Unleashing The Power Of Small Living: A New Approach To Housing With Nick Cripps

Nick Cripps, Director of Sales for Small Living Company, discusses the concept of small living and the company's focus on building smaller footprint homes. They offer a range of homes, including tiny homes, starter homes, downsizer homes, and affordable rental options. Nick shares how he became involved with Small Living Company and their vision for creating economically sustainable communities with a minimal environmental impact. He also discusses the challenges of financing for buyers and the progress they have made in gaining support from municipalities and stakeholders.

For full show notes and more information visit: https://bit.ly/3zFLhVH

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Transcript

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It takes a brave and independent mindset to go tiny. If you are trying to figure out your tiny pivot, this podcast is here to inspire and connect you with the other unconventional, gritty, inspirational people within this community. I am Laura Lynch, your tiny house friend and host. On this show, we are always going to come back to money because as a financial planner, this is the question I hear the most. How do I make this work for me financially? Well, that's my jam, so jump in, let's go. New episodes drop every Thursday. Nick Cripps, welcome to Les Housemore Moolah podcast. I'm super excited that we get to have this great conversation today. To get us started, would you please introduce yourself and the small living company? Yes, and thank you, Laura, for having me on. I'm extremely excited to talk about what we're doing out here in Ottawa. My name is Nick Cripps. I am the director of sales for a small living company. A small living company is a home builder, well a tiny home builder, but we'll get into that a little bit later. But primarily a home builder that focuses on smaller footprint homes, including tiny homes, starter homes, down -sizer homes, generally stuff that sits between 200 and 800 square feet. The application of those homes could be anything from residential dwellings right up to something that we do as well here. as cottages, seasonal homes, and also more in the affordable rental side for renters. Yeah. So great that you are working in that whole range of spectrum because, know, tiny certainly doesn't fit everybody, but more housing is needed of a variety of sizes. So what brought you personally to the small living company? Tell us about your background. So as I guess some of the best stories go, it was almost an accident. So I came to small living company. I'm a real estate broker by trade here in Ottawa. So one of the realtors that I worked with for several years, he's also a real estate coach, had asked me to meet with a couple of his coaching clients on an unrelated transaction about drawing up a contract. As a realtor, we're typically used to meeting in locations that are coffee shops and pubs or, you know, public, generally public locations. And immediately when I walked through the doors, we met at a golf course, which was also a brewery that the founders of Small Living Company actually owned. And immediately I knew that this was a different type of meeting. The brewery was also attached As far as I know, the region's only tiny home showroom. So we actually have three tiny homes built inside the golf course. And that's the rest of history, as they say, that it really grabbed my attention as somebody in the real estate business who is seeing firsthand what's happening as far as the affordability goes. And We just started the conversation from there, business, other business aside. We started the conversation on Tiny Homes and the vision So was this the early stages of Small Living Co.? This was very early stages. So to give some perspective, this was in the middle of a pandemic when face -to-face meetings were just starting up again. Date -wise, I think we're talking late 2022, or sorry, early 2022. And yeah, it was. They had just finished the showroom. Things were just sort of starting up and they had just opened up an eco resort, which was called Hammond Hill at the time, which is a campground. So you and I talked before about how that you all try to sort of steer away from the word tiny and I'm hearing some other parts inside of the tiny home world where maybe we're starting to lean towards a redefinition of the homes due to the needs of people, as I mentioned earlier, right? Everybody's not comfortable in less than 400 square feet. Why do you all specifically avoid the word tiny? So if it's okay, I'm going to kind of give you a bit of an origin story here outside of my meeting with the founders. So Brad, Karche and Aaron Markell are the two founders of Small Living Company. So if we go back, this is for all the entrepreneurs out there who have kind of seen their ideas evolve over time. I think really what we envisioned initially was backyard homes, coach homes, granny flats, if you will, something The homeowner could attach a smaller dwelling to their existing property, which is still very much a viable, affordable living scenario in most places. But giving them, you know, something to actually walk through and get the feeling for the space, if you understand what I mean. And I think a lot of what tiny home owners need to understand is, you know, condensed space means storage is important and all of the things that we take for granted in a bigger house is something that you need to consider when you're looking at a tiny home. So for us, and I apologize, I'm losing myself here a little bit. Like I warned you before, I like to ramble. When we initially founded Small Living Company, was for the backyard homes. And then from the entrepreneurial side, if you've ever dealt with any kind of NIMBY, the