The two houses, 583 and 628 square feet respectively, were a collaborative effort between the Detroit Shoreway Community Development Organization (DSCDO), Citizens Bank and Sutton Development.
The two tax-abated properties were initially listed at $129,000 and $149,000, but top realtors at both Howard-Hanna and Progressive Urban Real Estate failed to lure buyers.
Mark Lastition is a realtor in Howard-Hanna’s W. 25th Street office. He admitted he was surprised by the lack of interest.
“People liked the idea, but no one pulled the trigger,” he commented on a thread in the Detroit-Shoreway Community Facebook page this week. “Seems that ‘tiny houses’ are trendy to talk about – just not trendy to buy.”
Lastition, who didn’t work directly on the project, has been an Ohio City resident since 1993. He elaborated on his comments in a phone conversation with Scene Thursday.
“I’m as eager as the next person to see affordable, alternative housing options put up that may be marketed to a different audience,” Lastition said. “So it’s frustrating when you see a well-respected CDC like Detroit Shoreway put together this plan and the financing, with a builder who’s entirely on board, and nobody salutes.”
“But people would say, ‘for $129,000, there’s any number of homes I could buy,'” Lastition recalled. “Well, that’s true. But they’re not what these houses are about.”
Lastition said there was at least one buyer who’d wanted to buy one of the homes as an investment property, but due to financing restrictions from Citizens Bank, who contributed funds for the design and marketing work, that wasn’t an option.
According to observers on the Facebook thread, the homes occupied a middle ground that may have made them less attractive for some buyers.
“It’s a difficult balancing act where the novelty of an efficient tiny house needs to match the appeal of much larger, neighboring housing stock,” wrote Jonathan Sheirer. “These are a bit too big and expensive to be actual tiny houses, and I feel that the design intent to keep them “tiny house-esque” ended up sacrificing some of the potential for them to just be small, energy-efficient houses.”
To those who thought the price point was a bit too steep, Lastition chimed in on the thread to say that energy-efficient new construction projects are expensive, and the homes couldn’t have been sold for much less.
DSCDO’s Adam Davenport, who managed the project, confirmed.
“Whether it’s 400 square feet or 4,000 square feet, energy efficiency utility hookups are just really expensive,” he said.
Davenport also said that there had been a few offers on the houses, but that they came in too low, and DSCDO didn’t want to undersell.
“The purpose of the project was to meet our EcoVillage values,” Davenport told Scene, “We really wanted that energy-efficiency component; we wanted an aging in place friendly house; and we wanted some semblance of a yard on this formerly vacant city lot. These are pretty different than the 200-square-foot tiny houses that you see on TV.”
Davenport said that DSCDO rented out one of the homes as an AirBNB for about two-and-a-half months last year — guests included City Councilman Matt Zone and folks from Snapchat during the RNC — but that ultimately the development organization decided to sell to Sutton, whom Davenport called a “good landlord.”
Sutton works primarily in Tremont, having done construction on the Bergen Place and Starkweather Place projects there. Last year, he told Michelle Jarboe at The Plain Dealer that he was “totally smitten” by the Tiny House concept, and was hoping to use the Detroit Shoreway experiment as a model to duplicate.
When Scene reached Sutton by phone Friday, he said he had no comment on the project or his future plans.
Councilman Matt Zone, who was enthusiastic about the Tiny House Experiment at a ribbon-cutting last year and who has expressed confidence in the neighborhood’s appetite for tiny houses, wasn’t immediately available for comment.
Mark Lastition thinks there’s still hope for alternative housing options on the near west side.
“It’s just finding someone who’s willing to be innovative,” he said. “And sadly, we don’t have a great track record. If any community was going to be forward-thinking about how this all could happen, I would’ve guessed that it was going to be Detroit Shoreway.”
This article appears in Mar 15-21, 2017.
Well, this may have happened for a few reasons. First, most tiny house buyers (as far as I can tell) want portability and a price point that is far below rent for the area. Clearly, $130,000 is way above that level and probably way above what other homes in the neighborhood sell for.
Second, this area has a surplus of easy-to-renovate stick built homes, which can be purchased and renovated for far less than $100,000, all in. This is not NYC or SF, and it isn’t Boston or Philly, where old housing stock is more likely to need oil tank removal, asbestos remediation and other expensive repairs.
I want to see innovative approaches to housing here, but I just don’t think this is a winning strategy.
