Their Extra Wide Park Model Tiny Home on Land
Meet Yessi and Bobby, a young couple living in a lovely extra-wide park model tiny house on their own land in the Texas Hill Country. Fortunately, there are no legal obstacles to doing this in their small town. That's why they felt confident investing in their 5-acre homestead. Lucky breaks and smart financial planning have made a world of difference in making this all possible.
"Our parents said, well, you can have a big wedding, or you can put this towards your first home. So we decided to have a very small wedding and ended up getting our first home.
We ended up getting married just at the courthouse. It was probably a 10-minute ceremony.
Quick said and done.
But it was special.
We were living in a 2,000-square-foot house in Rosanky on 15 acres, and we knew that that wasn't going to be our dream home, and we wanted to build a barndominium. So we decided, or I kind of pitched the idea, well, what if we sold the Rosanky house and lived in a tiny house, and lived there for a couple of years to save money to build our dream home?"
-Yessi & Bobby, @_thehopperhouse
Inside their Extra-Wide Park Model Tiny Home
Yessi and Bobby bought their extra-wide park model tiny home from dealer Creative Living Solutions in Bastrop, Texas. It is 26 feet long by 15 feet wide for a spacious-feeling 390 square-foot living space. And their sizeable covered porch makes it feel even bigger.
They absolutely love the open, airy feeling of their tiny house. Beyond the extra-width, a series of large windows in the living room bring in loads of sunlight. It's also a great way to enjoy animal watching, from cows to red stags. Bobby built cool floating plant shelves that rotate to take advantage of all that natural light.
During the pandemic, Yessi readily admits she became a houseplant addict. She started with about two or three plants which grew into 47 to 50 plants. Sadly, she did have to downsize her leafy collection a bit. On the bright side, she & Bobby came up with creative solutions for displaying them around their tiny home. The rotating shelves are a prime example.
Extra-wide tiny homes help tremendously with furniture placement. That's why Yessi and Bobby were able to keep their massive flatscreen TV! On a more practical note, they could get mostly full-size appliances and a sizable island for their kitchen. This is perfect because they love to cook, hunt, and garden.
Ample room for a main suite is another top benefit of their 15 ft wide park model. Their bedroom features a king bed, along with his & hers closets. Additionally, it comes with private access to the connected bathroom with a bathtub.
Their loft serves as both a guest room with two queen beds and a home office for Yessi. Impressively, she can sit at her desk without hitting her head! Scenic views out of the upstairs windows make this a tranquil place to work.
Land and Tiny House Costs
Developing raw land is no small feat. Renting or buying equipment and installing utilities adds up quickly. Their water well installation alone hit $24,000. Then their septic system ran a little over $8,000, and the power company charged about $3,000 to put in a transformer. That's on top of the $94,000 Yessi, and Bobby paid for their 5-acre plot. But they saved a lot of money by doing many projects themselves, like digging trenches for electrical lines.
"The actual tiny house itself, we did customize it, so we paid $107,000, which came with everything that we wanted for us. It was very affordable because when we sold our Rosanky house, we actually made quite a bit of a profit.
With that profit, we paid off our vehicles, student debt, and any other debt that we had, so we actually became debt-free.
And with the little bit that we had left over, we used to pay for the land and a big chunk of the tiny house, so we were able to save tons of money. And a lot of our projects are DIY, so we were able to save on that as well.
The base model start, at least for this model, started at $57,000. So they're pretty affordable...
Our goal is to really save for the next three to four years. So we're kind of living off of one income, his income. And then my income just goes towards savings so that we can get closer to our dream goal."
-Yessi & Bobby, @_thehopperhouse