idea of tiny homes almost comes back to a mobile home park in a lot of people's minds. So having to figure out, how do we position this in a different way? to get people's minds around that. But then also taking it away from the consumer side, looking at it from the government side and getting building permits to build these types of homes. How are we going to position this? Because if anybody in the tiny home industry has ever approached any sort of government body about building tiny home communities, they kind of get a little bit of tunnel vision. and it becomes hard to sort of give them your sense of what it is that you're trying to build. The vision goes to tiny homes on wheels and it also goes into, as I mentioned, kind of the trailer park model. So for us, it was making sure that we were able given image that wasn't per se a tiny home, quote unquote, and more of a starter home or as, you know, for first time home buyers and restart homes for downsizers. So when we initially started, as we mentioned the coach home already, or sorry, the showroom already, but what we had to do was bring it into kind of the, sorry, I'm losing my train of thought here, bringing in the bigger vision of building a community. So we had at the time an eco resort called Hammond Hill, which we still have in our portfolio. This was sort of our launching point. But initially that was a campground. And one of the kind of entrepreneurial things that we had to deal with was kind of a pivot point, if you will. This is coming out of the pandemic. Now we're, Just the beginning of kind of lockdown ending in May of 2022, we had a huge storm here. It's called the derecho storm, which is to kind of put context to it, think of tornado without the funnel. It's very destructive storm and it's just a very wide path of destruction. For us, what that meant was we lost of our 62 acre resort, we lost 12 acres of trees in about five minutes on our opening weekend for the Hammond Hill Eco Resort. So what that ended up turning into, thankfully, was nobody getting injured, which was just a blessing. But from an economical perspective, it was an entirely lost season and six months of cleanup. And what we ended up with at the end of that was 12 acres of naturally cleared land that we had to now kind of make a pivot point with. So, uh, the leaders of the Hammond Hill resort and us, the leaders of, of small living company put our heads together. in November, when the snow was on the ground, cleanup was gone and we leading into the holidays of how do we take Hammond Hill Eco Resort and take small living company into the next. iteration of what Small Living Company was to become. a very long way of coming to why we call it small living company. Really what it comes down to is. The idea of small living is not necessarily the structure. And we internally very much believe this. I personally very much believe this. Small living is a concept in the way that we live. It's less use of commodities. It's less electricity. It's less water. It's less black water being put into the earth. All of these things combined, and not to mention the financial impact. of what small living is because it's more affordable, you have more disposable income, you're able to travel more, all of these things combined. So taking that and turning it into what is now the current iteration of small living company is a company that focuses on building communities that are economically sustainable and that don't have a heavy impact on the environment around them. Yeah, I love that. I often said, and I think I even wrote an article about this, is that tiny is not in my mind defined as square feet. It's mindset, it's intention. It's about living your life in a way that is kind to the earth and kind to yourself and in better balance. And so I love that idea of small living and the way that you're creating a concept that it's not just about the house size or the footprint of the structure, but it's really about how people are trying to live their lives. It sounds like that you all are, you know, seeing a lot of shifts that happen with that storm and the pandemic. And so that's only been kind of, you know, a couple of years really picking up steam. So What kind of progress are you seeing in your community, especially since Canada has been so affected with affordability? In Let's House More Mola, we hear so many stories of people living unconventional lives. Each of them is literally building their all -American dream. Are you tired of putting your dreams on hold because of money? Well, let's fix it. I have a two -part offering that is here to help you. First, I'm going to give you access to my financial freedom calculator so that you'll understand your numbers and have a tangible starting point. This is free. And then second, we'll book a session to figure out your finances so that you can live your alt -American dream as soon as possible. This is paid. Why am I giving you something for free? Because I'm passionate about empowering people to choose an unconventional path. So let's work together to figure out money so that you will know that you've officially taken action on your plans. This offering is for you if you're unsure of your cost of living or how much savings you might need. You don't know what money move to make next. You dream of an unconventional life built on your terms. You're seeking a permanent solution and not a one -time motivational boost. You want to learn about money from someone who shares your interest and breaking away from the norm. So what do you think? Are you tired of starting sentences with someday when I? Then go to all American dream .com and get the financial freedom calculator. So I think in the broadest terms, would be general acceptance of the model. I mentioned earlier, Nimby, the tiny home industry as a movement