At 22, buys & customizes lofted home in Pocket Neighborhood on a budget
Summary
TLDRThe transcript describes a unique housing community in Tempe, Arizona, where residents live in affordable, micro-homes designed for efficiency and sustainability. The homes, ranging from 450 to 600 square feet, are equipped with smart home technology and feature high-performance systems for energy efficiency. The community is designed with a focus on biophilic design, maximizing natural light and incorporating green spaces with fruit trees. Residents have access to shared amenities like a community center and laundry facilities, and the homes are part of a land trust that ensures long-term affordability for first-time home buyers.
Takeaways
- π The community features micro-homes and tiny homes designed for affordability and individuality.
- π³ The area is described as an oasis with fruit trees and a community-focused environment.
- π° Investors and first-time home buyers face challenges competing with high prices in the market.
- π« The homes are small (600 sq ft) but designed to maximize space and efficiency.
- πΏ The community encourages self-sufficiency with features like personal garden spaces and storage solutions.
- π‘ Homeowners have the opportunity to customize their living spaces, including smart home technology.
- π‘ The homes are equipped with energy-efficient features, such as solar panels and advanced framing techniques.
- π The community has a unique lease-to-own model that ensures long-term affordability.
- π The homes are designed with high-performance systems and biophilic design for optimal living conditions.
- π° Gray water systems are in place for efficient use of water in landscaping and fruit tree irrigation.
- π The community center provides shared amenities like a laundry room and kitchen, fostering a sense of togetherness.
Q & A
What is the main challenge mentioned for first-time home buyers in this area?
-The main challenge is the inability to compete with investors who buy multiple homes at high prices, making it difficult for individual first-time buyers to find affordable options.
How does the speaker describe the community they live in?
-The speaker describes the community as a little oasis in the heart of Tempe, with fruit trees, a storage container concept, and a sense of personal space combined with community living.
What type of homes are in this community?
-The homes in this community are micro homes or tiny homes, designed to be affordable and individualized for each homeowner.
What is unique about the design of these micro homes?
-The micro homes are designed with full-sized appliances, smart home features, and efficient use of space, including a crawl space for storage under the stairs.
How does the community manage the shared spaces?
-The front yard and courtyard areas are managed by the Homeowners Association (HOA), while the side yard is left for personal taste and customization by the homeowners.
What is the significance of the window placement in these homes?
-The window placement is strategic to maximize daylight, with most windows facing east to avoid the intense afternoon sun in Arizona, and to provide natural light throughout the home.
How does the community ensure long-term affordability of the homes?
-The community uses a land trust model where homeowners have a 99-year lease, and when selling, 25% of the equity goes back to the land trust to keep the homes affordable for future buyers.
What are some of the sustainable features of these homes?
-The homes have solar panels on the roofs, advanced framing techniques for better insulation, and gray water systems that use water from laundry for landscaping.
How does the speaker feel about their micro home?
-The speaker is very positive about their micro home, appreciating the minimalist lifestyle it promotes and the opportunity to make it a smart home. They see it as a starter home and plan to stay for at least another 5 years.
What is the average utility cost for these homes in the summer and winter?
-The average summer utility cost is around $65 to $70 per month, while in the winter it can be as low as $25, due to the efficiency of the homes and the use of solar energy.
How does the community handle laundry facilities?
-Most homeowners use the shared laundry facilities in the community center, which is equipped with full-size washing machines and dryers.
Outlines
π‘ The Oasis of Micro Homes in Tempe
This paragraph introduces a unique housing community in Tempe, Arizona, where investors and individuals are purchasing homes. The speaker, a young homeowner, discusses the challenges of competing with investors and appreciates the affordability and community feel of the micro homes. The homes are described as tiny, personalized, and efficient, with a focus on biophilic design and high-performance systems. The homeowner shares their experience of customizing their space, the benefits of the shared community areas, and the innovative storage solutions within the small footprint of their home.
