It's a bird. It's a plane. It's actually coastal modern, modern tiny living's most recent build!4/7/2023
We'll do whatever it takes to perfectly position your Modern Tiny Living tiny home. Let it be known that Trent and the Modern Tiny Living team will do whatever it takes to get your brand new tiny home positioned exactly how you want it! In this case, Coastal Modern was to be used as an ADU deep in the back yard of this existing home in Santa Monica, California, so we did what we needed to do...we craned it on in there. Trent and the MTL team drove from Columbus, Ohio all the way to Santa Monica to deliver this home in person, and the results were spectacular. Another happy customer, ready to live the tiny house dream!  Talking tiny homes with Modern Tiny Living founder Trent HaeryIf you've ever wanted and up close and personal look at Modern Tiny Living's founder, Trent Haery, then you're in luck. Trent was recently interviewed on The Tiny House Experts Podcast, and he shares the stories, victories, trials, and tribulations of building the USA's leading tiny house company, Modern Tiny Living.
Modern Tiny Living's tour tiny home, The Moth, is taking home some hardware.Modern Tiny Living is proud to announce that The Moth Pop Up Porch, a custom creation designed and built by our team at MTL - received the BizBash award for the Best Mobile Tour/Road Show of 2022!
(Not only that, but we beat out South Park and The Price is Right for the honors!) From Aldi, Director of Production at The Moth: "We truly appreciate your partnership in building our first tiny home for the tour... and now we have even more to be proud of!" Thanks to everyone at The Moth for letting us play a part in helping you tell your story "on the road"! Do you have a business that could benefit from the buzz of tiny homes? We've built promotional tiny homes for other folks too, like Wal-Mart, Cracker Barrel, and Upwork, just to name a few. We'd love to chat with you about it - shoot us an email at [email protected] and let's go! Here's the truth about composting toilets in tiny homes. Composting Toilets 101
Composting toilets are a type of toilet that use bacteria to break down and decompose human waste into compost. They are often used in tiny homes, as they are a more environmentally-friendly and water-efficient alternative to traditional flush toilets. There are several pros to using a composting toilet in a tiny home: Saves water: Traditional flush toilets can use several precious gallons of water per flush, while composting toilets use significantly less water, or no water at all. Reduces the amount of sewage: Composting toilets reduce the amount of sewage that needs to be treated, as the compost produced by the toilet can be safely and easily disposed of on site (and even used in a garden.) Environmentally-friendly: Composting toilets reduce the amount of water pollution caused by sewage, as well as the greenhouse gases produced by the treatment of sewage. Can be used off the grid: Composting toilets can be used in areas without access to a septic system or municipal sewage treatment, making them ideal for tiny homes that are off the grid. There are also a few cons to using a composting toilet in a tiny home: Cost: Composting toilets are often more expensive to purchase and install than traditional flush toilets. Maintenance: Composting toilets require regular maintenance, such as adding composting material and turning the compost, to ensure proper decomposition. Odor: If not properly maintained, composting toilets can produce unpleasant odors. Limited capacity: Composting toilets have a limited capacity and may need to be emptied more frequently than traditional flush toilets. Overall, the pros of using a composting toilet in a tiny home, such as water and environmental savings, may outweigh the cons for some people. However, it is important to carefully consider the costs and maintenance requirements before making a decision. Our preferred brand (no ad): Nature's Head The MTL team advocated for tiny house legislation in Columbus, Ohio. Modern Tiny Living's Trent Haery and Bruce Faris were thrilled to be included on a panel hosted by the Columbus Realtors® last Friday as advocates for tiny house living and pro-tiny house legislation. From the press release on Columbus Realtors®: “One of the goals of today’s event was to shine a different light on tiny homes and their potential,” said Columbus REALTORS® President Sue Van Woerkom. “Tiny Homes can be much more than just a trendy lifestyle choice you see on TV. Building and creating new affordable living spaces is one of our top priorities.” From Modern Tiny Living Co-Founder Trent Haery: “We’re hopeful that tiny homes will become legalized at least as ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units),” said Haery. “That is what we want to see from Columbus. We are supposed to be a progressive city. If we can’t put a tiny home on wheels in our backyard, we’re not.” Modern Tiny Living is proud, not only to be one of the country's premier designers and builders of tiny homes, but to be an advocate for a legitamate alternative to our ever-growing consumer culture. We believe people should be allowed to live as they wish, and we will continue to campaign for greater acceptance of tiny homes and the tiny home movement.  Congratulations to Matthew for winning a Modern Tiny Living tiny house!Friends, if you didn't get a chance to see our post on Instagram when Matthew won his Modern Tiny Living tiny house, here it is to warm up your day. The sheer joy is infectious, and we simply cannot wait to start constructing Matthew's dream tiny home. Congraluations on winning a Modern Tiny Living tiny home, Matthew!