Totally agree Madeline. Why pay that amount for something that small? If someone is going to spend that kind of money I am sure they don’t want something under 1,000 square feet.
When the people who build the tiny houses on HGTV talk about their houses, they typically choose the tiny home lifestyle for four reasons.
1.) Financial freedom from not having a large home loan.
2.) The portability to live anywhere at a moment’s notice.
3.) The ability to live a minimalist lifestyle and have the outdoors be a part of their lives and living space.
4.) They are built with sustainable materials and are low energy so they were built green and can live easily off the grid.
These on the shoreway are small homes (not tiny,) they are not portable on a trailer, they have a large financial burden, offer more space to fit stuff rather than creative outdoor spaces, and a large investment was made to make them energy efficient when these are fixed on the grid.
I’d say the builder totally missed their target audience. If they were built at a better price point, those would have sold to quickly to the millennial generation with student loan debt.
It sounds as if potential buyers actually provided valuable feedback — but nobody was willing to listen, since there was absolutely no wiggle room in the inflexible business model.
The problem wasn’t the idea, the problem was the cost. People go tiny to save and spend money else where in their lives
The “living” value of a tiny home would increase if they were actually a “tiny community”. Close proximity to “lifestyle activities” in the “zone” would make them more attractive.
Look at the wasted yardspace. Interactive gardening, gaming area, nature pond to stroll around, or sit and reflect, wifi share, “virtual shopping” areas…all packaged attractively in a walkable area. These ‘accents” will bring buyers. It’s not just the “home”. It’s the community attractions. Nobody wants to be home all the time.
150,000 to live in a “tiny house” in the hood! I wonder why nobody bought the houses. Smh
Well, I went to the “website” and it’s a trainwreck. No photos of the homes, no links to the MLS pages, no progress photos/stories on the blog (and the blog itself is a joke with little to no running updates). The only way to find photos of the homes was to click the little circular “F” to go to the Facebook page. Whoever ran the website should be fired.
Try living in that area what a joke. The drugs,violent crimes and prostitution problem is at its highest in years in that area. I grew up around there it was a shit hole then and hasn’t got any better in the last 20 years. They should have picked a different area to build maybe more people would’ve been interested. I love the tiny house idea considered building my own, but this area is a joke got to carry and conceal just to go shopping around this area.
Their business model was good for a COMPLETELY different area. But since their model was so rigid and not suited for the area, it’s no wonder it failed. The price was too high, the home too large. They were selling a small home with very few benefits for the cost of a large home. It makes no sense.
It’s obvious to me why this project failed. Intent is priority, and the intent here appears to have been to cash in on the tiny house movement. These kay be small houses, but they are way overpriced. People can purchase true tiny, and usually portable, for 40-60k.
First, im sorry it didnt work out for the intended purpose of the builders. There are ways of making it work. They need to change the landscape and lower the prices for sure.
There definitely needed to be more research on the target market.
All of the people commenting here should have been on the planning team. You all know what you’re talking about.
I live in Metro-Detroit & am in the start-up phase of my business, Tiny and Smart.
I have no website yet. Been doing leg work for years. Later this month I’m attending a course on tiny house building. I want to get it right when I create a Tiny House Community in Detroit.
If anybody is interested in getting involved in creating a community in Detroit, feel free to contact me.
I’m disappointed you called it a fail. Innovation always comes with high risks and it was an experiment. I commend those involved for trying something new and being open to bringing this concept here. So it didn’t work, back to the drawing board! Don’t be discouraged or discouraging when innovation hits!! It’s exciting, and there are always kinks, but that’s the nature of trying!!!!
The tiny house movement is viable in areas where the housing want is greater than the housing availability. The area has problems that supersede housing.
I paid a lot of money to be a prisoner in eco village. My only respite from gunshots, armed robbery, and break ins was rec time in the yard with my fellow inmates. You were asking someone to pay an exorbitant amount of money to live in a jail cell directly across from a drug house that they couldn’t leave for real imminent fear of danger. This wasn’t innovative. It was stupid. If the DCSO and Matt Zone thought this was a good idea, then they don’t know the neighborhood they claim to represent whatsoever.
1. The two houses are ugly. No style, no architectural details, nothing but paint to differentiate two identical structures.
2. The houses are too big to be tiny and too tiny to be a normal houses.
3. The houses are in the wrong area. You have to first get people used to tiny houses. That”s hard to do in an area with high crime and violence.
4. Anything built with tax abatement and incentives is likely to fail. If it can’t be built by for-profit developers, there’s a reason.