π‘ Smart Home Living in a Tiny Space
The speaker elaborates on the smart home features integrated into their micro home, which includes voice-activated controls and smart blinds. They discuss the efficiency of the home, the use of space under the stairs, and the ability to store items not used daily. The paragraph highlights the affordability and efficiency of the homes, with the speaker mentioning their low utility bills and the use of solar energy. The focus is on the practicality and sustainability of living in a small, smart home.
π³ Sustainable Design and Efficient Use of Space
This paragraph delves into the architectural and environmental design aspects of the micro homes. The speaker explains the advanced framing techniques used to reduce wood and increase insulation, the strategic placement of windows to maximize daylight and minimize heat exposure, and the use of natural materials. The paragraph emphasizes the high air tightness of the homes, the efficient use of space, and the overall goal of creating affordable and sustainable housing options.
π Community Ownership and the Future of Micro Homes
The final paragraph discusses the unique ownership model of the community, where a land trust holds the land and homeowners have a 99-year lease with an option to renew. The model ensures affordability by requiring a portion of any equity gained to be returned to the land trust for the next buyer. The speaker talks about the communal facilities, such as the community center and laundry facilities, and their personal plans to stay in the home for at least five more years. The paragraph concludes with the speaker's view of the micro home as a starter home that allows for growth and experimentation with smart home technology.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Micro Homes
π‘Affordability
π‘Community Living
π‘Sustainability
π‘Biophilic Design
π‘Smart Home Technology
π‘Efficient Design
π‘Customization
π‘Land Trust
π‘Urban Oasis
π‘Starter Home
Highlights
Investors buying multiple homes as first-time buyers makes it difficult for individuals to compete.
The community offers an oasis-like environment in the heart of Tempe.
Homeowners planted fruit trees themselves, creating a shared, fruitful space.
The houses are micro homes or tiny homes, each unique and personalized.
The community has a table of 40-foot fences allowing for personal space and community integration.
The speaker was a young buyer at the age of 22, finding the market challenging.
The homes are designed to be affordable in perpetuity, with individualized plots of land.
The homes come fully stocked with appliances and are energy-efficient.
The homes have smart home features, allowing control via tablet or voice activation.
The design includes a crawl space for storage, maximizing the use of space.
The homes are designed with high-performance systems and high air tightness.
Windows are strategically placed for optimal daylight and heat management.
The community has a shared community center with laundry and kitchen facilities.
The homes are leased with a 99-year lease, with a system to maintain affordability for future buyers.
The community utilizes gray water systems for landscaping, promoting sustainability.
The homes are designed with advanced framing techniques for better insulation and reduced wood usage.
The community is a starter home for young buyers, offering a stepping stone to future homeownership.
The homes are all-electric, with solar panels on the roofs contributing to energy efficiency.
The homes are designed with biophilic design principles, incorporating natural materials and elements.
Transcripts
one of the things that's tough about
this area is you'll have an investor
come in here and buy up seven or eight
homes as a first-time home buyer or you
know just a single person you can't
compete with those kind of
prices so this was nice to have this in
the heart of Tempe
this is like some sort of little Oasis
at the end of the street it is yeah you
kind of you come in you're not sure kind
of what to expect in this area as you're
kind of coming down here with all these
either duplex homes or single family
homes and then once you get to the end
of the street here with the fruit trees
the neighbors the storage container
concept it opens up to like this huge
Oasis in the in the summer this place is
a jungle all the you know all the trees
are fruit trees we have orange trees
lemon lime apricot Peach all free for
the
picking and the cool thing is we
actually planted all these ourselves as
homeowners it's interesting it's they're
definitely not traditional houses no
they're not you know they're they're
micro they're kind of micro homes
they're tiny
homes it's nice that everybody does
their own thing like there's a a table
like you're allowed to build your own
you can have your like yeah yeah I think
it's a 4ot fence that you can have up in
the front yard so um it it's having that
space where you can have your own
personal space and then kind of enter
into the community side of things over
here I was kind of looking for a house I
was 22 at the time and you know for a 22
year-old to be in the market looking for
a house is very tough and at that point
none of this was really here this was
all a dirt lot and I I applied right
