The Positive Trend Towards Accommodating Tiny Houses

Jordan Liberada, a tiny house author, shares his passion for tiny homes and his research on placing them on land. He emphasizes the importance of understanding zoning and building codes when selecting land for a tiny home. Zoning refers to the division of land into different categories and the regulations that determine what can be done with each parcel of land. Building codes, on the other hand, focus on the construction and safety standards of the building itself. Jordan explains that while zoning and building codes can be complex and vary by location, there is a positive trend towards accommodating tiny houses. In this conversation, Jordan Liberada discusses the legal aspects of living in a tiny house. He explains that the key to legally living in a tiny house is to ensure that it is 400 square feet or less. He also discusses the progress that has been made in the building codes for tiny houses and the importance of checking the zoning and building codes in your local jurisdiction. Jordan emphasizes the need to research and understand the zoning and building codes before purchasing land or building a tiny house. He also highlights the importance of knowing your motivations for going tiny and staying focused on your goals throughout the process.

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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. Well, Jordan Liberata, welcome to Less House, More Moolah podcast. Super excited to have this conversation with you today about placing a tiny home on land. So welcome. Yeah. Thanks so much, Laura. It's really great to be here. Appreciate you having me. Yep. So for listeners listening on the podcast, in case you have a chance to jump over to YouTube, I have moved my studio to my tiny house loft, which is kind of an interesting look. out on YouTube. But anyway, Jordan, would you please introduce yourself and share with us how you became so passionate about tiny homes? Yes, absolutely. So I am a tiny house author. So I've written a few books about tiny houses. I love tiny houses. I'm very excited about tiny houses. And I really see them as a great tool for people to achieve what they want to achieve. My tiny house journey kind of became the began six weeks, six, six, maybe seven years ago. when I stayed in Airbnb, that was a tiny house and it was this off grid kind of, you know, garage door opening little cabin in woods with a porta potty, a very nice one, a really nice porta potty, the nicest I've ever seen. and it was so nice. I mean, I had no address. just was so minimal. You have to donate your ends. And I just loved it. It kind of excited me. know, maybe bigger is not better. Maybe it could just be simple. Simple is good. So I proceeded to really get interested in tiny houses from there. I started learning about them, reading about them, watching shows about them. I think most people who have engaged with tiny houses probably have done it through shows. At least because they're, they're of full, you know, watching shows and so that's such a pretty little cute tiny house. And I did that too. And to a point where I said, well, how do I go from here to actually living in one, you know, what does that look like? Because there's a lot of content that's about pictures, that's about, you know, seeing people. people's finished tiny houses, but you have no idea how it got there or what they did to build it. and so I decided, okay, I'm going to learn this for myself. And the outcome of it was I took all of this research. I tend to get a little, shall we say, I like to go down the road. So I got really into this and I talked to a lot of people and realized, you know, think there's a need for some of this content to be organized. I've done all this research, so I took that and I put it into three different books that help people understand tiny houses and build tiny houses on wheels. then like we're to talk about today, deal with land and also finances in my third book. So yeah, it's been really fun. I I've learned a ton about tiny houses and more importantly, met a lot of cool people. So yeah. I love tiny houses. Yeah, I think that's awesome because anytime there's a new thing out, right, there's a lot of content or a lot of talk or a lot of ideas or a lot of photos, right? But the actual synthesizing of the information in a way that is digestible and usable is especially in this tiny house world since a lot has changed in not that long of a time. I'm sure that that's a really valuable product for folks, your books, the ability to kind of bring all of the inner webs together into concise and vetted information that can help people actually practically accomplish what they want to. Yeah, I mean, the cult, the cult is really, you are there. There's a lot of tiny house content that is great. mean, there's tons of great content, but a lot of it is oriented towards him. selling a tiny house or a building houses or have cool places. And at certain point you need to get into the a little bit more tedious boring stuff. So that stuff's really important. Glass back then just kind of clear advice of what makes the most sense. So yes, 100 % what you learn. Yeah. you've had, you've covered three topics in your books. Tell us about the scope and process of your research. sounds like you're