Surprising Trend Pops Up in This State To Help Buyers Nab Their First Homes

A home trend is popping up in Utah, and it provides the quaint comfort with a price tag that won’t place too much strain on your bank account.

Like most states these days, Utah has seen its home prices skyrocket. The median list price in Salt Lake City is $550,000, according to Realtor.com®, well above the national.

The problem has gotten so bad that local employer RAM Aviation, Space & Defense says it is having trouble finding employees and may have to move operations.

“When you can charge $1 million for an acre of dirt here in Southern Utah, which is what the going rate is for property for housing, it’s so less expensive in other areas of the country,” George Robinson, CEO of RAM, told KUTV. “It’s obviously a concern.”

“The days of the first home being a detached suburban home on a 10,000-square-foot lot, it’s just not there anymore,” Scott Messel, community development director for Washington County, tells KUTV.

The ‘compact’ house solution

Homebuilder BoxHouse in St. George, UT, has come up with a solution.

It builds “compact houses,” which start at 380 square feet and go up to 500. They are built overseas, shipped to Utah for final adjustments, and then boxed and mailed to the new owner. On site, the homes “pop up” and can be assembled in a day or two.

“We believe wholeheartedly in homeownership,” co-founder Jeff Staples tells Realtor.com.

A former real estate agent who got tired of watching eager potential homeowners finding out they did not qualify for loans, Staples decided to start his own affordable house business.

“I said, ‘I’ve got to jump into this,'” he says. “This will create so much more social change than I can do on my own. Homeownership does so much for people, and we want to give that opportunity to people who can’t otherwise afford it.”

But don’t call his homes “tiny.”

“We’re trying to avoid that stigma,” he says. “Tiny homes have a reputation of being narrow, claustrophobic, leaky, and not performing well. But ours feel like a regular house.”

He says the company’s homes are perfect accessory dwelling units for family members, young adults transitioning out of their parents’ homes, or seniors.

But what he hopes to achieve is the starter house.

This year, the company will roll out a 1,000-square-foot model, allowing its homes to legally exist as stand-alone dwellings in every state. But it is still less than half the size of the average U.S. house, which is a whopping 2,480 square feet, according to Bankrate.

For those not ready for the extremely limited space of the small house, or unable to move to an area where tiny homes are legal as stand-alone dwellings, this compromise could be the perfect option.

Tiny-house living isn’t always welcomed

Utah, like many other states, has varied restrictions on owning a tiny house as an independent dwelling. However, many states—Utah included—are beginning to relax their rigid stances in part to ease the housing crisis.

Recently, Washington County in Southern Utah near Zion National Park created an ordinance that would allow tiny houses in more rural areas.

According to a survey by LawnStarter, the state most friendly to tiny-house living is Vermont, followed by Kentucky, Arkansas, Maine, and Minnesota. Utah doesn’t appear in the top 10.

Despite all the pros of tiny-home living—affordability, eco-friendliness, a much smaller carbon footprint—state zoning laws simply haven’t kept up. Eight states even ban them or come close to it: Alaska, Iowa, Louisiana, North Dakota, New Jersey, New York, Wisconsin, and West Virginia.

“While tiny homes make sense for a number of good reasons, some communities fear they’ll attract less desirable—meaning less wealthy—residents,” explains Larry Samuel, author of “Home Ownership in America.” “Tiny homes also frequently don’t conform to existing zoning regulations, not unlike those for mobile homes.”

Changes are coming, slowly.

“To address affordability issues, architects and builders are creating smaller, denser homes to help close the gap,” says Chris Porter with housing market research firm John Burns Research and Consulting.

There is also the question of eco-friendliness. Climate change will drastically affect homeownership in this century. Smaller footprints can help.

“Lawmakers in more states should recognize small homes are a viable alternative to the typical land-hogging, energy-gobbling single-family house and bring their zoning into the 21st century,” says Samuel.

The low cost of tiny homes is a bit of a myth

BoxHouse homes start at approximately $80,000. This makes them more affordable than the average tiny house.

According to John Burns Research and Consulting, due to the high cost of construction, high-end projects make up the bulk of the current ADU volume.

“At $150,000 to $300,000, the cost to build a sub-1,000-square-foot ADU can rival that of a new, much larger home in a more typical homebuilding environment,” says housing expert Scott Wild, in a John Burns Research and Consulting report.

BoxHouse keeps its prices low because it outsources everything to its factory in China. Staples realizes that might give the homes bad optics.

“The brutal truth is that it is just a lot cheaper to produce there,” he says. “China has that reputation of cutting corners, but our partner is not that way at all. We will let the high quality of the product continue to speak for itself.”

However, Staples hopes to open a factory in the U.S., in part because of his concern about the “current geopolitical environment.”

BoxHouse takes pride in its “non-tiny-house tiny houses,” which look more like cottages, are built 3 feet off the ground, and come with full kitchens and bathrooms, and appliances like washers and dryers.

The company offers seven floor plans with four configurations. There is The Bungalow (a studio), Two Bedroom (with two separate bedrooms), The SkyLoft (with a vertical design), and even a multiunit option, called The Duplex, which is divided into two quarters.

There are clever space solutions such as retractable stairs. The company also claims that the soundproofing within the homes is equal to that of traditional stick homes.

All the plan options, including the upcoming 1,000-square-foot model, can be assembled on-site in a day or two with its so-called “pop-up” technology.

The changing laws for tiny homes

“More municipalities will clear pathways for ADUs,” predicts Wild in his report. “Broad, statewide mandates will lead to more ADU volume than local measures.”

To that end, Staples has also bought large plots of land in three states—Utah, California, and Texas—where he plans to sell a BoxHouse house that includes the land it sits on.

He’s not sure when the properties will be available as he says he is “fighting an uphill battle in all three states.”

However, he is optimistic that states, facing unprecedented housing crunches, will see the light and embrace small-home living.

“We control the product and the price,” he says. “We can’t control states’ zoning and regulations. But they are coming around.”