itself has its like staunch supporters. know, as you know, anybody who's in this world really gets it. It doesn't take a lot to explain to them what the benefits of it are. But sorry, up until recently, I'd say Probably two years is when tiny homes became more popular and not just kind of for the nomads, the off -grid minimalist communities, the general public and governments at all levels are seeing it as a solution to a problem. They can be built faster, they're using less resources and in turn costing less to the consumer. So directly in our community, We benefit from close relationship with the township that we're located in, is Hammond, Ontario, which is about 30 minutes east of Ottawa, Ontario, the capital of Canada. They've been very supportive in the idea of Hammond Hill, which was at the time, I think I mentioned this already, is the first campground that had ever opened in Ontario in 12 years. but we had sort of put a different spin on it. We're more of a glamping resort. So we have yurts and we use a company out of LA. I can't remember the name of them now, but they're very fancy tents that are all illuminated. So that was the original idea. But then after the storm was building this tiny home village and the municipality was very supportive of it. And a lot of the ways we got around that was again, the eco mindset we're not using septic systems, we use incinerating toilets. So there's no black water to deal with. There's also no kind of gross compost that you have to deal with, if you will. It's a bucket of ash that comes out and using water reclamation, things like that. So that's how we got the support of the municipality to build the eco resort into what it is today. And then also, just focusing in on, again, just that economical factor, but also adding in the affordability piece of it as well. Like how do we make houses more affordable without doing these giant footprints and also putting a lot of houses in a small space, but not impacting the land. Because anytime you go to do permits, again, I know you're down in the States, here in Canada, when you're doing any sort of development, it does become a bit of an issue when you're talking about water runoffs and all of this sort of things. I would imagine it's very similar, but all of those types of things matter up here as well. So getting, and sorry, building the idea these communities as residential. I like to call them pocket communities. I know I'm not the first to come up with that iteration, but I think these little pocket communities that aren't just homes, they're communities that are built around people and the way that we use the land. that's so interesting. think there's this tug that happens with development, right? Because we all, you know, those of us that are thinking about affordable housing and wanting to create solutions for affordable housing, we know that more housing is impactful to the land and more housing creates more sprawl. And so there's that desire to create more affordable housing and then also that desire to not be paving over everything that you see everywhere. And so it is having smaller footprints is one way to statistically reduce the amount of land needed and impact on the land and still, you know, provide housing for folks. And there's lots and lots of young people and folks trying to retire who are desperate for smaller spaces, who want smaller spaces. So you mentioned those two groups. So talk a little bit more about who you're trying to help with these pocket communities. that you break down those three buckets of people and separate out the middle -aged people, right? Because I'm middle -aged and it was age 46 when the kid graduated from high school and that was my downsizing opportunity. Okay, so I'm taking those three buckets of people because like you, I'm middle -aged and middle -age is the point at which... tiny living was possible because the kid in my household is my husband's kid and we had to wait until he graduated before we could kind of like leave the area. And so that was our juncture. And I really feel like for Gen X, my generation, this is a great opportunity to regear our careers too and use tiny living to do that. use tiny living as a way to cash out some of that home equity and do a little extra savings considering they say that our generation is just not prepared for retirement, all the things, right? It's just a great solution for middle-aged people. And then I read an article or heard a report on National Public Radio Marketplace recently that retirees can't find smaller homes to move into. So they would love to downsize, but they... can't even find the homes. So it's for all people. It's for all the people. It's not even finding the homes. It's finding homes that, you know, like you can downsize. And again, I'll speak to my area. You can downsize from a 3000 square foot home to a townhouse. But when you buy a townhouse, you're generally moving closer to the city or a little bit more central in a high demand area. So you might be downsizing from a 3000 square foot single into you know, 1800 square foot town home, but the price doesn't change. So you don't end up any further ahead. And that's really one of the key problems in trying to solve that. Yeah, that's a good point. And you know, for many folks, and they talk about this all the time when you hear, you know, talk about housing, it's the, you know, it's the primary way that, you know, people build wealth. But if you can't get at that wealth, then it doesn't really do you any good to have all that wealth. So you got to get to a smaller and more affordable living situation. So it sounds like that your municipality has been very welcoming and you mentioned NIMBYs earlier. So tell me how it is getting all the stakeholders on board. You mentioned that it seems like that there's good progress