Small Houses

The renovated house in the top picture is on Armstrong Ave in Hintonburg. I love tiny houses, there is something so doll-house-like, so intimate, so cute about them. Maybe it’s the little-child in me wanting to curl up in a cupboard.

Hidden behind the renovator’s trailer to the right of the blue and white house there is a foundation in the ground for another thin house infill.

I hope the vacant lot, now for sale, gets some more tiny infill houses rather than a McMansion.

I would love to see more tiny houses built in the city. I feel there is a huge market for them amongst singles, retirees, and people who want to spend less of their money on housing. However, so many city expenses are not size related or have minimum charges (eg water bill, electric bill, gas bill), and taxes on small houses can easily be higher than on larger houses, so they are squeezed out of the new-build category and are seen as non-economic by the cold-hearted (like me — when shopping for my first house, I discovered it is much more economic to have a 1300 sq ft house than a 900 sq ft house, and bought accordingly).

As for my tax comment above, taxes are based on market value. When a small one bedroom house (no driveway, and the house is so small the one bedroom is in the walkout basement) on Primrose was renovated it was reassessed at higher value than three storey 2200 sq ft houses along the same street, because the assessors said the “comparable” was a trendy loft condo!