away it was actually the 13th so there's
13 homes I was the last person to get in
this looks like houses like little
houses right and that was the plan cute
little houses that are small enough to
be affordable in perpetuity uh and yet
actually have them individualized where
they're all separated so that each
person feels like they have their own
plot of land which they really
do did you get a pick which one yeah so
well actually cuz I was the last
homeowner all of them um were pretty
much taken at that point actually I kind
of like my unit as one of the the best
not not to be biased at all each home
has it like a little sidey yard so the
front yard and the courtyard areas are
all HOA managed but the the sidey yard
is kind of our own personal taste so
this is the estate part of the micro
Estates
yeah this is you yeah so this is all my
personal taste everyone started with
just a dirt lot um and then you kind of
kind of got to choose whatever you did
so I wanted to have like a little bit of
grassy area for if I do get a pet or
something and then wanted to kind of
have some vegetation and such ended up
installing this spine back here over
time hopefully having this kind of shoot
out into both directions right it's just
a small patch yeah it's it's nothing
large where you're sitting out here with
the lawn mower or anything and it go
again it goes back to affordability and
the Market's just it's so hot right now
and as as a young person 600 square ft
of a home is plenty of space for one
person so what's cool about the place is
you kind of walk straight into the uh
into the kitchen area the homes came
fully stocked with appliances and then
to kind of as you kind of make your way
through uh it opens up until this is I
think at the lowest point is 16 ft and
then at the highest point if you're
standing from the bottom all the way up
it's 20t at the other end so it's a huge
space when you think of like a tiny home
or a micro home you automatically think
oh there's probably like a ladder to The
Loft you probably have a mini fridge the
cool thing about these homes is that
they're full-sized
appliances one of the cool things about
this area so you know you have the
bathroom on the other side of the stairs
which is a great use of space like right
about here is where the bathroom ends
from here on over you still have a ton
of space under the stairs and the
original plans had this as just dry
completely drywalled out the builders as
they were building the place the
standard 2x4 they actually went around
this whole area and left this open with
no 2x4s coming through here so that the
homeowner could come in and just without
you know needing any handyman to come in
here could actually pop this open
themselves break the drywall this they
had specifically designed Ikea cabinet
and it actually opens up
to a a storage space down there cuz like
so in a way it's kind of like your craw
your craw space it is yeah it's the
crawl space yeah the crossplay SL
storage for everything whatever you're
not using on a day-to-day basis if you
look around they're just where do you
store the Christmas tree where do you
store some of the stuff that you would
normally have in a normal house and so
that's actually a huge at the at the
highest point you can stand up it's
probably 6 feet and it comes all the way
down it's a most people on first you
know when their first their first time
looking at the place they don't really
notice it cuz the it it does a good job
of kind of hiding itself you really have
to kind of focus when someone's sitting
on the couch for a while then they start
to then they notice that you know hey
that bookshelf doesn't doesn't look too
normal but um like first time walking by
you don't really notice that there's a
whole storage room back there the other
thing too is because it's such a small
space being able to make the the Home
Smart proof and you know like a whole
smart home is was pretty inexpensive to
do originally when I bought the house
all the switches and everything in here
were just standard toggle switches
everything in here now um is all smart
home so I'm able to I'm able to control
90% of the home um on on my on my tablet
uh you know voice activated um it all
everything here is kind of activated in
one way uh the blinds also are all smart
home
activated and that's the cool thing with
the smart blinds too is in the morning
as I wake up I have them programmed to
you know come up right before my alarm
clock comes off to start to let some
natural light
in and then in the evening and night as
I'm driving in the lights are already on
the shades are already down um and it's
just a smooth transition into the
house you know when a lot of people come
up they think that it's a very small
space but they're actually shocked by
the size of the insides you know I've
had 10 people in here all at once and
you would think that 10 people on the at
on the first floor only would just be
just completely packed but it actually
has a decent amount of space where
you're able to still kind of move around
in
there I'm such a minimalist when it
comes to a lot of stuff I try to keep
everything kind of tucked away as much
as possible so most of the time this
kind of stays stays open do you like the
material difference there it's
