Senior Project took up all of the second semester of senior year. For my TED talk and paper I was discussing the social and economic impacts of a tiny house development. During my action piece, I teamed up with a classmate to do advertising for my business; Durango Tire Storage. I thought this would be a better use of my time because I was actually accomplishing things rather than everything I was doing being hypothetical.
TED Talk
Senior Thesis
What is a Tiny House; why and how is it better for the economy and the environment for you to live in one?
Luke Stetler
Senior Project Advisor: Stephen Sellers
12th Grade Humanities
Animas High School
February 27th, 2017
Part I: Introduction
What is the American Dream to you? Skylar, a fellow student at Animas High School explains the American dream to him: The American dream is being able to go home every day to your wife and kids after work. Where you can make your own rules and decide when you want to work, where you want to work, and how you want to work. The dream is that you do not have to worry about finances, take vacations, and live happily ever after.
Living in 10,000 square feet with personal servants and the most beautiful husband or wife in the world, taking vacations whenever someone feels like it, and driving a Corvette. This is the American dream for some and those people need to wake up. While not all Americans strive for this exact dream, for the majority who do, it is very hard to achieve. Only the most elite in our society will be able to do this and others are just striving to get there, but luckily, people can still live a pretty great life without all of that stuff. It all starts with where someone lives. Of course some want to live in the biggest house on the block but that takes a lot of work. Cleaning, maintaining and fixing a house of that size could cost thousands of dollars every year. You would also have a huge mortgage that is difficult to keep up with. But do not fret, there is a solution, and it is called a tiny home.
According to tinyhousecommunity.com, a tiny house is defined as “a home of 400 square feet or less, either on wheels or a foundation. We consider a home of between 400 and 1000 square feet to be small, but not a tiny home”. Technically, someone could not call a 600 square foot house a tiny home, but lately, others including developers, builders and tiny house owners, have used the definition more loosely. People have been warping and changing the definition to cover a more broad range of home. Lots of people call some homes “tiny homes” when the house looks small, but unless it is under 400 square feet and on wheels or a foundation, it is not a true tiny home.
Part II: Historical Content
The subprime mortgage crisis was a nationwide banking emergency that was a large contributor to the United States recession that lasted from December 2007 - June 2009. This happened after the housing bubble of 2006-2007 collapsed and caused home prices to fall to record lows. This caused thousands of foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies. During the housing bubble, people were buying houses they could not afford which made the loans very expensive. When some individuals stopped paying the loans, this was bad news for the bank. In 2008, Americans built up more debt than they could pay off. There was a total of 14.72 trillion dollars of outstanding mortgage debt (Appendix, figure 1).
This was happening when housing prices kept increasing because people continued to buy bigger and better houses. When people were no longer able to make payments, because the loans they were getting were too much for them to pay back, the banks stopped making money and no longer had the capital to give out more loans. Normally when a person defaults on a loan, the bank repossess the house and sells it on the open market. However in 2008, too many people were defaulting on their loans so the bank had more homes than they could sell. When they put the house back on the market, the house sold for less than what was still outstanding on the loan. This means the banks were losing money which made it financially irresponsible loaning out more money. Without these large sums of money, people were not able to afford the big houses, so people stopped buying which resulted in the prices dropping significantly.
Growing environmental concerns have also contributed to the growing tiny house movement. Global warming has become a huge problem over the past couple of decades and people are trying to find a way to help contribute to the solution without giving up their cars or other ridiculous things like that. Global warming support continues to grow as the scientific evidence gets stronger every year. A tiny home can be the way someone can put out less carbon and not give up any essential parts of their lives.
Tiny houses have existed for years but there was really no large scale traction in the market until a couple of years ago. The tiny house movement has grown a lot over the last six years. From approximately 1000 tiny homes in 2010 to over 10,000 in 2016. Since the historic decline in housing prices in 2008, people tend to be more cautious when buying a home, and understandably so. Some people now are less likely to buy more expensive homes with the knowledge that it will be repossessed if they can no longer afford to make payments.
