Plain talk on building and development.
2017-09-13 07.52.09 HDR
Here is a link to a live Excel File you can download for a modest rental cottage court:
You may recognize the Static Pro Forma tab as the template used in the IncDev Small Developer Workshops.
Please post comments and critiques here or email me with questions. The sooner folks understand the small developer business model the sooner building/rebuilding will get better.
I guess the phenomenon of the "Tiny House" is now part of our culture, since there are now HGTV shows about Tiny Houses. I love a well designed small house. I am not a fan of Tiny Houses on wheels for a couple of reasons. It can be hard to find a place to park a tiny trailer and actually hook it up to a sewer line unless you go to a trailer park or RV park. Tiny Houses on wheels are not built under typical local building codes but under a the ANSI standard A119.5 for Park Recreational Vehicles, (specifically RV's without motors, gasoline tanks or diesel tanks). If you would like to put your tiny house on wheels on a permanent foundation, you will need to convince the local building official that the trailer meets the local building code. It is possible to get your tiny trailer certified to comply with the International Residential Code (IRC) by a third party inspector who watches the trailer being built by the fabricator, but this is not a typical practice by many of the folks building Tiny Homes/Trailers.
For the next couple of months my wife and I are living in the little pink cottage shown above in the Cottage Square neighborhood in Ocean Springs, MS. This little one bedroom cottage was used as temporary housing during Mississippi's recovery from Hurricane Katrina and was later removed from its transport frame and placed on a foundation at Cottage Square. It was dual certified by the manufacturer as a HUD Manufactured Home (mobile home) while it was attached to the transport frame and as a IRC compliant modular cottage when removed from the frame and set on a permanent foundation.
We are finding the cottage to be quite comfortable. We have an actual bedroom compared to the sleeping lofts often provided in Tiny Houses/trailers. The kitchen and bathrooms are pretty straight forward, built from standard cabinets and fixtures. There is plenty of natural light and a porch we can sit out on when the weather allows.
After spending a fair part of the workday on the phone or on video calls coaching small developers, it has been pretty common to find me staying up late to finish work on my own projects.
In an effort to bring more discipline to my daily work routine, my well-organized wife, Eleanor has set up the pay button on the blog (above the photo in the black menu bar) as a way for folks to buy some of my time in scheduled 20 minute blocks.
The rate is $80 per 20 minute block. If you would like to schedule a session, please email me at janderson@andersonkim.com to set up a time. You can attach information to your email that will help me understand your project. (There is no charge for any time I spend reviewing your background information). I typically use Google HangOuts for video call coaching session. Hangouts allows 3 or 4 people on the call and you can share computer screens. Please install Google Hangouts prior to the session and test it out. We can also use Facetime, but Facetime does not allow screen sharing and is limited to two party calls.
As an unexpected side benefit, upgrading the version of the Wordpress blog platform to get the pay button feature eliminated those random advertisements that used to show up in the free version.
Best, John