kind of nerdy in this regard. And so I'd love to hear how you kind of gathered and, you know, streamlined and, you know, organized and kind of what that looked like through your research process. Yeah, for sure. So, yes, I am a little nerdy. a trained technical writer. And the background, most of my career has been in technical communication. So I kind of have this, this mix of, you know, really being, being able to understand complicated things, but then communicate them to people. That's really been my career. So I was able to apply this to tiny houses as well. As far as the scope, it was really all about, okay, day zero, summer, day one, whatever somebody is at. I don't even know the tiny house is. So how do we just from zero to 100? So the scope was really, what are the problems that people are facing that are preventing this? Obviously the first one is, well, what are the tiny houses in the first place? What are the, why do people live in Why is that because there's a million reasons people could be interested in personally or just in general. So let's just introduce that. Right. And then it's well, I've got to be able to build one place one forward one. I got to do all this legally. How do I do this? So, so the scope was very much that practicality. How do we resolve some problems for people? And my process started with just a massive amount of With reading blogs, there are tons of good tiny house blogs. There's tiny house industry associations. There's embassy groups. There's great Facebook groups. I got involved in all of this. So I just kind of embedded myself into tiny house world and said, what's going on here? Let me figure it out. And of course, plenty of YouTube videos too. There's still the videos, people, you know. building, building tiny houses or, Hey, this is how you install a shower stall. And how do you do it? Right. Stuff too. tons and tons of content. luckily I, I'm understanding how to filter good content from not so good content. So understanding, okay, this is, this is legitimate. This is maybe just one person's experience, which has tons of merit. That might be a good idea to, you know, for example, if build something in, you build a tiny house in, let's say, Texas, the insulation you use is quite different than that of a tiny house in Seattle. So how do we figure out those differences, right? Anecdotally. So, so my process was first just amassing this information and figuring out where's the good content. And then it was. Let's organize this content in a way that's critical for people, regardless of why they're going to, right? That's a key thing here. And a beautiful thing about the tiny house world. There's a million reasons people do this. know, people are doing it for financial reasons. They're doing it for sustainability reasons. They're doing it to get off grid. They're doing it because they want to be connected to nature or they want to be mobile. You know, there's so many different backgrounds. So I just said, well, Tiny house is kind of the unifying factor here. Let's, let's focus on practically how to get people into tiny houses. And was the result of the research was putting together these books. And I then took that to the community and said, Hey, text to review this. need people in real estate to review this. I need people who've done tiny houses to review this. So making sure that the research I did was. You're reviewed. You know, making sure that it's, it's. Good. That's the whole point is making sure that people actually get help from this stuff. So yeah, mean, that's kind of it, Laura. Not rocket science, but thorough, I'd say. Yeah. And that's really cool because it's not just your experience or the experience of a couple of people. It's really a collection and a collation of all of the data. And then using experts in the field to review before it goes out. I think that's probably the most academic, right? Tiny house writing that's out there. So that's awesome. So let's zero in a little bit on your research and what you learned about selecting land for a tiny home. As you were writing that third book and thinking about placement, What did you learn specifically about that idea? yeah. Yeah, there's where to begin. no, I think with, with, with land. Well, firstly, it's really hard. It's the hardest. It's the hardest part of this whole process was what I learned. on the stories from people that actually did conducted a survey, nothing formal. mean, I did it on Facebook, right? I did a big. Tiny House Facebook group. Basically said, hey, what's your biggest challenge with tiny houses? Number one response was affordability. So that's, that's a big category. Number two was, was finding land and zoning. So navigating the process of, know, if I build a tiny house and I stored in my, in like a warehouse, where do I actually put it? That was the second biggest, how to build it, all the design questions. That was it. So it was clear. It's clearly a. quite a problem. that was my big thing. The second thing I learned about it is a little bit more. mystic, which is that the thing that makes it complicated is actually the thing that makes it possible, which is zoning is not consistent. So if you look, for example, in Europe, zoning is at a national level. I know we'll talk about what zoning really means, but basically in Europe they say, this