat, RV, van, etc.” “Other” clocked in at 69,000 in 2015, 75,000 in 2017 and 96,000 in 2019. The 2021 numbers should be out soon, and undoubtedly will notch another increase.

None of this is definitive–yet–but does strongly suggest that more people are turning to RVs for affordable housing. That, in turn, means more demand for RV spaces in campgrounds, as well as on the streets for people who can’t afford campground fees.

There’s one more data point that’s relevant: the growing number of “tiny homes,” which unlike RVs are intended as full-time residences but which usually don’t meet zoning and other requirements for conventional year-round housing. Half beast, half fowl, they often cruise the countryside on their wheeled chassis in a frustrating search for a roosting place. This week the Tumbleweed Tiny House Co. came to their rescue, issuing a nationwide list of “over 250 places to park your tiny house”–the great majority of them, it turns out, being RV campgrounds.