Part III: Summary of past research
Since the year 1950, the average size of the American home has grown from 1000 square feet to 2450+ square feet. That is an increase of over 240%. There are many environmental and economic impacts that come along with this increase. First of all the larger the house, the higher the price. Prices of homes steadily increased for 50 years until 2008 when the prices got too high for people to afford and started dropping (Appendix, figure 2). Since then, we have recovered and the housing market is back on track. Some people feel the need to own these big houses so they pay for the bigger house regardless of the price increase. Needless to say, this is a poor combination. Normally, people feel the need to own a larger home because of the economic status. For some it feels good to own a big house in the nicest neighborhood. However, bigger houses mean higher prices, which mean larger loans. These larger loans are easier to default on which is where the problem lies.
This is not only bad for the individuals that have to take out these loans to be able to afford these homes, it also takes a large toll on the environment. Ever increasing square feet means ever increasing energy consumption. The more energy someone consumes the larger the carbon footprint they have, which has such a negative impact on the environment. Our carbon emission have increased every decade for the last 100 years according to the EPA (Appendix, Figure 3).
According to the EPA, the United States is the second largest contributor to carbon in our atmosphere (appendix, figure 4). We release around 5902.75 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. While China is the largest contributor to carbon emissions (6017.69), the United States releases much more carbon dioxide per capita than China: 19.78 vs 4.58. We are behind 8 other countries in carbon emissions per capita. However we release much more carbon total because we are 12,166 times larger than the largest contributor per capita (Gibraltar). They release 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per capita.
Carbon emissions come from someone's home in many different forms. Electricity, heating and gas are just a couple of ways houses put carbon into the atmosphere. These three forms of energy usually contribute the most amount of carbon from a house. Ms. Smith, with the nation electric association, stated this:
“According to a study performed on the top 100 population centers in the United States, electrical energy represents 53% of the energy used within the average American household” (Susan, 4).
This high consumption of electrical power is due mainly to heating, cooling and lighting homes. Heating water also takes a lot of electrical energy. Heating a house usually takes anywhere from 32%-52% of the overall power consumed. In the year 2005, America used about 21.75 quadrillion Btu’s. To put that into perspective, a 1 quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros (1,000,000,000,000,000). That is almost 35 million propane tanks of energy. Since heating takes so much energy, having almost 1/8th of the square footage means someone is going to use 1/8th of the total energy.
On average, according to callmepower.ca, people spend approximately $0.72 per square foot per year to power their home. That may not seem like a lot, but when you multiply that number by 2,500, (the average sized American home) you get a total of $1,800 per year spent on electricity alone. Taking these numbers into consideration, for a large tiny home (400 square feet) it would only cost $288 to power a home for a whole year. That's upwards of $1,500 dollars every year to spend on any other debts. In this instance, owing a tiny homes is a great improvement for the environment and an individual's checkbook. As you can see, reduction of energy (or owning a tiny home) can save someone a lot of money in the long term.
Pricing of a home can also be a big part in the house someone buys. And most are too expensive without taking out a loan. A medium sized house in downtown Durango can cost an individual a whopping $365,000. A “fixer-upper” in town can cost someone almost $200,000, and then they have to do all of the work to make the house a nice place to live. Even with a $200,000 house, they are still probably going to have to take out a loan because it is unlikely to have that amount of money in savings.
Having a house mortgage can really be a drag. Let us say someone buys an average sized American home for $272,000, if someone puts 20% down, they have to borrow the rest of the money from the bank. Over the course of the loan, they will have to pay another $209,704 in interest on a 4.25% 30 year loan. That adds up to a total of $481,704 dollars! They end up paying almost double the price of the original home. This can cause many problems and can be a huge hassle, especially if someone is not responsible with money. The average price of a medium sized home (houses over 2000 square feet) are very expensive and very costly to pay off over time. However, building a tiny house is a much better option.
