Tiny house: Where you can buy a home for under $60,000

In this town, house prices are high and rental stocks are low but if you like things cosy there’s another way to get on the property ladder.

Mike Grant’s tiny house took 80 hours to build.

Mike Grant moved to the Wodonga region in the middle of a pandemic but quickly became fed up fed up with the expense and regulations of building a home.

So Mr Grant decided to go off the grid.

He and his wife had moved south from Darwin and needed somewhere to live in a hurry.

All the council approvals were too expensive and were taking too long, he said, so he bought a block of land in Chiltern and built himself a tiny house.

The tiny home is has a 130W Victron solar system.

Mr Grant was a builder in Tasmania for 30 years, and spent eight of those years building tiny houses.

“We couldn’t get a planning approval so we needed to live somewhere,” Mr Grant said.

“I bought this bit of land and quickly built this cabin. It took me about 80 hours.

“Houses are too expensive, there’s too much regulation, and rentals are too expensive.

“Being resourceful people we solved the issue- you have to live somewhere.

“We have a lot of motivation and energy.”
The tiny house, which is 3.6m wide eight metres long, is complete with Victron solar system and self composting toilet.

The Chiltern tiny house is complete with self-composting toilet.

The 62-year-old has now bought a farm with a house on it, and has put his tiny house up for sale for $55,000.
He said if it doesn’t sell, he will just put it on a truck and take it with him to his new farm.

Mr Grant said he hoped the tiny house movement would put pressure on councils and governments to have less regulation around building houses.

You can follow Mr Grant’s tiny house journey on Instagram @tinyhomeaus