there both the consumers and also with the municipalities. How about the the NIMBYs, the neighbors who are, you know, concerned? How's that going? So we have a outside of our general home here in Hammond, we have some business partners or colleagues in our network that had a kind of a well, they had a piece of property that they were looking to develop. This piece of property This goes back to talking about the pocket neighborhoods. It's a larger development, believe the total size of it's somewhere around 20 or 30 acres. This is in the west end of our city, well, it's actually outside of the city, we call it the Ottawa Valley. So this area is identified for development and it's gonna have a mix of these bigger homes that we've been talking about, some town homes in there, some low rise multifamily homes. But because of the relationship we had, they offered us an opportunity to have this kind of four acre plot in collaboration with them. so with small living company and creative creative development ventures is the company name. They sort of allotted this three to four acre plot that we're just kind of now in the planning stages of, which will become the very first starter home community. So really, and these are going to be Purchasable homes are not rentals. So people will be able to come in. We're targeting a price point in an area that sees the average town home selling for, you know, somewhere around six to$700 ,000. We're targeting a starting price point in between two and $300 ,000 to get these people into these homes. it's not, again, and I really want elaborate on it's not just the home, it's building the community. So a lot of the development plan there is building this community. And as far as bringing the municipality in, again, completely separate from the ones we've been dealing with, very receptive. We met with the county warden, met with the whole development team there, very much on board with the idea. They have a very aggressive plan of building substantial amounts of homes in this county, which consists of 17 different municipalities. And they're just, they kind of love the idea of what it is that we're offering. So as far as bringing stakeholders on board, honestly, I do believe the timing is right on a lot of levels. I think that has a big part of it. At the end of the day, people are just jumping into the tiny home movement and becoming stakeholders in not only SLC, it is a shared vision. What I do believe SLC is doing differently is looking at, as we've discussed already, the bigger picture of what small living is. It's not the footprint. We're bringing partners and collaborating with companies that focus on sustainability. using vertical farming, solar power, water reclamation, all of those technologies on their own are very kind of forward thinking. But when you combine them with tiny homes, the applications reduces the grid impact, makes food affordable, it reduces utility costs, and just simplifies life as a whole. And we're talking about starter homes and people just starting out and they're kind of career path or whatever it is, all of those little savings do count. It really does matter. And then of course, building the community around them is also And it seems like people are very attracted to the idea of a community, you know, having the option of, you know, growing some of your own food and, you know, having those more sustainable practices in there. That eco -village concept seems to be very popular, at least in My social media feed, right? Absolutely. It's huge. So I'm going to ask you a question that I didn't give you in advance. Of course, one of the biggest challenges is the funding for buyers. Are you all now that you're kind of getting away from the tiny home on wheels, being able to work with any lenders to help folks get financing? So that's a you know, it's funny. just kind of that's a really great question. When I initially came to Small Living Company at the time, had my, I was like I said, I was a real estate agent and I still am today, but I was presented with a problem that we were dealing with in this world, which is finance. And I actually went and got my mortgage license. So I would have direct access to speak to lenders and try to solve this So at the end of the day, I did end up solving that problem, which was a financing company that basically finances them like RVs. It's kind of the best comparison. It actually directly comes from an RV dealership. As long as they have a VIN number and they're insurable and they can be towed behind a car, well, you can finance them. But that dried up about two months ago. Again, with the economy the way it's been. From what I understand, it's very similar down South as to what it is up, well, probably worse up here, but it's a key piece in affordability. So, I mean, if you're buying a tiny home on wheels, now you're paying 9 % interest. If you're getting a mortgage, you're paying somewhere around 6 % interest right now. So how do we kind of transfer that into the communities? Well, the answer to that is you take them off the wheels and you put them on the ground and now they can be mortgaged like at least up here. So yes, we do offer various tools for people looking to finance. Something that you sort of touched on a little bit earlier was the accessing the equity in their homes that if you are a downsizer, more specifically than if you're a first time home buyer. After the pandemic, and again, speaking specifically to this area. people experienced an increase in their property values somewhere in the neighborhood between 40 and 60%. So a home that costs $500 ,000 in 2019 costs close to a million dollars today in 2024. So that does give them a little bit of access to capital. But when we're going into retirement, and again, the real estate mind of helping investors buy and