Building a 100% personalized tiny home could cost someone anywhere from $20,000-$100,000 ($100,000 being the highest end tiny homes). Because it is so inexpensive, someone would likely not have to take out a loan. If they do, it will be a cheap loan that they can pay back much quicker than 30 years. In fact, 68% of tiny house owners have no mortgage, compared to 29.3% of all homeowners in the United States. For most Americans, 1/3 - 1/2 of their total income goes to their home. This can equal up to 15 years of working income to just pay for their house. Constantly having to make payments towards their house gives them less money to do things they likely want to do, like travel, pay off debt, or buy a new car. As they say on thetinylife.com:
People are joining this movement for many reasons, but the most popular reasons include
environmental concerns, financial concerns, and the desire for more time and freedom.
For most Americans 1/3 to 1/2 of their income is dedicated to the roof over their heads;
this translates to 15 years of working over your lifetime just to pay for it, and because of
it 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck (Tiny life).
In fact, 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. This is just unacceptable. If someone is always living with little to no extra money, how are they supposed to put money toward other things like retirement, savings, and medical emergencies? Spending less money on someone's home can give them additional funds for retirement and savings that they would have otherwise spent on their home.
Since a tiny home is such a good investment in someone's future, 55% of tiny house owners have over $11,000 dollars in the bank, which is much more than the average American (thetinylife.com). In addition, 89% have less credit card debt than the average American, and 65% have no credit card debt at all. This shows across the board that tiny house owners are much more well off than the average American in the middle class. The national debt relief states this very well:
It seems that the dilemma of falling into debt is not a question of whether you will
borrow money or not. It is more of why you will put yourself in debt in the first place. If
you do not want to be a slave to debt, there is one thing that you can do. You can join the
Tiny House Movement (National Debt Relief).
Renting a house or apartment is a great option when looking for a temporary place to live. However, when someone has settled down into a job and have decided to truly settle into a town or city, does renting really make financial sense? Maybe, but probably not. A thousand square foot, 1 bedroom, 1 bath apartment can cost someone up to $1,300 a month. That is a minimum of $15,600 dollars a year. This is before other expenses, taxes, fees, and insurance. These extra expenses could cost someone up to another $6,000 per year.
While the economic and environmental impacts of a tiny home are important, there is also the people that just want to live in a tiny house for that kind of lifestyle. Some individuals that do not live in a tiny home because of economic status or environmental concerns, but just like the feeling of a tiny home. Living tiny can do different things for different people, but a couple I found online explains why they like living tiny. Mr. and Ms. Sturm have enough money to own a large home, but they just like how it feels to live in a tiny home. When asked how they feel about living in their home they said:
Aside from not having room for some things that I would really like, I think it is great. I
have never been a person who likes to clean. My husband and I, we like to be out on the
water and outside doing stuff, and so a tiny house is really, really good for people like
that because it takes me less than two hours to clean, top to bottom. And we really do not
have a whole lot of maintenance on the house. (Sturm, 2)
Cleaning and maintaining a large house is always a hassle and just like Ms.Sturm has found out, it is much easier to clean and maintain a smaller house.
The online interview also asked:
“In addition to the feelings of regret, did you also feel a bit of relief about getting rid of clutter” (Johnson, 1)?
From all I have found in my research, their opinion reflected information that I have found from other sources. They said:
Yeah, and it is because we Americans, especially, have so much stuff, and we don't even
usually know what we do have. I'm sure you've had the feeling that I've certainly had of
cleaning out a closet and thinking, oh, my, I didn't even remember that I had that. Well, if
you don't remember that you have it, you probably don't need it”. (Sturm, 1). Avoid ending with a quote-- wrap it up in your own words, especially when moving onto a new section.
Part IV: Conclusion
As discussed, having a mortgage can be a positive or negative experience. Paying for a $200,000 - $350,000 house outright is very difficult without having a lot of money saved up in the bank. Taking out a loan is expensive and the more money someone borrows, the more they have to pay overall in interest. Also the more money an individual pays for a house, the more money they are going to have to spend on property taxes and maintenance of the home. Since tiny homes are cost effective and highly efficient, most tiny home owners do not have to take a loan, and the ones that do, only have to borrow a small amount of money. This is a very good advantage because they are able to pay back the loan back quickly and then have disposable income to spend on anything else they choose.