The cost of living is too affordable in Cleveland for this to have Ben a viable option. One could retro-fit a small home in CLE in say Slavic village, cudell, (south of Lorain) Ohio city, st. Clair -superior, fairfax, westpark for far less than $130-$150k. Plus have the space to grow in. If you’re young and in the market for a small(ish) home you eventually will have to grow into your home for that kind of money. Cuz let’s be honest, part of the reason the cost of living is so low is because the rate of income growth here is abysmal. There’s so much wrong with this idea and kudos for “trying” to pass some mess but know your market next time.
I think that this project failed because it was TOO innovative…if they hadn’t overthought it, they’d have recognized that the houses were going to be way too expensive, especially in a city that is absolutely loaded with cheap housing stock. A tiny house works for people because it is cheap, costing at most what a rental would cost. This house is too big, and too expensive. My 3-bedroom 1200 sq ft condo in North Olmsted cost me little more than half of what these are selling for. It’s not rocket science…build them cheap in a safe enough neighborhood and they will be much more likely to sell. Most urban tiny house communities are for economic and yet dignified housing for the homeless, those trying to get back on their feet (like veterans), and people who just want to minimize their cost of living. That would be incredibly useful in a city like Cleveland, but you can’t have the starting price be a $1,000/month house payment! Make it somewhere closer to $500 or $600 and put it in a nice enough neighborhood, and then you’ve got something. That’s not innovative, it’s just not overthinking and overdoing it!
Why would anyone pay over $100,000 to live in a 600sq ft house that sits directly across the street from multiple run down properties occupied by people with face tattoos?
Wrong location plain and simple.
This ‘experiment’ failed because it was just another cash grab, not an actual attempt to start a tiny house community.
These houses need to sell at a much lower price and profit margin to the owner! I ‘m sure many people would like to own and live in these homes but at a reasonable lower price as it should be!
If I did the math right, it’s $230 per square foot for a cracker box in a slum. Seriously? I don’t think so. You can get a bungalow in less-risky West Park for half that much. And 50% larger, too. Plus yard and garage.
Ask the man who knows.
Chuckles the Clown
I purchased an all brick home in WestPark for 95,900 (1800 sq ft). Just dumped $40k into it and it’s a great house. People just weren’t ready to pull the trigger on these small homes when they can get triple for less money. I like the concept, just wasn’t executed well.
Shoulda come to my street in West Park , kiddo…the all-brick house next door was selling for 80K when our neighbor died. It eventually went for a mere 50K.
She was a pack rat for 40 years and the place was a shambles. My wife and I spent weeks cleaning the place out last winter. No heat. No water. We dumped recyclables in the city bins and donated six rooms of furniture and household goods to various charities. Also acquired some amazing treasures from all over the planet–her husband was a Navy lifer.
Last spring, a guy in the neighborhood bought it for 50K, gutted and remodeled the kitchen and bathroom, and built another half-bath on the first floor. Don’t know how much moolah went into it but after a year of working on the place part-time, he recently sold it to a guy who worked for him.
There are a lot of hidden gems out there, but you have to be willing to forego the hip and the trendy and the next Brooklyn (NY)…and be willing to live on the edge. Of the city, that is, rather than on the edge of the inner city abyss, in Coolville. Where prices are ridiculous, the spaces are small, and things can get sketchy.
Out here, you can still walk your dog after midnight. And have a yard to keep him in. With real trees and real grass.
Chuckles the Clown
The City of Detroit’s small homes for low income May be more feasible.
Watching tiny house program, they are building homes for under $60,000, Why in the heck would I pay $130,000 for a non-mobile home in a part of town that is still in the progress of being rejuvenated. I’d rather put that money towards a condo, townhouse etc. in the suburbs. (though I know I will have to add additional money) lol
I may actually be interested in seeing if I qualify to buy one of these I would live in it can reach me at 216-858-0789 William Crowell
This learning by failure is what economists refer to when they say “MARKETS”. Entrepreneurs introduce their ideas and products into the marketplace to be tested against Consumer demands. Unlike Socialist economies where the consumers MUST take what is given, in a Capitalist society, the Consumer is free to choose. Not only free to choose this or that, but also to choose nothing. It is VERY difficult to educate Economic Development Professionals, Community Organizers, Democrat Politicians, and everybody else in the CDC community about Markets. They would prefer a top-down, bureaucrat-driven, totalitarian acceptance of their BIG IDEAS.