is what you're allowed to do nationally. So, you know, for all of France, let's say. And that's it. That's the law. Right. So that's what you can do. So if your country doesn't allow tiny houses. Well, to that here, it's decentralized. It's all at a local level, which is quite difficult to navigate, but it leaves a lot of gray area, a lot of room to actually find a place to put it. So for those who are willing to do the work and willing to, to build the relationships needed to do that. It's very possible. It's really, it's very possible to place a tiny house in a way that's consistent with your local zoning law and to do it by the book. We could certainly talk about doing it not by the book and going around everything. You know, that maybe is whole different thing entirely because plenty of people do that and it comes with real risks, but it comes with advantages too. So there's kind of the, do you want to go buy the book versus Do you want to just go kind of, you know, just go rough with him and say, you know what, I might not, I won't get caught. But you have to ask like, what's, you know, what's it mean? What's that, what's that actually mean for you if something goes wrong? So yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. I think that you're so right there. It's just like so many other, you know, regulations and laws in our country that are so disparate depending on where you are. And so if you find the right place, then you can have a very, you can have an unconventional life there. It's just a matter of finding the place that that's gonna be easy or legal or nobody's gonna enforce any rules, which is kind of the great area you were talking about. So let's define for listeners who may be new to this topic, let's define zoning, building codes, and we'll get into some of the building standards used from tiny home builders too, but can you define zoning and building codes and help us understand what is the difference? So zoning and building codes go hand in hand. They're kind of like siblings in this process. To start with, zoning is all about land. Building codes are all about construction. So zoning, let's take You know, imagine you're your county, you're your county or your town or city. What happens is they take all the land in the county. They divide it up into little parcels or plots of land. That could be, you know, tenth of an acre to a hundred acres, whatever. But they have these plots of land. They then assign each land, each parcel, excuse me, to a zone. So a zone could be industrial, agricultural. residential single family, residential multifamily, retail, there's tons of different options. Those are just some examples. It's different everywhere. But basically they're saying, okay, each parcel of land, you're allowed to, it basically falls into this category. And then within that category, they have an ordinance. The ordinance says this is what you're allowed to do within that category. So, you know. single family home, you're allowed to have a single family to follow these specific rules, such as where the house is placed on the property. You can't have more than 20 people living in this house, something like that. So basically, high level zoning is the local municipality divides the land up and then says this what you're allowed to do with this land based on the categories. And so, so it's land use, like, you know, they get to decide how land is used. So a tiny house. Is it a single family home? great question. Who knows? It's the beauty of it. And I know it's kind of intimidating to say it that way. Who knows, right? A lot of zoning ordinances. If you look at the majority of them, they don't refer to tiny houses. Some do. You will find some that do. And those are great because they've worked with tiny houses before, but many don't. you you look at a zoning ordinance and you just, you find it directly from the department or on the website of the local government. And the zoning ordinance is going to have a list of things. You you've got your duplex dormitories, You have your bed and breakfast. You have your townhouse. You have just a single home standalone. All these categories. Well, tiny house isn't there. And it begs the question, if you have a tiny house on wheels, especially, it begs the question, is this a house or is this an RV or is this neither? And this question does not have a universal answer. There are ways to there are ways to make your tenancy specifically if you want. Which means that it will be treated by the law and by zoning boards and building. So. if the way the present comes, do I want it to be because you can't. But then. So, it kind of is this great area. It's this great area. So your question is it. Is it a single family home? It depends on what the local government has to say and really what you agree on with them. And something I harp on with people is that it's really important to work with them. You know, you got to collaborate. It's good to find places that want people living there. Typically rural areas trying to draw in people. They want to work with me. They want to stimulate their economy. They want to have more residents there. There's some flexibility. So you're looking for those places that are flexible and then working with them and saying, hey, we're going to they might change their zoning ordinance to