Reducing a person's carbon footprint is important when attempting to help the environment. From the information provided above, it is easy to conclude that reducing our carbon footprint is very important and downsizing might just be the way to go if people want an easy, subconscious way to help.
While many people choose to live in a tiny house because of the economics, there are also people that choose to live that way due to the lifestyle. Living a minimalist lifestyle can be a lot less stressful than living a normal life because individuals have so much less to take care of in regards to their houses. Having less to take care of, gives people more time for errands or spending time with family which is very important to any close family. As you can see, living in a tiny house is a great improvement for the environment, an individual's checkbook and life in general.
Work Cited
Alter, Lloyd. "Finally! Tiny Home Subdivisions and Developments Are Becoming a
Reality."TreeHugger. N.p., 21 Dec. 2015. Web. 23 Jan. 2017.
Bluefish, Https://www.facebook.com/CBSPittsburgh. "Tiny Houses Could Be Coming To A
Neighborhood Near You." CBS Pittsburgh. Ihategurdals, 1888. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
Burkart, Karl. "A Breakdown of the 'Average' American's Environmental Impact." MNN - Mother
Nature Network. Mother Nature Network, 28 June 2015. Web. 21 Feb. 2017.
Corndal, Jose. "What Is The Tiny House Movement?" The Tiny Life. Tiny Life, 19 Oct. 2015.
Web. 21 Feb. 2017.
Finfar, John. "Tiny House Design Part 1 - Codes and Foundation Selection." Udemy. Macy
Miller, 2015. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
Gornal, Mitchell. "Durango." Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses. N.p., 10 May 2014. Web. 23 Jan.
2017.
Johnson, Skylar. "Solar Homes Vs. Non Solar Homes." Sciencing. Sciencing.com, 2015. Web.
30 Jan. 2017.
Jones, Bob. "What Is The Tiny House Movement?" The Tiny Life. N.p., 19 Oct. 2015. Web. 27
Feb. 2017.
Niz, Ellen Sturm. "This Is What It's Really Like to Live In a Tiny House." Country Living. Country
Living, 14 Oct. 2016. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.
Rubert, Indigo. "Tiny Houses Affordable, Energy-efficient and Often Illegal." Times Record.
Times Record, 10 July 2016. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
Luke Stetler
Senior Project Advisor: Stephen Sellers
12th Grade Humanities
Animas High School
February 27th, 2017
Part I: Introduction
What is the American Dream to you? Skylar, a fellow student at Animas High School explains the American dream to him: The American dream is being able to go home every day to your wife and kids after work. Where you can make your own rules and decide when you want to work, where you want to work, and how you want to work. The dream is that you do not have to worry about finances, take vacations, and live happily ever after.
Living in 10,000 square feet with personal servants and the most beautiful husband or wife in the world, taking vacations whenever someone feels like it, and driving a Corvette. This is the American dream for some and those people need to wake up. While not all Americans strive for this exact dream, for the majority who do, it is very hard to achieve. Only the most elite in our society will be able to do this and others are just striving to get there, but luckily, people can still live a pretty great life without all of that stuff. It all starts with where someone lives. Of course some want to live in the biggest house on the block but that takes a lot of work. Cleaning, maintaining and fixing a house of that size could cost thousands of dollars every year. You would also have a huge mortgage that is difficult to keep up with. But do not fret, there is a solution, and it is called a tiny home.
According to tinyhousecommunity.com, a tiny house is defined as “a home of 400 square feet or less, either on wheels or a foundation. We consider a home of between 400 and 1000 square feet to be small, but not a tiny home”. Technically, someone could not call a 600 square foot house a tiny home, but lately, others including developers, builders and tiny house owners, have used the definition more loosely. People have been warping and changing the definition to cover a more broad range of home. Lots of people call some homes “tiny homes” when the house looks small, but unless it is under 400 square feet and on wheels or a foundation, it is not a true tiny home.
