Tiny homes in San Antonio

[Jessica Chow]

My husband and I just got back from meeting with a developer in San Antonio, TX, named Peter French. He has done a ton of work in San Antonio, with his latest news coverage being around his Risingbarn.com project of tiny homes for affordable housing. He also does commercial and custom project tiny homes. He also tries to minimize waste when building and keeps building time low by using templated floor plans and each home is equipped to be 100% solar power reliant. Amazing stuff. For all of you local SA folks- what is your sentiment around these tiny homes? Good or bad for the community and neighborhoods?

[Seth Teel]

@Jessica Chow  Peter does great stuff.  The large scale commercial development he does at Grey Street Partners certainly has a positive impact on San Antonio.  Rising barn is a great concept, but kinda a niche market.  They have couple cool projects in Dignowity Hill, and a pre-fab structure at Broadway News ( camerarenting.com), but most of their stuff is one-offs out in the Hill Country.    

While I like the idea of tiny houses, I don't think San Antonio is the best market for it.  They are much better suited in Austin, where real estate prices are so crazy that one can benefit from the cost savings of a tiny home.  Here in San Antonio, you can still buy a regular sized home for less than the price of some of the Rising Barn tiny homes.  This means your buyer pool is limited to people that really want a tiny home and care about the environmental impact reduction their building process has.