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What it's like to build and live in a $24,000 Tiny Home
House Feature

What it's like to build and live in a $24,000 Tiny Home

By Tobias Roberts, Rise Writer
Last Updated: Mar 19, 2025

How would you like to build a home for you and your family for under $24,000 dollars even though you essentially have zero building experience? What if that home could be moved anywhere around the country by a simple trailer and the heating and utility bills were nothing more than a negligible monthly expense?

Table of Contents

  1. What is the square footage of your home?
  2. How long did it take you to build?
  3. How much did it cost to build?
  4. How much construction experience did you have before you started building it?
  5. Why did you and your girlfriend decide to build a tiny home?
  6. Tell us about your home. How many rooms does it have? What other features does it include?
  7. What do you do for water and the toilet?
  8. You put your house on wheels. Why did you decide to do that instead of on a foundation?
  9. What did you look for in a trailer to put your tiny home on?
  10. What would you do differently if you could do it over?
tiny home mark wu exterior owner

Mark Su and his girlfriend were living in British Columbia, Canada where the average sale cost for a home was well over $500,000 Canadian dollars. The cities in BC are renowned for having some of the highest rents and lowest vacancy rates anywhere in the country. Facing that reality, Mark says, “I was inspired to build a tiny house when we were living in BC. Back then we were renting and we knew we couldn’t get into the housing market in BC.”

tiny home mark wu entrance

Over the course of eight months, during the brutal Canadian winter no less, Mark hand-built his own home for under $24,000 US dollars ($30,000 Canadian dollars), which included the cost of renting out a contractor yard where the home was actually built.

Mark is a nature photographer and environmental scientist by trade but found that a minimum of experience was more than enough to build a beautiful home with his own hands. “Back then,” Mark says, “I didn’t have any carpentry experience, so I decided one day to quit my job and take on a carpentry course and that was the beginning of our tiny house journey.”

As more and more young people are drawn to the environmental and economic benefits of tiny homes, it can be inspiring to learn how other young people who do not have significant experience as builders, contractors or carpenters have been able to build their own homes. Mark graciously took the time to respond to some questions about the process of building his own tiny home on wheels.

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tiny home mark wu exterior

On a sustainability level, Mark's tiny home on wheels uses only a fraction of the raw materials that would have gone into a regular-sized home. Much of the interior design work is focused on reclaimed wood, used appliances, and even finding hidden treasures at antique stores such as a seven-dollar red kitchen sink.

If you want to see more of Mark's tiny home, he has a beautiful YouTube video that takes you on an entire tour of the home.

Article By

Tobias Roberts

Tobias runs an agroecology farm and a natural building collective in the mountains of El Salvador. He specializes in earthen construction methods and uses permaculture design methods to integrate structures into the sustainability of the landscape.

Tobias Roberts