Part II: Historical Content
The subprime mortgage crisis was a nationwide banking emergency that was a large contributor to the United States recession that lasted from December 2007 - June 2009. This happened after the housing bubble of 2006-2007 collapsed and caused home prices to fall to record lows. This caused thousands of foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies. During the housing bubble, people were buying houses they could not afford which made the loans very expensive. When some individuals stopped paying the loans, this was bad news for the bank. In 2008, Americans built up more debt than they could pay off. There was a total of 14.72 trillion dollars of outstanding mortgage debt (Appendix, figure 1).
This was happening when housing prices kept increasing because people continued to buy bigger and better houses. When people were no longer able to make payments, because the loans they were getting were too much for them to pay back, the banks stopped making money and no longer had the capital to give out more loans. Normally when a person defaults on a loan, the bank repossess the house and sells it on the open market. However in 2008, too many people were defaulting on their loans so the bank had more homes than they could sell. When they put the house back on the market, the house sold for less than what was still outstanding on the loan. This means the banks were losing money which made it financially irresponsible loaning out more money. Without these large sums of money, people were not able to afford the big houses, so people stopped buying which resulted in the prices dropping significantly.
Growing environmental concerns have also contributed to the growing tiny house movement. Global warming has become a huge problem over the past couple of decades and people are trying to find a way to help contribute to the solution without giving up their cars or other ridiculous things like that. Global warming support continues to grow as the scientific evidence gets stronger every year. A tiny home can be the way someone can put out less carbon and not give up any essential parts of their lives.
Tiny houses have existed for years but there was really no large scale traction in the market until a couple of years ago. The tiny house movement has grown a lot over the last six years. From approximately 1000 tiny homes in 2010 to over 10,000 in 2016. Since the historic decline in housing prices in 2008, people tend to be more cautious when buying a home, and understandably so. Some people now are less likely to buy more expensive homes with the knowledge that it will be repossessed if they can no longer afford to make payments.
Part III: Summary of past research
Since the year 1950, the average size of the American home has grown from 1000 square feet to 2450+ square feet. That is an increase of over 240%. There are many environmental and economic impacts that come along with this increase. First of all the larger the house, the higher the price. Prices of homes steadily increased for 50 years until 2008 when the prices got too high for people to afford and started dropping (Appendix, figure 2). Since then, we have recovered and the housing market is back on track. Some people feel the need to own these big houses so they pay for the bigger house regardless of the price increase. Needless to say, this is a poor combination. Normally, people feel the need to own a larger home because of the economic status. For some it feels good to own a big house in the nicest neighborhood. However, bigger houses mean higher prices, which mean larger loans. These larger loans are easier to default on which is where the problem lies.
This is not only bad for the individuals that have to take out these loans to be able to afford these homes, it also takes a large toll on the environment. Ever increasing square feet means ever increasing energy consumption. The more energy someone consumes the larger the carbon footprint they have, which has such a negative impact on the environment. Our carbon emission have increased every decade for the last 100 years according to the EPA (Appendix, Figure 3).
According to the EPA, the United States is the second largest contributor to carbon in our atmosphere (appendix, figure 4). We release around 5902.75 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. While China is the largest contributor to carbon emissions (6017.69), the United States releases much more carbon dioxide per capita than China: 19.78 vs 4.58. We are behind 8 other countries in carbon emissions per capita. However we release much more carbon total because we are 12,166 times larger than the largest contributor per capita (Gibraltar). They release 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per capita.
Carbon emissions come from someone's home in many different forms. Electricity, heating and gas are just a couple of ways houses put carbon into the atmosphere. These three forms of energy usually contribute the most amount of carbon from a house. Ms. Smith, with the nation electric association, stated this:
“According to a study performed on the top 100 population centers in the United States, electrical energy represents 53% of the energy used within the average American household” (Susan, 4).
This high consumption of electrical power is due mainly to heating, cooling and lighting homes. Heating water also takes a lot of electrical energy. Heating a house usually takes anywhere from 32%-52% of the overall power consumed. In the year 2005, America used about 21.75 quadrillion Btu’s. To put that into perspective, a 1 quadrillion is a 1 followed by 15 zeros (1,000,000,000,000,000). That is almost 35 million propane tanks of energy. Since heating takes so much energy, having almost 1/8th of the square footage means someone is going to use 1/8th of the total energy.