include a tiny house for you. Probably not right away, but they might do it, you know, after you've done it after you've been there for five years. But they might say, you know what? To us, this is a single family dwelling. And we're just going to give you a special permit to allow it to be on wheels or to allow it to not to be so small, to be 300 square feet. so yeah, it's kind of kind of a gray area. Yeah, it's interesting because at some point somewhere in the history, people had to put manufactured homes in those. categories, right? And you'll find that there are certain zones where manufactured homes are allowed and certain zones where manufactured homes aren't allowed. So even when you break down residential, you'll find different allowable land uses in residential based on what, you know, what the municipality and those people voting people into power and all of that are allowing and content with in their area. are certain lots of residential zones where you can't have a manufactured home, right? yeah, so it's kind of tiny homes are maybe following that history of what manufactured homes went through being that they showed up on Weehills too. they're still, and tiny homes are still fighting to get written into the zoning. Yes, yes. And it's, the trend is positive in general. For tiny houses, there's like, you're not seeing, you're not seeing places often going backwards from going away from tiny houses. They're typically moving towards it. But for anyone listening, you might be the first person to talk to your, to your local municipality about tiny houses. It's possible. You might be the hundredth. So it kind of depends, but there is definitely a positive trend. And there's trends in zoning. There's also trends in building codes, which I haven't even gotten into, but there's positive trends in general. Yeah, awesome. So go there. Building codes help us understand that. So building codes, so zoning is about land. Building codes is about the building itself. So the actual construction. There are tons of different kinds of codes. So there's the IRC is the is really the main residential code that houses are built upon. You also have codes for plumbing, for electric, for fire, for wastewater. There's codes for tons of stuff. this is really just, I mean, at its core, in a completely perfect world, this is 100 % about safety. So it's about making sure that homes are built safely people living in them can dependably be there and know that it was constructed properly, right? It's kind of the the local government saying, you know what, we have validated that this is a legitimate building. So, you know, that's, that's why it's there. So it's not something to be ignored. I think that's another important aspect for people who are deciding, well, do I go by the book or do I kind of go on my own? please don't lose sight of the safety element of some of this, you know, because there is a, it is quite tedious to deal with. You know, you're building, you're planning department, which is building codes and zoning department can feel tedious. You're like, this is too much. But don't build a structure that's going to collapse. don't build a structure that's going to have an electrical fire. These things matter a lot. So yeah, that's just a quick copy. The building codes are really fundamentally safety measure and the. the way that they work. You have kind of a council, the ICC, it's called International Code Council. And they, every three years, they publish a new set of codes. We're actually in a year that they published, the 2024 has a new set of They then, they kind of create the code, but it's it's not enforced down to the local level. It's rather adjusted by the local level. So states adopt the code and we're just talking U S so if we're talking, you know, other countries, they have their own code, but in the U S the states adopt the code. Last I checked 49 states plus DC adopt the code. Wisconsin doesn't last I checked. It's similar, but they have their own. So it already you already kind of see. Okay, we're we're getting kind of localized, right? This is just how it is. And so those states adopt the code and then some states say at a local level, can. As a county or a city or not. You can have your own as well. So some cities have their own building codes. So basically you've got these standards. You've got these codes, which apply to different standards, and then that gets adopted down to the local level. So for anybody trying to figure this out and who's like got their head spinning after what I'm talking about, all you need to do is go and look and go online and Google. building codes in my state or Google IRC. Go to the dot org website. is the ICC website. Just get accustomed to how it works. You'll see all these different code options and it's not, it's tedious, but it's not, it's not written in a way that's super complicated. It's just, I mean, imagine writing a whole book about building a There's a lot of content. but it's organized quite well. It's a digital library for you. So, yeah, the building codes are essentially that way of saying this is how to build the house in compliance with what we have determined as a council. Makes sense. And it's safe. And so is there a building code for tiny houses? Yes and no. Yes, and so, so building codes in general apply to and