Big advantages to living small

Catherine Foster, author of Small House Living. Photo / Supplied

Less is more when it comes to small houses. When freelance writer Catherine Foster moved into a tiny home her life changed forever. No longer was she beholden to the bank, or to 9 to 5 work. She could lock up and leave her home, and travel. What's more, it gave her the impetus to write a book about small house living in New Zealand, tracking down like-minded home owners and their properties - 20 of which are featured in the book Small House Living.

Small home owners, Foster points out want to live differently. They have less to maintain, less to clean, the home itself requires less of the world's finite resources to build and once it's built it uses less energy to heat.

New Zealand had a culture of small homes historically with the state house and baches. Several of the homes in Foster's book are baches. Foster is relieved that as a nation we've retreated from building the Mediterranean pink stucco palaces of the 1980s and 1990s that showed off the owners' wealth. Smaller new-build baches are becoming more common.

Building smaller baches does pose problems. The owner of the Taieri Mouth Bach had to be extremely restrained with design and materials to avoid overcapitalising in an area where property prices do not carry a big city premium.

The Hut on Sleds house featured in the book had to be built to be moved should there be coastal erosion. The same bach features a unique vertical 1.5 storey high bi-fold shutter system that completely covers the glass front of the home when the owner is away.

Catherine Foster's book tackles both the merits and the caveats of small-house living in New Zealand. Photo / Supplied

What all the homes have in common is architectural design. Many use innovative materials. The Container Bach in Tuateawa, Coromandel is built from two 17m shipping containers.

Foster says our planning laws and banks have stymied the development of 37sq m or smaller "tiny houses". Here it's almost impossible to get planning permission for a home that size. "It's ridiculous that the Government goes on about affordable housing, yet doesn't allow people to build [small houses]

"The demand is there. People want to build but can't because the regulatory framework won't let us. It is common sense that this has to change."

She says limitations to the number of dwellings allowed on a site and rules such as height in relation to boundary, access and light stop many potential owners in their tracks. "There is also the problem of nimbyism," she says. "People don't want the densification of suburbs. Yet I believe firmly with really good design these homes are not eyesores."

Foster has her fingers and toes crossed that Auckland's Unitary Plan will see sense and allow Kiwis to build sub-37sq m "tiny houses".

The bank is the other problem. West Aucklander Dot Dalziel ran into the bank lending impasse when she and her partner tried to borrow to build a tiny house to replace an orchard cottage. "We got laughed out the door," says Dalziel. The bank would lend on a five-bedroom brick and tile for the same money and site, but not a 90sq m architecturally designed passive solar efficient home. The loan-to-value ratio was wrong for the area, it said. A compromise was reached by adding a 35sq m studio to one end of the couple's 88sq m home.

Catherine Foster's (pictured) book on small home design is full of bright ideas. Photos / supplied

The cheapest home in the book was also one of the most innovative. The 65sq m Warrander Studio in Governors Bay, Christchurch, had only one piece of timber left over from the build thanks to the use of building information modelling (BIM) and computer numerical control (CNC) machining. The home was designed, engineered and modelled digitally in 3D and prefabricated in Nelson and Wellington. The entire build came to $130,000.

Foster came across four distinct groups of people to whom small house living appeals. One group wants to "consume more elegantly", the second is young people looking for an affordable first home without sacrificing design, the third is downsizers, and the fourth is grandparents who want to live in their own home on the same property as their grandchildren.

Although small houses are cheaper to build overall because they use fewer materials, they are relatively more expensive per metre than larger houses because some charges such as council fees are the same whether you're building 300sq m or 37sq m.