On average, according to callmepower.ca, people spend approximately $0.72 per square foot per year to power their home. That may not seem like a lot, but when you multiply that number by 2,500, (the average sized American home) you get a total of $1,800 per year spent on electricity alone. Taking these numbers into consideration, for a large tiny home (400 square feet) it would only cost $288 to power a home for a whole year. That's upwards of $1,500 dollars every year to spend on any other debts. In this instance, owing a tiny homes is a great improvement for the environment and an individual's checkbook. As you can see, reduction of energy (or owning a tiny home) can save someone a lot of money in the long term.
Pricing of a home can also be a big part in the house someone buys. And most are too expensive without taking out a loan. A medium sized house in downtown Durango can cost an individual a whopping $365,000. A “fixer-upper” in town can cost someone almost $200,000, and then they have to do all of the work to make the house a nice place to live. Even with a $200,000 house, they are still probably going to have to take out a loan because it is unlikely to have that amount of money in savings.
Having a house mortgage can really be a drag. Let us say someone buys an average sized American home for $272,000, if someone puts 20% down, they have to borrow the rest of the money from the bank. Over the course of the loan, they will have to pay another $209,704 in interest on a 4.25% 30 year loan. That adds up to a total of $481,704 dollars! They end up paying almost double the price of the original home. This can cause many problems and can be a huge hassle, especially if someone is not responsible with money. The average price of a medium sized home (houses over 2000 square feet) are very expensive and very costly to pay off over time. However, building a tiny house is a much better option.
Building a 100% personalized tiny home could cost someone anywhere from $20,000-$100,000 ($100,000 being the highest end tiny homes). Because it is so inexpensive, someone would likely not have to take out a loan. If they do, it will be a cheap loan that they can pay back much quicker than 30 years. In fact, 68% of tiny house owners have no mortgage, compared to 29.3% of all homeowners in the United States. For most Americans, 1/3 - 1/2 of their total income goes to their home. This can equal up to 15 years of working income to just pay for their house. Constantly having to make payments towards their house gives them less money to do things they likely want to do, like travel, pay off debt, or buy a new car. As they say on thetinylife.com:
People are joining this movement for many reasons, but the most popular reasons include
environmental concerns, financial concerns, and the desire for more time and freedom.
For most Americans 1/3 to 1/2 of their income is dedicated to the roof over their heads;
this translates to 15 years of working over your lifetime just to pay for it, and because of
it 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck (Tiny life).
In fact, 76% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. This is just unacceptable. If someone is always living with little to no extra money, how are they supposed to put money toward other things like retirement, savings, and medical emergencies? Spending less money on someone's home can give them additional funds for retirement and savings that they would have otherwise spent on their home.
Since a tiny home is such a good investment in someone's future, 55% of tiny house owners have over $11,000 dollars in the bank, which is much more than the average American (thetinylife.com). In addition, 89% have less credit card debt than the average American, and 65% have no credit card debt at all. This shows across the board that tiny house owners are much more well off than the average American in the middle class. The national debt relief states this very well:
It seems that the dilemma of falling into debt is not a question of whether you will
borrow money or not. It is more of why you will put yourself in debt in the first place. If
you do not want to be a slave to debt, there is one thing that you can do. You can join the
Tiny House Movement (National Debt Relief).
Renting a house or apartment is a great option when looking for a temporary place to live. However, when someone has settled down into a job and have decided to truly settle into a town or city, does renting really make financial sense? Maybe, but probably not. A thousand square foot, 1 bedroom, 1 bath apartment can cost someone up to $1,300 a month. That is a minimum of $15,600 dollars a year. This is before other expenses, taxes, fees, and insurance. These extra expenses could cost someone up to another $6,000 per year.