so. You most states right now, 2018. See, 2021. Because it takes time for the states to actually adopt the new code. Tiny house. Everything everything to tiny. If you're building a mouse, you have to follow the code. If you're building a tiny mouse, you also have to follow the code. That doesn't change. If you're going to do the RV route, that's a different story. RV has its own set of standards, so you're going to go to the RV standard. But let's say you're going to the house route. If you're going to build a house, smaller otherwise, it has code. But starting in 2018, the codes had some realizations in for tiny houses. And in 2018, it was called appendix Q. So that allowed for tiny houses on wheels, specifically on wheels, to have realizations. A good example. You're sitting in your loft, Laura. Yes. So typically in a standard tiny house, excuse me, non -tiny house. There's a minimum height from floor to ceiling of a floor, whether it's a loft or otherwise. Well, that's not same as a in a tiny house. So appendix Q said, well, you know what? It's okay. It's actually not a big deal if we don't. If we don't have a full floor, if we have kind of a half of the floor, it's okay. If this dwelling is 400 square feet or less, that's the key. Don't go building your tiny house 410 square feet because it's not a tiny house now. 400 square feet or less, then it's okay. We can have a loft and we can have the skylight function as an egress window for fire. You know, there, so there's some relaxation and the whole idea is. So pioneers in the industry said, we've got to get this legal. People need to be able to live this way. They want to, but also, mean, it's. Societally speaking, we need people to be able to live in a more affordable manner. This is a great tool to do it. We've got to be able to, to loosen this and then place it forward to the ICC. they said, yeah, yeah, this, this is a good idea. And since then, this is the great, it's really exciting. Since then, it's improved and it keeps improving. And we are moving towards adding full code for 2027 on how to build a tiny house on wheels properly with the chassis and the trailer and everything. How is that done properly? That's really exciting because, and also wheels is... think what we all think of as a tiny house when we first envision one, but also is some flexibility. You know, there's so visible. So, so, like I said before, things are really moving in a great direction. So those are so for tiny houses, you can look at the appendix for the code that your municipality has adopted. Yeah, so I volunteer with the tiny home industry association on the resource map, which maps out across the United States, the different zoning, the different zoning details and the building codes both. And it is intensely to your point because it's jurisdiction by jurisdiction, municipality by municipality. It is really, really complex. to stay up to date with what is going on with different adoptions in 2021. was appendix AQ, right? And so 2024, think it's BG. Yeah. Yeah. So really, really interesting stairs being another one that gets some loosened, the riser heights get a little bit in the depths. So interesting. My tiny house that I'm in was built, you know, largely to electrical code in that Eric, my husband is an electrician. And so certainly safety was really important. Likewise, the plumbing very much to code, but yeah, the loft height, right? I'm sitting in it right now and my, if I am a little taller, right? I'm, hitting my head. and you know, we have sort of a ladder coming up here and. you know, definitely you have to make some modifications in order to fit into that small space. If you're going to have anything other than just one floor or what have you, lots of different things that have to be loosened. So let's talk about what we might look for from a zoning and building code standpoint when we're looking for land. So thanks for that. explanation, Jordan, I think that was really concise and helpful for folks that are navigating this world for the first time. I guess, you know, I kind of live it every day or hear about it all the time. And so it is kind of somewhat less confusing for me. But for most people, they don't know what their property is zoned or what the building codes were that were used when their home was built. and they don't know the difference. So I think that was really helpful. if someone is out there thinking about going tiny and thinking about putting on land, what might they want to look for in terms of a place related to the zoning and building codes? when placing the tiny house, you're really looking at zoning more so than code, right? Because wherever you place it, you're going to have to adhere to code. If you're mobile, that's a different story. But as far as finding a proper place for it, your first step is really go to your local jurisdictions website. Try to find the zoning map, which is often just a PDF. Sometimes if you're lucky, it's an interactive live map, GIS it's called. So you might even look for a GIS link on the website, but typically from what I've seen, it's not that. Typically it's just a PDF with color coded, know, agricultural, residential, retail, cetera, school zoning. So you're looking for that. And simultaneously you're looking for the ordinance, zoning ordinance. So the ordinance