noticeable yeah and so I growing up well
my my dad was in construction and so I
always got to see like blueprints and
stuff of places and so growing up I was
a huge architecture fan and this is so
it's different in the future I might
kind of make a couple changes down thead
Road I I thought about maybe open up
opening up little slits through here to
kind of let some of that natural light
from up here flow down into the main
area I mean I like that you're talking
about the future like this isn't just a
20-some house yeah that's the nice thing
I think the the age range here is pretty
dramatic but you know we're all
firsttime home buyers being first-time
home
buyers we all are kind of in the same
bucket we all kind of didn't understand
like you know okay well you know what do
you do for blinds you know what do you
do for closet system this was actually
an idea that was bounced off of another
homeowner what I ended up doing was
putting in a ton of Ikea closets here so
you have yeah yeah you have a ton of
space yeah you have a lot of storage
space for clothing yeah that's the nice
thing too is that it's so customizable
so underneath the bed you have a ton of
drawers to keep everything in there
extra bedding and such and then and then
kind of you're off I work from home
space so it's kind of nice to be able to
work from home here on most of the time
you'll actually catch me downstairs
working at the dowy table cuz
it's the homes because they're new and
because they're so efficient one of the
worries was how do you get fresh air in
here when you don't open the windows you
know they're they're sealed up so well
that vent right there actually is a
fresh air vent so it's timed with the
exhaust fan in the bathroom certain
times the night it'll turn on and start
to suck air from downstairs and then
pull fresh air from outside so you con
conly have some fresh air in here the
whole place is all about efficiency you
want to share what you pay for utilities
yeah we all have solar on the roofs it's
not our solar it what we do is we
actually we lease quote unquote our
roofs to the local electric provider and
they give us a credit each month on our
bill so all the solar goes back into the
Grid on average and again keep in mind
we live here in Arizona where it's 118
in the summertime the average summer
bill is probably somewhere around $65 to
$70 a month and in the in the winter I
think my most recent bill was $25 so
very very efficient homes very efficient
no gas it's all um all electric in here
um but you can't beat that all electric
$25 yeah exactly yeah you can't beat
that at all and I think that's what
shocks a lot of a lot of people it's
like $25 a month
how most of what we did was economical
in order to keep the homes as affordable
as possible the homes are all um
designed with as much biophilic design
and as much of the high performance kind
of systems and they are quite high in
air tightness and everything else I knew
to keep the envelope very very
simple the framing in these houses is
actually Advanced framing techniques
where normal you would have a stud every
16 in on Center and you put the
insulation in between that the all of
these are framed at 24 in on Center
which is perfectly fine structurally but
we reduce the amount of wood we need by
20% and we get more insulation so we get
better insulated walls with less framing
members and you want to limit the amount
of size of the windows for two reasons
one is to look keep the cost low because
windows are more expensive than than
walls and the other is is that you want
to limit the um heat exposure that you
get through them as much as possible we
chose a placement of Windows that
maximizes daylight where you need
it hey
again so the the four Windows had to do
a a great amount of work you know they
had to bring in a lot of light and where
you really want it and so that's where
it got really fun with trying to
experiment with where those windows
should uh should
be there's a window on the back at the
bottom of the stairs and this provides
light the corner where the at the bottom
of the stairs so it it reflects light
all over the place in the corner and
then the other windows are in the
opposite corner so you get light kind of
all through the space on the inside just
from those couple of Windows there no
window on this side which is this is
west west side okay but this is right
against the property lot line and so you
can't it needs to be 1 hour rated so you
don't want to put a window in it because
then it gets really expensive you know
economically we really chose carefully
where to put the windows and where not
and West you definitely don't want a
window in Arizona because you're working
with climate which is which is like what
somebody was saying 117 degrees
sometimes in heat waves in the summer oh
it gets up to
122 but this last summer we had it was
um over 110 for 31 days straight we're
not totally unused to that but not for
31 days it was a
lot and I big fan huge fan of the uh of
the glass door wor this is the glass
side I mean it's just like all right
here yeah yeah so you know in the
evening here in Arizona it's the hottest
time of the entire day so having all of
the windows and doors facing uh to your
East you're not getting all that hot you
