Pandemic spurs tiny house interest among Turks

ISTANBUL

Gizem Babürhan stepped into a tiny house on wheels she rented in the Aegean vineyards and saw the future of Turkey’s coronavirus-ravaged tourism industry.

“This minimalist life offered us priceless peace,” said Babürhan. “I hope in the future, we will own a tiny house and tour the world with a home on our backs.”

The tiny house movement, a fad that gained momentum in the U.S. in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, appears to have caught on in Turkey during the pandemic.

The unimposing wood and composite metal structures resemble spruced-up sheds on wheels or sawn-off trailer homes.

Yet the Turkish firms that make them say they have barely been able to keep up with demand in the past year.
YAKO Groups chief executive Galip Ölmez said he received only “sporadic orders” after introducing the concept to Turkey in 2017.

“If we compare 2020 with the previous year, the orders have increased 20 fold,” Ölmez said without disclosing precise numbers.

Architect Pelin Düştegör said most of her tiny house company’s clients were “from the tourism industry looking for camping concepts”.

“We had just under 250 orders in all of 2019 and this shot up to 4,500 a month in 2020,” Düştegör told AFP.

Fear of hotels

Turkey is perhaps best known to global tourists as the place of golden beaches and all-inclusive luxury hotels.

But the economic shock of the pandemic and suspicions that people will shy away from crowds for years to come have some Turkish tourism firms revising their plans.

Düştegör said the tiny houses’ popularity with tourism companies was rooted in their low investment cost and the potential to turn a profit within three and a half years.

It is easier and far less risky to invest in a scattering of little mobile homes than it is to maintain or build a hotel.

The houses can also be parked on lands without a building permit because they have the status of a vehicle in Turkey.

“I can easily see more camping stations and tiny house resorts opening in the future,” said Düştegör.
Çağlar Gökgün rents out the tiny house he bought and parked in the middle of a vine-yard on the Aegean Sea.

“People will want to stay in nature in small groups rather than at a 500-person hotel,” Gökgün predicted.

“No one will want to wait in the queue for an open buffet.”

Ölmez said his firm produces homes ranging from 15-40 square metres, about the size of a small studio or a hotel room.

Their prices range from $17,000 (125,000 lira) to $30,000. It is hard to buy a small house in Istanbul for less than $70,000.

Clients who want to put down a tiny house on land they already own are responsible for hooking up the water and electricity while the company builds the home and takes care of the furnishing and design.

“We see tiny houses as the future of tourism in Turkey,” Ölmez told AFP in his tiny house showroom on the outskirts of Istanbul.