says, okay, we've got these zones. You have the map, but just cause it says. single family, what does that actually mean? So the ordinance explains what that actually means. So you're looking for both of those on the website. That's your first step. Just read it, take your time. It's often large, but it's often, again, it's readable. I don't wanna say it's simple, because I don't think it's necessarily simple, but it's not. so complex that if you don't scan through, look for what you're actually trying to find, which is residential, or sometimes mixed use, even agro tourism type zoning, those categories are where you can really find your information. And if you're looking for building a tennis community, you might even be looking more in a multi -family or in hotel zoning or hotel zoning. So there's not a series of numbers and letters for this. It's usually explained in English. says zoning, residential, multifamily, residential, single family, residential, tiny house, if you're super lucky. You're probably not gonna see that, but you might. So you just look for that residential zoning and read it, read what it says. Typically, you're gonna have three different things per zone. You're gonna have what is permitted, what is not permitted, and what is special or conditional permission. So that means you could do it if the zoning council board team says yes. And that's usually what you're actually looking for. Because unless you're going to a place that says, hey, time houses, come on in. We want you. We have to do this. It's fine. Unless you're looking for that. you find a place like that, you're going to want to find a place that says, Hey, we might, we might take this to be good. We have some gray area. We want to work with you. It won't say any house necessarily. might, but just say, Hey, you know, single family, alternative use, special, special, or conditional permit. or another one that's super common and certainly, some listeners might be, might be looking at is the ADU. So that means accessory dwelling unit. Basically, you have a house on a foundation, a traditional home, and you want to put a tiny house in the backyard. That's the accessory dwelling unit, that's the ADU. Most zoning ordinances have language around that specific situation of having an ADU. So you're just reading through this and trying to understand, what are the rules? What are the... things that I might be able to do, what are the things I know I can't do. And you're going to take that information and you're going to follow it away and say, okay, cool, I know this. And how is where it's important to actually have a conversation with the local zoning committee. We're bored. I keep changing the words, you know, it can be whatever with the local zoning board. So this is where it's really important because. You don't really want to leave it up to chance, especially if you're buying land. You don't want to buy land and then say, well, I could get a special permit. I'll be okay. And then they say, no, no, we don't do tiny houses or we changed, we changed our mind. You know, you really, if you can, you want to get it in writing that, that they're going to work with you. at the very least you want to build a relationship with them so that you know that there is going to be an opportunity to, to get the. to get the permits that you need to be doing this properly. So that's really the way, if you're going about it, the way of I want to have my own land that I own or I lease and I put this tiny house on it. The other route is more, right, I am just going to take my chances and not do that. Typically, if you're doing that, you're not buying land, most likely. You're probably making an agreement with a farmer or making an agreement with somebody who land zoned for hunting, even. I don't know if that's good idea, given what hunting means. you'll have people shooting around you, but you're just making a deal kind of off the books and saying, okay, I'm going to live, I'm just going to live here. And if I have a tiny house on wheels and a pickup truck and I get kicked out, then I can leave. And there are certainly plenty of people who do that or do something in the middle where they say, I'm going to live here permanently. As you can probably tell by the way I don't love this approach, but at the same time, a lot of people make this decision because it's really, especially in the past, it's felt really necessary and is fundamentally, it's easier. It's not necessarily, it's not lower risk, but it is easier because you don't have to deal with any of this, this, this stuff. but there are horror stories out there to consider if you do that. So. I mean, I remember talking to somebody who lived, she had lived on land for a couple of years and she basically had a neighbor complain to the local, think zoning, was either zoning or planning department and said, Hey, there's this tiny house. I don't like it. And that's how it starts. Usually they said, yeah, okay. We'll check it out. came and said, is, you didn't get permission to do this. And it started this whole. almost like not an actual lawsuit, a scenario between her and the local government. She's already on the other side because she didn't get permission. And now she has to go through the challenges of remediating the situation. So she did get it resolved, which is really