There are distinct advantages in downsizing to smaller home

Five words you never thought you'd hear from a homeowner: I need a smaller house.

Yet the concept of downsizing a home — or doing more with less — has been gaining favor since the publication of architect Sarah Susanka's “The Not So Big House” (Taunton, 1998).

Susanka espouses the belief that when smaller-scale homes are done right, they are more livable, enjoyable and socially responsible than the ever-expanding floor plans of today's developments. (The size of the average site-built home grew 8% from 1998 to 2004, rising to nearly 2,350 square feet, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.)

Jay Shafer has been a longtime small-house devotee. Shafer, owner of Tumbleweed Tiny House Co., Sebastopol, California, has been building and living in houses ranging from 50 to 750 square feet since 1997. He lived in the original 100-square-foot Tumbleweed model for seven years before switching to the smaller 70-square-foot XS House in 2004.

The homes, he says, not only suit a pared-down lifestyle, they're affordable, ecologically responsible and simply easier to care for.

“For me personally, my biggest reason for living in a tiny house is that I haven't got the time or patience to paint or maintain a larger house,” he says.

A strong mix of practicality and idealism lies behind the drive toward smaller homes. Indeed, Shafer says about half of the houses he builds are for people who intend to live in them full time as their primary structure. But half the buyers purchase the structures to supplement their current homes.

People buy them as inexpensive vacation cabins or put them in their backyards and use them as art studios, writer's garrets, home offices, guest rooms or close-but-independent living quarters for a college-age child or an aging parent. Tiny House Co., Buena Vista, Virginia, built one home for a day nurse to have a private spot to stay overnight, and another for a mother who wanted her handicapped son to have his own place but still live nearby.

On the idealistic side, they truly do afford more socially conscious living, using fewer building materials, less land, less energy. Fully insulated, tiny houses are easy and inexpensive to heat and cool, and they're relatively inexpensive to buy. Shafer's models range from about $23,000 to $42,000. A typical 20-by-24-foot model from Tiny House Co. runs about $39,000. (Those prices are for materials and construction only, not for land.)

The drawbacks of a tiny house are obvious: It's tiny — “great personally, but not as good for guests,” Shafer says.

That being said, many of the structures sound smaller than they feel. Opening the center of the houses, using a lot of windows and maintaining unobstructed thruways for traffic, means they maintain a sense of spaciousness. The structures maximize every square foot through a variety of design tricks, like turning otherwise unusable space under stairways into storage.

“The secret to a great tiny house is knowing what's necessary and eliminating all the rest … (what's) necessary for happiness, because all those extras get in the way,” Shafer says. “A sense of space has much more to do with the quality of a place than with the quantity. A well-designed little house can feel roomy and a poorly designed mansion can feel crowded.”

And if the space does get too cramped, both Tumbleweed and Tiny House models are designed to be expanded easily.

The only real problems Shafer has encountered in building tiny houses are zoning restrictions and building codes that sometimes set minimum size limits. Many of the structures, however, are sold on wheels, which oftentimes puts them outside the jurisdiction of local housing authorities.

To be sure, there likely isn't to be a rush of people looking to ditch their bungalows and ranches for the square-footage equivalent of a modern master bathroom. But Shafer, who hand-crafts all his structures, has seen a significant increase in his business. Tumbleweed builds about five homes per year, up from one per year when he started the company. And he sees more potential in the future because of their versatility.

One Tumbleweed home was erected on a city rooftop, and they easily could be used as infill on small lots or clustered on a roof.

“I figured at some point somebody out there would want smaller houses and it seems like that's the case,” Shafer says. “When I built the first one, it seemed novel, but now there are a lot of books out there on the subject and a lot of people interested in small houses.”