My parents built a small house for me on their property; I live without rent

Last year, my boyfriend and I tried to understand our next move – and we found him in my parents’ courtyards.

Our apartment lease in Los Angeles was launched in June, and after two years in the city, we missed our house in Santa Barbara.

We agreed to return to our hometown, but we did not know where we lived. After all, the accommodation can be even more expensive in the central city of California than in Los Angeles.

The average rent of an apartment in Santa Barbara is about $ 2,901 (and $ 2,733 at the), depending on the Rentcafe rental list platform. This number only climbs when you take details such as the ideal location and the equipment sought.

Although we can technically allow ourselves to live in our hometown if we compromise in the neighborhood and the desired advantages, pass most of our income to rent an apartment, we did not really want to look good.

We also plan to buy a house one day, and saving money is our top priority.

Thus, when my parents proposed to transform a hangar on their 5 -acres property in Santa Barbara into a tiny house of 500 square feet for us, we were all inside.

Transforming the hangar into a house was not as simple as I expected

Last April, my mother began to meet entrepreneurs to plan the layout of the house that has become.

It would be difficult to adapt to everything we wanted in the small space, but we settled on a design from a room to a bathroom. The living room and the kitchen would be a space divided by a sofa, and the bathroom would contain a stacked washer / dryer.

I stupidly thought that designing a house would be as simple as paying sims – choose your paint, choose your floor and, boom, all done. It turns out that it is much more complicated.

Throughout the process, we have experienced many setbacks, such as showing plumbers, electricians and entrepreneurs.

Many of them had preliminary commitments and worked on our small house as a parallel project.

It took us about a month to find a plumber, then we ended up having to dig a tunnel under the hangar to connect our lines directly to the plumbing in the main house.

We also had trouble connecting an ethernet to the small house. My father had to execute conduits from the main house underground and to enter Ethernet through it.

Overall, the project took about five months.

We are grateful to live somewhere, we can have our own space and also save money

In November, we finally moved into the converted storage hangar at the northwest corner of my parents’ property.

I am grateful that my parents have financed this project and do not charge us rent. We have regular monthly expenses, such as grocery store and gas, but we are able to save most of our income.

In addition, not having to pay rent helped me maintain my career as an independent writer.

I recognize how lucky we are to be in this position. However, my partner and I are not planning to live here forever. My parents have built this space with the idea that when we move, they can use it to accommodate guests or other family members.

For the moment, it is our house, allowing us to live where we want without spending most of our rent income.

We are incredibly lucky to spend our days surrounded by nature in the city where we grew up, both nestled between the mountains and the sea.