Answer Man: Tiniest Asheville 'tiny house' in Oakley legal?

Dec 13, 2023

This Answer Man installment deals with a really small dwelling that raised questions of legality for one reader. Have a question for Answer Man or Answer Woman? Email Executive Editor Karen Chávez at [email protected] and your question and its answer could appear in an upcoming column.

Question: I saw this tiny one-bedroom, one-bath house just sold in Oakley for $170,000. Is this part of a tiny house community? How many people can legally live in a house this small? Is this the new wave of housing in Asheville?

Answer: The house in question is on Broadview Avenue in the East Asheville neighborhood of Oakley. It's about three long blocks north of Interstate 40 and less than a mile southeast of Oakley Elementary. But the eye-popper about this home isn't the location, it's the dimensions.

The house is 14 feet by 24 feet, or 336 square feet. It's got one bedroom, one bath and a deck that is three-quarters of the size of the house. It's a modular home built in 2022 on 0.17 acres, and while the county tax assessor valued it at $124,000, it sold to a Charlotte couple for $170,000 in April.

More:Asheville, Buncombe see record high Q1 median home sales prices; When will prices drop?

Asheville and Buncombe County both had record-breaking highs for median home sale prices, with numbers higher in 2023 than any other first quarter on record. For the first quarter of 2023, the median sales price for a home in Asheville city limits is $465,000, up from $440,000 in the year prior. In Buncombe County (not including Asheville), it is $426,995, up from $405,000, according to a report from Mosaic Community Lifestyle Realty.

About the legality question, Barry Bialik, founder of Compact Cottages and a member of the city's Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, says the description "tiny house" is sometimes used for houses on wheels.

"Tiny homes on wheels are not allowed in the city anywhere," he said.

But a house on a foundation, like the one in question, really can be any size, as long as it meets minimum building code standards for things such as bathrooms.

"There's really no minimum size," Bialik said.

More:Affordable mobile homes are disappearing in Asheville; code change could bring some back

More:Photos: Tiny home construction with BeLoved

More:A new kind of housing? 2 micro-housing projects could bring 300+ apartments to downtown

So, yes, it's legal. As for being part of a tiny house community, Bialik and others said there aren't a bunch of similar homes being built right around that area, so that's a no to a new miniscule dwelling neighborhood.

Finally, about it being part of a "house wave" in Asheville, there are people building homes with really small footprints on small lots in groups. That's happened recently in South Asheville with a 45-home subdivision called "Atkinsville."

Those footprints are usually less than 500 square feet. But they've got multiple stories, including a carport on the bottom, putting them at more than 1,1000 square feet of finished space. They also have usually one and a half bathrooms and two bedrooms. So, to my mind, that doesn't exactly qualify as tiny.

More:Answer Man: Status of downtown Asheville land once slated for 'massive' apartment project?

More:Answer Man: What is happening at Asheville's former nuclear fallout shelter?

The problem with building a subdivision of really tiny homes is land price, Bialik said. Right now there are really no buildable plots in the city for any less than $100,000. Mortgage companies don't want to give those loans when the land value ends up being more than 25% that of the home value.

"Today's $100,000 lots means $400,000 houses. So if we want to get houses down to the $300,000 or less level, then we have to get land prices back down to $60,000."

Outside of the market, that has been done, but with subsidies. An example is Beloved Village, also in East Asheville, reserved for people at lower income levels.

Joel Burgess has lived in WNC for more than 20 years, covering politics, government and other news. He's written award-winning stories on topics ranging from gerrymandering to police use of force. Got a tip? Contact Burgess at [email protected], 828-713-1095 or on Twitter @AVLreporter. Please help support this type of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times.