June 28, 2021
How small is too small?
I'm glad you asked!
This question has been bouncing around in my head as we look at opportunities in multifamily real estate. Since it is making all kinds of racket rattling my brain I thought how nice it would be to share with you. Then, you can have these thoughts bouncing around in your head and distracting your day. We all know we don't have enough distraction these days with social media (who remembers Bebo?), news, work, working from home (will that remain a "thing"?), friends, family, coworkers, home-schooling, internet school (is school really going to be in-person this year?), neighbors (where is Karen anyways?) and of course, my blog.
Did you know in Hong Kong and Japan they have what has been coined "coffin apartments"? They are as small as 25 square feet. Let's get some perspective on that for a moment. How many of you sleep on a king-size bed? 42 square feet. How about queen-size? 33 square feet. Apartments in Hong Kong & Tokyo? As small as a queen-size bed. And, you all are complaining about how much your significant other hogs the blankets? Perspective. And the cost? You get all of this for $245-350 / month in Hong Kong and $700-1,000 / month in Tokyo. What a bargain!
My guess is none of my blog readers live in Hong Kong or Tokyo and do not live in a nano apartment. However, we likely live in a place that has a bedroom; unless you are in the doghouse, then you DO live in a micro-apartment and I stand corrected. Typically the minimum size of a bedroom in the USA is ~72 square feet. Now, divide that by three and you have an apartment in Hong Kong. Now I know, before you get honked off and make a scene, this is not a TYPICAL apartment size in Hong Kong. However, there are 10s or perhaps 100s of thousands of people who live in this size apartment. There is a flat in Hong Kong that is 600 square feet which contains 19 apartments AND a common area for toilets and bathing. There are some modern units in Tokyo that are under 100 square feet. These are nice, furnished units which are slightly larger than our smallest bedrooms in the States.
Some of you may live in an RV such as a Prevost with slide-outs. If you do you are sporting a massive square footage of over 300 square feet. Spacious!
So, how small is too small? Depends. As we look for buildings to convert from motels to apartments we seek out those no smaller than 250 square feet. Then when we combine some units they will be a manageable 500+ square feet. And at Thunder Mountain Apartments in Sierra Vista the smallest units will be at 300 square feet and go up from there. So, the size of 1, 2 or 3 Prevost RVs.
Our entire project is equal to the cost of TWO new Prevost RVs which are road ready. See the bargain we are getting? That puts things into perspective...
Our latest updates are awesome. The demo of the interior units has begun. Yep! True story! Can you believe it? We can because that's what we do. We make things happen. We see things happen. And, we are incredibly excited! We are demoing 48 units now and soon we are going to be putting the project back together. Cabinets are ordered and they will look amazing.
Ok. Enough suspense. Here are how the cabinets will look:
I'm kind of stuck on this thought of how large a Prevost is compared to some apartments in the Far East. You can fit 12 Hong Kong tiny apartments or 5 Tokyo nano apartments into ONE Prevost travel rig. Wow! I'm battling getting my head around that.
So, how small is too small? Comment below or send me an email We would love to hear your input!
And that is our project from my corner of the globe ~Bruce
Yes it does!
ReplyDeleteYes. Research does put things into perspective. And travel.
ReplyDelete