nice. But it's just something to consider. So yeah, when going Buy the book or not. What about ag zoning? How is that a little bit more easy to deal with? Or what are your thoughts on ag zoning? Yeah, ag zoning can work. Agricultural, you know, if you for one, for one zoning can change. So that's something to consider. You know, you could say, you could say I found a plot of land. It's agricultural zone. But I think this is great for residential. Why not? Or it's agricultural zone, but they're saying you can have a house here because think of your typical farm. has a house, has a barn, has crops, right? So you can you can work within that too. You can work within that too. It just comes down to the local municipality, what they say. Same with like anywhere you see tourism. That's typically a good sign because that typically means that they really want people to rural. People bring other people in. So you might have some story of somebody here. did the tourism route and they were some sort of public facing. service or attraction. So they made like a little petting zoo with goats basically so they could live there. They were primarily living there because they wanted to live there in their tiny house. But they needed to have this public facing thing if they had this little business on the side that gave them the permission to do it. I mean look at the different zoning, look at the maps. The cultural can work. you might be able to convince them to change the zoning or the zoning mapping that does happen. I mean, every time you see a development company change like all the offices into apartments, it's a change of zoning. So it happens all the time. The key is to be creative and to work with them, collaborate. So most of the folks listening to this, if they go tiny, they're probably gonna buy a tiny home either from someone who has one or from a builder. So in terms of going back to building codes, which of course, as you described, governs the construction of the living space. So how do we know or pick a builder that's actually gonna build codes that comply with the rules and the jurisdiction in which we perhaps wanna buy land and park our tiny house. How would we know how to navigate that? Yeah, can be challenging. think first and foremost, Just because a house is smaller doesn't make it easier to build. tiny houses come with their own set of challenges from a construction perspective, especially on wheels. It's a whole different ballgame. So if you have, I've heard this too many times of somebody just getting their tiny house built by a person with construction backgrounds who's not done tiny houses before. with a house that's way too heavy, especially if it's on a trailer. It's different. It's different. But it is still a house. So it still requires expertise. So definitely do your due diligence when selecting somebody to build your tiny house if you're having it built from scratch. Secondly, as far as the building code question itself, You got to kind of ask, well, what's my, what's my goal and my plans here. If you know you're going to put it in a certain place, get an idea of the different building codes that they use in that area. You know, IRC 2018 versus IRC 2024 versus they have their own, find out what they are and then communicate with that, communicate that to your builder and under that, and sort of the date and it will comply to that. You know, when you look at the industry, there's a lot of construction specific construction companies that have been around and more that are popping up. So they are very tuned in there. They are very much part of those tiny house industry associations or the industry association, but also tiny house alliance there. You they're part of these groups, these advocacy groups. So they're. They're tied in, so you should consult with them, talk to them, and make sure everybody's on the same page. You know, unfortunately there's no like catch all. I wish there was this catch all. This is how I, this is exactly what I need for my land. It's exactly what I need for my building. Everything just, you know, I could do a quick Google search or ask chat GPT and it'll tell me exactly what I need. The reality is, is you've got to take ownership of that project and manage the project, even though you're not building a house, manage it and make sure that just. I know exactly what the local municipality needs and requires and know my daughter is going to Find way to. Yeah, that's great advice. I think, you know. The very 1st step in the going tiny process, if you're going to be fixed or permanently placed or semi permanently placed is to understand where and to research your where and understand the zoning understand the building codes that apply. Talk to your builder about that and everything comes down to because the jurisdictions are so have so much control over the rules specifically in that area. And there's not a universal anything you have to really figure out the where. 