Are you dreaming of living in a tiny home? Is the only thing stopping you from buying a Scandinavian tiny house the fear of not being able to find a plot of land to put it on?
This guide is here to walk you through every step, make the process of finding a tiny house plot as easy as possible, and get you started on your tiny living adventure!
Read on to find out how to find and secure a tiny house plot, all of the questions you need to ask the landowner, workarounds to potential problems, and what you’ll need to get set up before your tiny house rolls onto your new piece of land.
Finding a plot of land
It’s no good simply having a tiny house if you don’t have anywhere to put it – so finding a landowner who is willing to rent you a piece of land is your first task.
And I’m happy to say that it isn’t as impossible a task as it may sound, and if you have the time to do it properly, you might end up with the dream plot of land to call home for years to come!
1. Consider your must-haves
Get started by listing the must-haves, including the basics such as maximum commute time and rental budget.
2. Write a profile, aka your land-finding resume
Now you need to sell yourself, after all – you’re asking someone to give up a part of their property.
I’ll be sharing a free downloadable template for this soon, but in the meantime – here’s what you need to include.
- A good photo of you
- Your name and job title
- Some information about you, such as hobbies and fun or memorable facts.
- Explain why you’re a good tenant (don’t smoke, pay on time, don’t plan on throwing parties, etc.) and offer references if possible.
- Sell the idea of having you on their land. Are you a horse expert and happy to keep an eye on the land owners’ horses when they’re away? Or maybe you’re a keen gardener willing to negotiate a lower rent to keep their garden in tip-top shape!
- Sign off saying you appreciate their time, and hope they can help, but there are no hard feelings if they can’t.
Once you have your profile ready, here’s what you need to do next –
3. Post it on your social media
Friends and friends of friends are the best places to start, and you might be pleasantly surprised to find out that your friend’s cousin’s neighbor’s elderly uncle has an empty piece of land and would be happy to rent it to you – with reduced rent if you keep the grass mowed!
4. Ask your friends to share
Don’t just share it with your little circle; make that post shareable and ask everyone to share it and help you find a plot. Offering to bake a cake in any flavor for the person who ultimately helps you find a spot isn’t a bad form of bribery either!
5. Local advertising
If you’re moving to a new area where you don’t know anyone there yet, find the best local marketplace website, in Norway this would be Finn.no and pop an ad up. Or, if there’s a local community center, ask if you can pop something on their noticeboard.
6. Social media advertising
As you’re scrolling Instagram, Facebook, or Tiktok – you will have had an ad or sponsored post pop up, but it’s not just businesses that can make the most of these platforms.
This unique and quirky way of advertising to locals will surely catch people’s attention!
7. Get in touch with local Airbnbs
Get in touch with local Airbnbs – they’ve already proven that they’re willing to rent out their property and are looking to make money from their home.
Ask whether they have a small patch of unused land tucked out of the way that they would consider renting to you.
You’ve got a few great benefits you could sell to them in this instance:
- Offer to be available for handing over keys or dealing with questions from guests.
- If you’re good with social media, offer to spend time shooting content each month and posting it to their social accounts.
- Finally, you could offer to give them a % of the Airbnb money with them if you rent out your tiny house when you’re away.
8. Call local organizations
Are you a keen tennis player or Sailor? Why not get in touch with the local tennis club or sailing club and ask if they can include a note in their next email newsletter? People tend to find it easier to offer help to those who can relate.
9. Print it out and hit the road
Last but not least, print out a bunch of those profiles and start driving around the area you’d most want to live in, and just pop them in mailboxes.
10. Follow up
Finding land takes work; an essential part is following up. Don’t pressure anyone into making a snap decision; instead, why not offer to pop over and explain your plans or help them with their garden chores one evening while you chat to them about tiny living.
Remember – you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so be patient – these lovely land-owning folks don’t owe you space at their home, but by building a good relationship with them – you might just find that you end up living somewhere you could only ever dream of.
The next steps
So you’ve found a nice patch of land, great! But hold your horses – because now there are a lot of things you have to check before you sign a rental agreement because not every patch of land will be suitable for a tiny house.
Let’s go through what you need to check one by one.
Garbage
This is something you might not have thought of – but before you move in, you’ll need to know how to dispose of your general waste.
What to ask the property owner –
Are we able to dispose of our garbage in your bin, or would it be possible for you to order an additional bin from the council, and we’ll pay for any extra cost.
If it won’t work –
If on-site garbage isn’t an option, you do still have options –
1. Minimize your waste by buying package-free foods
2. Dispose of your garbage at work.
3. Find a local waste center and work out a deal with them.
Registered and postal address
You need an address for everything, from ordering things online to registering with your bank.
What to ask the property owner –
Would it be possible for us to add a name label to your mailbox so that we can get our mail delivered here?
If it won’t work –
It is an option to only use the address for officially registering with the local government and then to set up a mail redirect to a PO Box to save your landlords from any mail-related hassle.