While the economic and environmental impacts of a tiny home are important, there is also the people that just want to live in a tiny house for that kind of lifestyle. Some individuals that do not live in a tiny home because of economic status or environmental concerns, but just like the feeling of a tiny home. Living tiny can do different things for different people, but a couple I found online explains why they like living tiny. Mr. and Ms. Sturm have enough money to own a large home, but they just like how it feels to live in a tiny home. When asked how they feel about living in their home they said:
Aside from not having room for some things that I would really like, I think it is great. I
have never been a person who likes to clean. My husband and I, we like to be out on the
water and outside doing stuff, and so a tiny house is really, really good for people like
that because it takes me less than two hours to clean, top to bottom. And we really do not
have a whole lot of maintenance on the house. (Sturm, 2)
Cleaning and maintaining a large house is always a hassle and just like Ms.Sturm has found out, it is much easier to clean and maintain a smaller house.
The online interview also asked:
“In addition to the feelings of regret, did you also feel a bit of relief about getting rid of clutter” (Johnson, 1)?
From all I have found in my research, their opinion reflected information that I have found from other sources. They said:
Yeah, and it is because we Americans, especially, have so much stuff, and we don't even
usually know what we do have. I'm sure you've had the feeling that I've certainly had of
cleaning out a closet and thinking, oh, my, I didn't even remember that I had that. Well, if
you don't remember that you have it, you probably don't need it”. (Sturm, 1). Avoid ending with a quote-- wrap it up in your own words, especially when moving onto a new section.
Part IV: Conclusion
As discussed, having a mortgage can be a positive or negative experience. Paying for a $200,000 - $350,000 house outright is very difficult without having a lot of money saved up in the bank. Taking out a loan is expensive and the more money someone borrows, the more they have to pay overall in interest. Also the more money an individual pays for a house, the more money they are going to have to spend on property taxes and maintenance of the home. Since tiny homes are cost effective and highly efficient, most tiny home owners do not have to take a loan, and the ones that do, only have to borrow a small amount of money. This is a very good advantage because they are able to pay back the loan back quickly and then have disposable income to spend on anything else they choose.
Reducing a person's carbon footprint is important when attempting to help the environment. From the information provided above, it is easy to conclude that reducing our carbon footprint is very important and downsizing might just be the way to go if people want an easy, subconscious way to help.
While many people choose to live in a tiny house because of the economics, there are also people that choose to live that way due to the lifestyle. Living a minimalist lifestyle can be a lot less stressful than living a normal life because individuals have so much less to take care of in regards to their houses. Having less to take care of, gives people more time for errands or spending time with family which is very important to any close family. As you can see, living in a tiny house is a great improvement for the environment, an individual's checkbook and life in general.
Work Cited
Alter, Lloyd. "Finally! Tiny Home Subdivisions and Developments Are Becoming a
Reality."TreeHugger. N.p., 21 Dec. 2015. Web. 23 Jan. 2017.
Bluefish, Https://www.facebook.com/CBSPittsburgh. "Tiny Houses Could Be Coming To A
Neighborhood Near You." CBS Pittsburgh. Ihategurdals, 1888. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
Burkart, Karl. "A Breakdown of the 'Average' American's Environmental Impact." MNN - Mother
Nature Network. Mother Nature Network, 28 June 2015. Web. 21 Feb. 2017.
Corndal, Jose. "What Is The Tiny House Movement?" The Tiny Life. Tiny Life, 19 Oct. 2015.
Web. 21 Feb. 2017.
Finfar, John. "Tiny House Design Part 1 - Codes and Foundation Selection." Udemy. Macy
Miller, 2015. Web. 25 Jan. 2017.
Gornal, Mitchell. "Durango." Rocky Mountain Tiny Houses. N.p., 10 May 2014. Web. 23 Jan.
2017.
Johnson, Skylar. "Solar Homes Vs. Non Solar Homes." Sciencing. Sciencing.com, 2015. Web.
30 Jan. 2017.
Jones, Bob. "What Is The Tiny House Movement?" The Tiny Life. N.p., 19 Oct. 2015. Web. 27
Feb. 2017.
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