Luxury Tiny House Boasts Full-Size Features and Costs Under $4,000, but There's a Catch

Recent years brought about a slew of variations on the concept of mobile home, from van and bus conversions to repurposed RVs and tiny houses. Not a single one of these is new to the scene, but their popularity is – and it's been fueled by travel and social restrictions, the work from home shift, and the desire to combine everyday living with leisure travel.

With increased demand and higher competition among builders on the segment of tiny homes, the units themselves have remained priced prohibitively. Put it in much more direct terms, tiny houses are still very expensive even though the array of options available is more impressive than ever before.

The only way in which you can get a cheap tiny house is if you build it yourself, and content creators have been using this loophole to their advantage, offering video tutorials and even online support to any potential downsizer thinking of this option.

This is also one such example where the promise is that you could build your own "luxury" tiny home on a budget that's well under $4,000. If you think that any tiny even dreaming of being called "luxury" usually starts at $50,000 and can go as high as $200,000+ for ultra-lavish park model units, that's the very definition of a good deal.

This is the work of the team behind President Chay, a family-run channel fronted by Chay Denne and his brother. They usually build budget towables to show that DIY is the cheapest and perhaps most enjoyable approach to a nomadic life, but their projects always come with an asterisk.

This one is no different, and we'll get to that part later.

The tiny home starts out as a run-down double-axle 13-foot (4-meter) trailer the Chays buy online for as little as $500. Because they want full size amenities inside the tiny, which would then qualify it as a "luxury" one, they decide to extend the trailer with metal rods, so that the house comes with a usable length of 16 feet (4.9 meters). Width is also enlarged as much as legally possible, to about 8 feet (2.4 meters).

With just 130 square feet (12 square feet) of available space on the trailer, the brothers decide to build upwards to create more livable space. So, they put up higher-than standard-walls – 9 feet (2.7 meters) on one side, 10.5 feet (3.2 meters) on the other – with the goal to add a loft for sleeping. That's a relatively standard layout for most tiny houses this size, allowing to create a compact but still comfortable living space.

The bathroom is on the tongue of the trailer in a bump-out, and the ground floor would also include a full kitchen and a living room. These spaces exist only in footprints for the time being because this first video focuses solely on the exterior of the house.

With a frame made up of 2 by 4s and plywood walls with just a weatherproof barrier, the house boasts one-piece single-glazed windows the brothers built themselves to further cut costs, foam insulation on the floor, an aluminum-clad roof, and wood trimming. With its overhang exterior lights and color-blocking colors, it certainly looks like the "luxury" tiny house promised in the description of the video.

Perhaps the nicest part about the build is that, while it started out on an estimated budget of $5,000, the Chays were able to complete it for just $3,840. Most of the cost-cutting came from cutting the wood trim themselves and building their own windows, as opposed to buying new.

And now for the asterisk part. In photos, this tiny home might look ready to move in with just a bit more work on the interior, and it might even look "luxury" if your understanding of the term implies a home with a bit more visual appeal than a standard tiny house.

But if you watch the video below, the unit lacks work that would make it durable and cozy in all weather. The trailer hasn't been treated for rust before painting, there's nothing to seal the foam on the floor on the underside of the trailer, and not one window opens – neither for air nor for emergency egress. The fact that the windows are single pane won't do any good in colder climates, while their size might ultimately work against them on extended travels.

These are issues the Chays have been criticized for in previous builds, including their DIY travel trailers and bike trailers. The reason they probably don't bother addressing them is that their builds are mere showcases of what can be done if you're willing to put in the time and effort. In that case, though, a disclaimer would come in handy.

So we're doing it for them: there's a reason why we're constantly being warned not to believe everything we see online or on social media. A tiny house on a $4,000 budget is doable, to be sure, but it would take much more work, more time, and more effort than what you see in this video. On the same note, spot lighting doesn't make a tiny house "luxury." Its features and build quality do, and this one has neither.