On-site electrical setup
Unless you plan to be entirely off-grid, you’ll need a power connection available to your tiny house. Ideally, you should have an electrician come out to inspect the connection to ensure that there’s enough power to share.
Once they’ve checked that the connection is strong enough, the electrician should be able to buy cables and prepare your connection so that it’s simply ready to plug in.
Setting up the on-site electrics is surprisingly expensive – to give you an idea, our electrical set-up costs were approximately 21,000 NOK.
What to ask the property owner –
Can we run a permanent electrical cable from a power source to our tiny home?
We’ll pay for the electrician to come out and check the power, connect the cable, and fit a meter so that we can pay you for the energy we use each month.
If it won’t work –
Living off-grid is possible if you’re able to utilize solar power and battery packs – however, with Scandinavian winters being as dark as they are, this could be an enormous challenge.
Water connection and disposal
We all need water and having a water hook-up that makes filling a tank as easy as simply turning on a tap inside your tiny house is the best way to go about this.
But to have this in place, you’ll need permanent access to an outside tap.
What to ask the property owner –
Can we use the closest outside tap for our tiny house water supply, and if you still need to be able to use this tap, can we add a double tap adaptor so that you can use one and we have permanent access to the other?
If it won’t work –
If you cannot get water on-site, there is an option to add a rainwater collection and filtration system, but this adds time and money to your initial tiny house setup.
Don’t forget –
As well as needing access to water, you’ll also need to know how to dispose of it – this depends on the rules in your location.
- You can collect your greywater in a grey water tank and empty it as and when necessary – the rules for where you can drain these depend on where you live.
- You can dig a pipe into the ground and have your grey-water run into the soil – you will need to use only environmentally friendly hand soaps, shampoos, dish soaps, etc. if you plan on going this route.
- Some countries allow you to let your greywater run out of the home – but this isn’t in every location.
Parking at home
How close to your home can you park your car? A charming walk over the field to get home might seem enchanting when you first view the land, but on those snowy winter days – when you’re loaded down with shopping, the charm can quickly disappear.
Alternatively, maybe you don’t mind an icy walk but want a garage or covered carport to park your car so that you don’t have to shovel snow every day.
What to ask the property owner –
Would you mind if we added a gravel driveway leading up to our house and a pop-up garage so we can winter-proof our driving needs?
If it won’t work –
Consider asking your neighbors if they have a garage you could rent or a piece of land where you could place a pop-up garage.
Internet connection
If you happen to work from home, finding out the best internet provider for where your home will be, is worth all of the research hours that it can take.
In Norway, we had to order a mobile wireless router which took a week or so to arrive. We did this a few weeks before moving into the tiny house, as we still had our old mailing address and wanted to be sure that it arrived in time so we wouldn’t miss any work.
What to ask the property owner –
I would strongly recommend not going through the land owner for your internet. Not least because if your internet goes out during the day while you’re working from home and they’re at work – resetting the router that’s in their house would be quite the kerfuffle.
If it won’t work –
I don’t know what to say here other than – if you can’t get internet to your plot of land, I wouldn’t move there.
Preparing the land
Now it’s time to prep the land for a home, ensure it’s level, drains well, and has supports ready to place the tiny house on.
It’s important to consider the cost of prepping your land; for example – will you need to rent a digger? Order gravel? Clear any undergrowth that’s currently in the way?
I’ll be writing a step-by-step guide on prepping land for a tiny house, including the cost breakdown of precisely what we paid for this, so keep your eyes peeled for that very soon.
What to ask the property owner –
If the land owners are happy for you to level and prepare the groundwork for your home? Ordinarily, the tiny-home owner will pay for this, but it’s a good idea to put a minimum rental term clause in the contract to make the costs worthwhile.
If it won’t work –
If they don’t want you to make any permanent changes, so long as the land is in a well-draining area and reasonably flat – it is possible to use paving slabs, breeze blocks, and wooden planks to prepare the plot.
Rental Agreement
You’ve found the dream plot, and you’ve gone through each of the points above with the land owner to ensure that this location will tick all the boxes for your dream home; awesome! But now what?
Well, whether you’re renting a plot from a friend or an absolute stranger, having a legally binding contract in place is an absolute must to ensure transparency so that there’s no room for confusion on either side.
Make sure to include a notice period, as finding a new plot for a tiny home can take some time, so you want to give yourself as much time as possible if that happens.
You can download free rental agreements from Docracy.com – but check that the one you choose is valid in your country of residence.
What to ask the property owner –
Would you be happy for us to use a basic rental agreement to ensure we’re both clear on expectations, such as the rent payment due date each month?
If it won’t work –
If they don’t want to put anything in writing, I would be very wary indeed.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of little tasks associated with finding a piece of land to put your tiny house on, but the good news is that all of these tasks will hopefully only need to be done once!
Having recently gone through the exhausting job of finding and prepping land for our tiny home, I can happily say that the work was beyond worth it, and I envision myself living tiny for the rest of my life.
Keep Living Tiny xx
Nadia.