1st, and foremost. Yeah, so let's talk about some of the typical problems that you have seen. You you mentioned, you know, kind of building the house too heavy or, you know, some other chat or having a neighbor complain. What are some other challenges that you have seen with people trying to put their tiny homes on land? Well, I think a problem that is A common problem kind of ties to what you just said, which is know your where. I would say know your why. You got to know why you're doing this. Because the chances are you don't want to live in a tiny house just because you like the idea of a smaller house, period. No other, no other reasons, right? Chances are it's a tool being used to achieve something, whether it's financial freedom or being kind of thinker or mobile. There's reasons you're doing this. I think a typical problem I see is people get very fixated on the tiny house and they forget what. motivated them to do it in the first place. We all do this. I do this. Everybody does. When we get into something, we're like, Hey, I really have this vision of what I want. I think I've found a way to get there. And sometimes we lose course because we get too focused on that next step. In this case, getting the tiny house. So I think that's a common problem for people because you'll see people really get too specific, which really limits their ability to find land. If you want to be, let's say, let's say you decide you want to have a tiny house, but you want to be within one hour of Chicago, you're probably not finding a place to put one. You're now in an urban and suburban area. Chances are you're not going to find that, right? But if your reason for wanting to be in Chicago is you've always lived there. And that's it. Maybe it's worth challenging that and saying, well, I don't necessarily need to be in Chicago. Now, if your reason for being in Chicago is your grandchildren live there and you want to help that, well, that's a really good reason. And I think it's important to just ask yourself what's more important in this whole ordeal. Is it having the tiny house? Is it the other things in my life? Right? Like what's the most important thing? And once you do that and you You know, you sit down with yourself and with your partner and your family and you understand, okay, this is actually what I'm trying to achieve. Then you can be much more flexible with how you achieve it. You can realize that, I could cross that state line. You know, it's not a huge deal to cross that state line, especially if you're on the East coast where states are smaller. You know, you can say, you know what? Maybe a tiny house on a foundation will work. Maybe I don't need it to be on wheels. with each, when you relax your needs, you open up a lot of opportunity for finding land. So if you know your how, then you can know your where, and then you've. I love that you're singing my song. It's all about values, right? And figuring out what is deeply most important to you. tiny houses are very romantic ideas for some of us who have been following it on HGTV or whatever. it seems they're also perfectly beautiful and clean, right? but the reality is it is, you know, still quite complicated to figure out the process and maybe it isn't, you know, 400 square feet. but maybe you would be, you know, well served by a condo or maybe you would be well served by, you know, a historical home that was built at 900 square feet or, know, lots of my clients, you know, have more what I would call, you know, regular sized homes, but they understand what their. Motivations are, and they're just building an intentional life instead of just sort of buying as much house as they can afford because that's what you're supposed to do. So I love that we can kind of expand our. Our opportunities beyond just the really iconic and and rigid and sometimes very difficult challenging path of finding a place where you can legally. safely and, you know, forever put a tiny home and instead think about what are all the other living options? mean, I've got people in my community living in shed combos and earth ships and yurts and all kinds of things. And of course, all those are equally complicated from a legal perspective, but, there are just a lot of different ways to live an intentional life and it doesn't necessarily have to be a tiny house. But if It is you got a route in to what you're really trying to accomplish and you got to stay true to that and keep focused on that because it is a little bit of a. A gritty for sure. Awesome. Well, Jordan, thank you so much for all of those great explanations and really breaking all of that down. Would you please share with listeners where they can find you, where they can find your books, where they can follow along on the work that you're doing in the Tiny House. Yeah, so you can you can find my books. I'm looking inside my name Jordan Libera. You can also search Tiny House Practical, which is the book series. These three books. You don't have to read all three of them. They're not really in order, but you know, that's the series, Tiny House Practical. I also am on tinyhousepractical .com, which is my website. And feel free to just reach out to me at jordan at tinyhousepractical .com and I'll get back to you. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Jordan, thank you so much for your time today. It was super great having you on to explain these really, foundational pieces of understanding what's going on in the legalization world and helping people move forward with their dream of tiny living. Super helpful. Thank you so much. This is so fun. 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. And 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.