build portfolios, is you want to hold on to your capital. You don't want to put that all into something. And certainly when you're retiring is having that cash there for a rainy day fund, if you will. yes, getting financing, helping people get the proper mortgages in place. If you are doing tiny homes on wheels, we do still have people that we can use to get that done. and we try to cover all of our bases on the financing side so you're not cash out of pocket. Yeah, that's such a critical piece. That's one of the huge barriers, especially when it comes to the starter home space for sure. So as we're starting to wrap up, Nick, would you tell us where you'd like to see the business in five years and what kind of impact you would like to see that you all are making? So I grew up in a co -op which is sort I don't like calling it social housing, it's not. Co -ops are more exactly what they sound, it's cooperative housing. So, you know, when my parents lived here, they were just starting out and my longest memories that I can remember from going back to my childhood was, you know, my dad was out cutting the grass, that was his job in the co -op. My mom was on the board, you know, so. It's funny how now social housing has kind of gotten away from that. It's become sort of you live in your four walls and you stay there and there's really no sense of community. There's no sense of belonging, which is just not the experience that I had when I was a kid. So, you know, and again, tempering my kind of entrepreneurial exuberance, if you will. I am a very ambitious. I do think that, you know, don't think tiny homes are necessarily the answer to all of our problems. I certainly am realized that not everybody, myself included, like I mentioned, I still have three kids and they're all teenagers. So living in a tiny home for me is just not something that would make logical sense. But certainly I do understand that there's so many segments of this industry that, you regardless of how much tiny home builders come into this world and start to build out their niches, there's plenty of opportunity out there. What I see for small living company is... is sort of an expansion of affordable living and economical living and to be a leader in our field of doing that. Building communities and what I'll do just to sort of, I'm gonna read here, I'm sure you've seen my eyes going down a little bit, I've got my notes, but I do wanna read our vision and mission statement because I think it really does encompass sort of our vision for the next five years. I don't think. you know, five years from now, I don't think we'll be entirely there, but I certainly think we'll be on our way. So at Small Living Company, our vision mission statement is this. So our mission is to redefine housing with an eco -conscious, sustainable and affordable living solutions. We envision revolutionizing housing by creating vibrant, affordable and sustainable communities that foster environmental responsibility and a sense of belonging. So if I was to, biggest wishes and vision for the next five years, I would like to be well on the way to fulfilling that vision and mission statement. Yeah, that's awesome. It is definitely more than about making money off of small homes or creating maybe a few affordable houses, but really having an impact in the overall way that people are living and the way that we're living closer and connection with the land and also in community. And I love that you grew up in that co -op structure, which I've been studying lately. And it seems like that there can be a lot of benefits there if you can set up the appropriate boundaries and, yep. So very interesting. So please share with listeners how they can find or get in touch with small living. Yeah, sure. So they can reach me directly at my email. My personal email is nick at smallliving.co .com or directly on my cell phone. If you're not in Canada, WhatsApp also will work. It's 613 -863 -6595. And that's my direct contact. and of course you can jump on our website, is smallliving .co. I believe the way that we were connected was through Till at Tiny Easy. So we're one of five companies, I think worldwide, that are implementing some technology that they're about to launch. I don't want to give too much away, because it's not my company to give away just yet. But we're really excited about that. That's kind of the technology aspect of this. But we'll give our customers. sort of unprecedented ability to customize. Let's just put it that way directly from our website. So I think that's something that's we're the world. I can tell you we're very excited about it, but I know just speaking to to tell over a tiny easy that they're very excited about as well. But yes, small living .co is is where you can find us on the web. And of course, all the socials and Instagrams which I sent you, I don't remember them off the top. Yes, we'll have them all linked in the show notes. Nick, thank you so much for expanding on your vision and what you have accomplished so far and where you all came from. I really appreciate you giving us that insight into a new way of thinking when it comes to this small living opportunity that we all have. Awesome. Thanks for having Hey, thank you for taking the time to listen to Less House More Moolah. I have another free resource on my website for you, the Unconventional Values Quiz. In just two minutes, you can pinpoint your style of freedom seeker, security guardian, adventure enthusiast, or community builder. Check it out at thetinyhouseadvisor .com. one more thing, podcasts don't have algorithms like social media does. They only grow by word of mouth and reviews. If this podcast is helpful to you, would you please post a review on your podcast app and tell a friend who is trying to live a values -based life? It would totally make my day.