know light coming into the home yeah and
this is a huge part of like just the all
the amount of natural light that you get
inside the house I'm a huge fan of it
personally the window placement are kind
of at these Corners so that there's
always natural light no matter where you
look this is or it all is now that I'm
back here I'm like w there's a lot of
window here you know this is where you
want
it so the window that you can't see here
is bouncing natural light
around and then um when you're looking
this way when you come down the stairs
you have light there and then you turn
around and you've got lots of daylight
there if you're when you're walking up
the stairs here there's a the fourth
windows up in the bedroom up there you
get natural daylight there and just even
using the um inexpensive Lumber is
really you know something that you
wouldn't normally find in affordable
housing to actually have exposed wood
and one of the things about bleck design
is natural materials and so we did that
handrail as a oak for
instance these are actually wood that is
used for form work for concrete walls
and it ended up being a little less
expensive and a little better looking as
a finish to use this and it's pretty
expensive material and it's very very
hearty and the other thing with the
windows too I mean he's got this open
right now so again you can release Heat
at night and when you look around like
you can really tell there's plenty of
daylight right there's the lights are
not on which is odd because there's so
few windows and they're small but it's a
small
house how big is this each house is 600
square ft that includes the mezzanine
okay so down here is what I think about
for roughly 450 and 150 okay it is small
but like Christian lives here alone
still right but um Danielle who lives a
couple doors down it's her and her
husband so they share it and they say
it's plenty for them too
so and then of course we wanted to have
some connection between the main window
which is at the kitchen so so that
there's some sense of being able to keep
eyes on the neighborhood and being able
to say hi to each
other
the land ultimately belongs to the land
trust everybody that buys one of the
homes has a 99-year lease which they can
renew if they want and when they sell it
they have to return 25% I believe it is
to the next buyer so whatever Equity
they brought in 25% of it goes back to
the land trust in order to hand it to
the next buyer in order to keep the
houses affordable and
perpetuity you buy but you're not on
it's not a market rate right correct so
the homes they were you know between 175
and 210 they appraised obviously a lot
higher than that uh the whole idea is
again affordability so at the end of the
day you know when you do want to go sell
new town which is the owners of the land
lease will be the people to likely
repurchase your home right away it's
kind of giving back to the community in
terms of again letting another first-
time home buyer come in
here so I'd say like 80% of the
homeowners do our laundry in the
community center there's I think one or
two homeowners that actually have their
own laundry aside from that 80% of us
all kind of do it in there um you would
think that it would be a pain but
honestly all of us have gotten really
used to it and haven't had any problems
on rare rare occasion you'll have
overlap where you know multiple people
want to use it but and you would think
that it'd be on the weekends but in
reality sometimes that overlap happens
like on a Tuesday night so huge space uh
Community Center and this is kind of
where you know again CU it's a smaller
home having some of those larger
Gatherings kind of makes it tough to do
in a small space um so you can host a
large event you can have friends giving
or or like a Friends Christmas party in
here a full-size Kitchen in here with
the
appliances and then we have the laundry
here so this is kind of where this is
the uh home away from home as we all
like to call it as I said look it's 5:00
on a Saturday and
open um these two are the are the gray
water um systems there So eventually
what'll happen is when we do go through
the final install process that'll be the
switch there'll be a switch here for
homeowners to be able to swap that on
and off so the gray water from the
laundry it goes into the Landscaping
correct and even with you know the fruit
trees and everything people will ask us
about the watering of that but right
there is a large water tank that
collects roof water and that goes to
these fruit trees yeah so there's a
slanted roof it all flows to the back
where there's a pipe system around the
whole complex it takes it to an
underground storage system under the
parking how long do you think you would
stay here I definitely see myself
staying here for at least another 5
years it's a space that I'm still kind
of growing in because it's small it
gives me the opportunity to do a lot of
of the stuff that I dreamt about like
making it a smart home to test some
stuff out here before actually taking it
and when I do purchase a you know a big
boy home I can kind of use some of what
I learned here so it's just the old idea
of a starter home yeah it is 100% yeah a
starter home
yeah
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