Thanks to ALL of you that contributed to our campaign sponsored by Omaze, as your contributions resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars of donations to Path Partners in Los Angeles. Trent shared insights on tiny house constrution, zoning, and much more. Trent Haery, co-founder of Modern Tiny Living, was recently inteviewed by Bankrate.com about the tiny house industry and we are thrilled to share the story with you here!
Tiny living has certainly continued to grow in interest, popularity and reality since we opened up our doors in 2015, and we are proud to see the evolution and growth of the industry. In the the article, Trent tackles topics like zoning, parking, financing, and much more. Here is a snippet about parking, zoning, and codes: "Trent Haery, co-founder of tiny home builder Modern Tiny Living, based in Columbus, Ohio, explains that the rules for building a tiny house boil down to two types of regulations:
State and local regulations may dictate permitting requirements, restrictions on the home’s size and guidelines for construction. Plus, some states, such as California, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Oregon and Texas, are more tiny home-friendly than others. By doing this research, you’ll know what you’re allowed to build and where, and how best to go about planning the project. “The safest bet is always to work directly with the city officials and ask them, as opposed to taking a risk and hiding in your house hoping no one sees you,” Haery says." Great job to Trent for representing both Modern Tiny Living and the tiny house industry so well in this article! This beautiful tiny house is ready for finishing touches by its new owner. Howdy, Tiny House Fam! Just wanted to drop by and share this beautiful new tiny house shell we wrapped up at Modern Tiny Living for a customer in New York! This shell features a spectacular exterior modeled after the extremely popular modern farmhouse look that many luxury homes are going for these days. With Smart Siding, Wood accents, black metal roofing and black windows, it is the perfect canvas on which our customer will build the remainder of the home. Check out more photos in our gallery below! Here's a quick video on finding tiny house-friendly parking spots!Our friends at Tiny House Expedition have put together a great article and video on tiny house parking options and tips. For those of you looking for ideas on how to legally park your new Modern Tiny Living tiny house, check out this great information!
Trent shares his candid thoughts as one of the world's leading experts on tiny homes. Trent and his daughter, Ada Modern Tiny Living is a custom home builder at heart.
When we got into the industry, every single house was a new, exciting project with new challenges. We discovered what worked and what didn’t, what was most popular and what we could do without. Over time, we found that a few floor plans kept getting re-ordered over and over, with a few modifications here and there. So, we worked with our suppliers and architect to get these 3 plans down to a budget-friendly science and said, “Since these are so popular, I guess the clientele has decided for us… we have 3 models!” And they were born: Over the years, at all the shows in all 4 corners of the United States, I always heard the same questions, “Hey Trent…":
How much does it cost if I upgrade this countertop to quartz or get rid of this appliance? Check out our Quote Builder tool! There were many sleepless nights working on this. Now, you can finally calculate an estimated price of your model… while wearing pajamas and on your own time. Is this one a model or a custom unit? I’m confused. Now, you can clearly differentiate our models at the website. Each model has its own gallery and then the custom homes are all tossed into the custom gallery. What exactly comes with the base price? Now, at the quote builder link, you’ll see at the top I have compiled a very detailed description of what comes with the “base” model, and the exact price. If you know me, this took forever. Far longer than it should have. But it's done! Where can I get a loan for one of these? The answer was always the same and it was always ambiguous: “Go talk to…” and it was true…I wasn’t lying to you. It really has been that difficult to get a loan for a tiny house. I was being honest. Nobody...nobody would do the loan, so it was like, “Go talk to grandma!” Then, over time, I found one or two credit unions that would help. An answer! Finally! At least for military folks, USAA and Navy Federal. The rest of you were stuck with 7 year loans from LightStream, and staring a $3k/mo payment. No thank you! For you and me both, it was the worst. Anyway, we’ve made some progress here. Check the financing link at our website. Now, there are 12 and 15 year loan options there! These aren’t perfect, but they’re a lot better than what was available before, which was nothing. I’m still working hard to find a collateralized loan for you guys which would mean lower rates and longer terms, but for now, these two lenders (Hearth and GetPowerPay) have been the best we have found. Having a background in banking, I can sniff a bad loan product when I see one and neither of these is that, but I told them both that I want better. So they will have to evolve or