Is a Tiny Home Investment Right for You?
Tiny homes are all over reality TV and sweeping the nation. Whether you’d ditch your mortgage and live in a tiny home yourself or plan to rent or resell, now is the time to consider whether a tiny home investment is a good move for you.
Paradigm Life’s Cash Flow Wealth Summit guests, Mike Tveter and Jamon Scott from Upper Valley Tiny Homes and Tiny Villa left us with this great advice to consider as you think about getting into the tiny home arena.
The social landscape of the tiny house scene in the U.S. is a work in progress. City planners are just getting their feet under them while exploring and evaluating how tiny houses fit in their communities. Differences in building codes and regulations mean you really need to do your homework to know the best partner to build for you and the restrictions you may have on where to park your tiny house.
Tiny Home Investments: 4 Ways
1. Build for yourself
Tiny housing is an appealing alternative for minimalists. With a building cost anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000+, tiny homes are affordable and highly customizable to suit your personality. The financial freedom compared to buying a home could be huge (but your living space won’t be). The choice to live in a small space is a personal one, but it really works for those who are committed to downsizing. You may want to rent a tiny house for a while before you invest in your own.
2. Build and rent as a recreation property
Options here are only as limited as your imagination. With a smaller investment amount, fewer permits required, and quicker build times, tiny homes may be the ideal way to create tiny vacation rentals with big rental returns. Offering optional vacation packages like a stocked refrigerator or in-home spa services can up your income potential.
3. Invest in a monthly rental
When you’re looking for a real estate investment with less intensive day-to-day involvement, monthly rentals can have a nice return depending on where it’s located. Options abound here as well. A tiny home can be built on a trailer or foundation, and are welcomed in some residential lots, RV parks, mobile home parks, and new tiny home developments and communities. Home Owner Associations (HOAs) often place regulations to ensure community standards.
4. Flip tiny homes
A tiny home investment flip goes like this: buy land, build tiny home, sell, and make profit. When you flip a tiny home your stakes are lower, your investment is lower, so your risk is also lower than flipping residential property. Your velocity for flipping grows—some people can flip a tiny home every 3 or 4 months. Another way to flip is to purchase a mobile home park and upgrade several of the units to tiny homes. By placing a few “crown jewels” and sprucing up the area or adding a park, you’ve substantially increased the value and appeal of the mobile home community. Then you can sell the entire mobile park at an amazingly larger profit margin.
Pro Tips for Tiny Home Investments:
As we mentioned, do your homework. Make sure your building partner builds homes according to residential building codes. Here are a few more pro tips:
Parking—yes, you can park it on residential lots, but usually the city will require an acre of land. Instead of using the term “tiny home,” ask the city if you can put an RV, trailer, or mobile home on the property. Register your tiny home as a park model to avoid any confusion as to what a tiny home is.
Financing—tiny homes are only collateral after they are built, so some have a hard time getting a bank loan. This is a great opportunity to utilize a policy loan from your Wealth Maximization Account. Partner with a builder who will offer you a VIN number and a contract before they start to build the home.
Offer personal loans to others—if you have cash availability, you can create investment opportunities by offering loans for other buyers and set your own terms. You can also use the cash flow banking aspect of a whole life insurance policy to loan money to other buyers or builders, which offers you twice the benefits. When you borrow against the cash value of your policy and loan the money elsewhere at a higher interest rate, you earn interest off the parties you loan to as well as on the cash value of your Wealth Maximization Account. To learn more about the multiple benefits of a Wealth Maximization Account as part of The Perpetual Wealth Strategy, access Paradigm Life’s free eCourse here.
Overall, tiny home investments require you to do your homework, research your land restrictions, and get to know the community, with the end goal being to make money and have fun. New and creative ways to grow wealth are constantly flowing from the tiny home movement—and it’s just reaching its stride. We can say with confidence is that now is the time when your opportunity is golden.
Our goal at Paradigm Life is to help people find ways to build wealth and have access to liquid cash for other investments. To learn more about real estate investing with whole life insurance, we invite you to with one of our Wealth Strategists.