Less is more: How to buy your own ‘tiny home’ from €29,000

Maybe you need a temporary home while renovate your own, or maybe you’re looking for a more permanent — and affordable — home.

Whatever your needs, the creators of a new “tiny home” hope to inspire people to think outside the box when it comes to housing needs.

Clare-based Common Knowledge was set up in 2021 as a non-profit social enterprise, aimed at helping people learn the skills needed to build an affordable, sustainable and happy home.

One of its first projects has been the creation of the “Tigín”, a tiny home mobile home measuring just 20sq m. The Tigín links in with a global movement towards tiny homes, whereby people choose to downsize and live with less.

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The initiative is led by four founders — Fionn Kidney, Erin McClure, Claire (Spider) Hickman as well as Harrison Gardner, who published a book, Build Your Own, earlier this year and later this autumn will appear in an RTÉ TV series.

“I think what Tigín is doing starting a conversation about tiny homes — you can have a good quality of life living in these,” says co-founder Fionn Kidney.

It’s also a response to the housing crisis.

The initiative, says Gardner, was born out of a desire to “equip people with what they need to build their own — the clearest path to affordable housing is getting more involved in the building project yourself”.

“A lot of people out there will never need the nuclear family three-bedroom home,” says Gardner, adding, “it isn’t appropriate, they’ll never be able to afford it, and it’s much bigger than they need.”

So the Tigín can act as a sort of stepping stone to independence, allowing people to move into the housing market in a lighter way, without the burden of a 30-year mortgage.

“It’s about trying to meet the needs of where people are right now, and they don’t have to make a decades-long commitment,” he says.

It may also suit people looking to live off-grid, or to take their “foot off the rent ladder” for a while, adds Kidney.

It’s also a temporary solution for people needing someplace to live while they renovate their home.

Since the pandemic, the team has seen an increase in people moving out of towns and cities to more rural locations, where often the only homes available to buy are those that need substantial renovation work.

Renting while doing this work can prove expensive — “it all gets a bit daunting”, says Gardner — which is where Tigín comes into play; it allows people to live beside their properties, and when it’s no longer needed, can be sold on to someone else.

You can transport your Tigín tiny home wherever you would normally drive your car, and a tiny trailer can also be bought to move it.

The home is as described — tiny — at just 20sq m. However, as Gardner says, efforts have been made to make it both as luxurious as possible and as big and open as possible, and so it features very tall ceilings and lots of glazing. It’s designed to have a bit of a “plug and play” mentality, in that all the electrical systems are built in with outlets on the outside, while the homes come with a compost toilet.

Common Knowledge now has three of these Tigíns for sale (it originally had four, but one has just been sold), built in part during its building workshops. Prices start at €29,000 (including VAT) for a shell only model, increasing to €50,000 for a home finished with metal cladding, and €56,000 for a hemp clad home.

But if you fancy yourself as a crafts person, you could build one on your own for less; the plans and materials lists for Tigín Tiny Homes will be made available from December, and will be available for use by anyone who wishes to build their own — for free.

Common Knowledge is not all about tiny homes — “it’s one element of what we do”, says Gardner.

Indeed, the social enterprise only has four such homes to sell and won’t be building any more. It will, however, continue to provide people with the tools helping them to improve their construction skills — hopefully from an expanded premises.

Currently based at Gardner’s home in Ennistymon, the project hopes to move into a new premises in Clare and will be launching a crowdfunder in the coming weeks to help fund the acquisition of a property in the area.

As Kidney sees it, the new home will be a “centre of learning for people to come to from all over Ireland, regain lost skills and develop a better understand of building and making and mending”.

The social enterprise runs a number of courses and since it launched more than 250 people have been on one of its courses. These include the five-day Build School course (€750), while other options include learning how to use your own natural dyes, stains and inks for textile and home use (€280); a two-day introduction to furniture design (€380); and bricklaying for beginners (€180).

Common Knowledge will also hold a course in Dublin for the first time in October — likely to be the first of many, says Gardner.