we will find somebody better. Simple as that. Do you have a model with a main-floor master bedroom? In the works! Catalina will be a 28/30 main-floor master. Email me, personally ([email protected]), with what you would like to see in this model. Please keep it simple and just to the point as other stuff needs to go through our main channel ([email protected]m), but I genuinely want to hear what matters most to you all for our next model. We do have some custom models with first floor master bedrooms. Take a peek at our website. Is there any info out there that will help me determine, roughly, the cost of (insert description here)? Yes, there is. In effort to be as transparent as possible, I’ve done what few tiny house builders will do and talked about the cost per square foot. Why don't many builders talk about it? Easy, because it’s really high, and really scary! Haha…kidding...but not really. Check out our pricing link and you’ll find a good metric for pricing out your tiny home in 2020. This will be useful to you even if you end up buying from another builder. Could you do a quick quote for me? So, as some of you may know, I’ve done quotes on the road, from rest stops, in person, etc., and it is not quick and simple. It never is. I have to speak with about 8 people before we can accurately calculate the cost of a build, so here’s what I’ve done. For models, you can now determine the cost all by yourself with our quote builder tool. For custom quotes, I typically end up on the phone with you for an hour, then I work for about 3 or 4 hours on the pricing, and then I spend another hour on the phone with you before you tell me that you changed your mind about everything! Haha…you know it’s true! At least for some of you...but that's part of the gig. So, our solution is here: Use the pricing link to get a very rough idea on your own, and then if you want a more concrete quote, you can pay the $250 for the 5 hours I put into it. This money will go into our Christmas Bonus fund that will be paid out to every member to MTL except for me (They don’t know that yet. Hopefully they’re reading this email). Anyway, yes, we’ll do quotes still for custom gigs. Please just know going in that custom homes tend to cost 1.5x as much per square foot as models. If that sounds bogus to you, save your $250 and let’s just grab some beers together next time I’m in town. I know you are slammed… do you still offer custom homes? Yes. As I started this email, I was thinking about how much I get inspired when looking at one of our custom builds. I’m reminded why I do this. I’m reminded that it isn’t all about making payroll. I’m reminded of how much you guys bring to us. I’m reminded of how cool it is to see a new idea come to fruition, and how it inspires me enough to tow that sparkling new tiny house 2500 miles away on nothing but string cheese and almonds. So, yes. We do. If you don’t already know, I’ll tell you…Guys, it takes forever to design and build a custom home. We have our models down to a science, we get bulk pricing for them and rarely need to engage our architect. We just hook you up with our interior designers to make sure they don’t turn out ugly… haha… seriously. Don’t turn away the help! Anyway, you get the point. When looking at a from-scratch custom home, we really view it as just that. A blank canvas on which to build dreams. I told the team: I want our custom homes to look so different, so unique, that I don’t want to ever build one again that looks even remotely close to it. I don’t want to know the price and I don’t want to standardize anything about it. I want to see the staircase handrail made out of antlers in one, and a chandelier in another. Production builders have their benefits, and we are trying to offer that with our models, which you selected, so we can remain competitive and affordable. However, if you want a from-scratch floor plan we will still do it. It isn’t our bread and butter, as they take twice as long and feel like a pain in the a** sometimes. But at the end of the day, we’re a custom home builder at heart. So, even though we’re very busy cranking out all sorts of beautiful Kokosings and Mohicans, we will still do one-off custom builds. These start at $99k. Before you write me some hate mail, please consider that they take forever to design, build, nothing is stocked and we get zero bulk discounts. Please consider that with any traditional home a production home tends to cost about half as much per square foot compared to a truly custom home. An analyst would tell me, “Trent, your future is in scrapping custom altogether…follow the money!”, but I still want to give that option to you guys if you want to pay the premium for it. I hope you understand: it’s the time, not the materials or size, that make a custom home cost more. The alternative is that we just don’t offer one… and I’m not interested in that! Thank you. Thank you all for the support, in whatever capacity it has been. We’ve been through a lot together…the MTL family has been through babies, marriages, divorces, good times and bad, and we’re still here thanks to your support. We’re very optimistic about our industry growing…DC and zoning will catch on soon. Hang in there, and we’ll see you on the road! Thanks, Trent |
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