LOCAL

TINY HOUSES: Local builder tries pocket neighborhoods

Nick Reynolds
nreynolds@ithacajournal.com | @IJCityWatch
Buzz Dolph, owner of Tiny Timbers LLC, uses a fork lift to make adjustments to a roof he'd just installed on a prototype Tiny House on his property in Ithaca.

When Varna residents first heard of plans for a 15-home development on a little more than two-acre plot in the hamlet, they were a bit skeptical.

After hearing what Buzz Dolph, the owner of Tiny Timbers and the development’s builder had to say, that apprehension gave way to excitement — after all, Dolph said, it’s not every day a builder comes along who proposes homes that, under mortgage, cost less than $700 a month to pay for.

“It’s really important to the Varna community,” Dolph said, referring to the nature of development in Varna and lack of affordable, for-sale housing. “I feel like they’ve been really frustrated with what’s going on… there’s a significant lack of that. Rents and housing prices have skyrocketed… there just isn’t enough supply and there’s a big financial hump for everybody. If we can add supply at an affordable rate, I feel we’ll do all right.”

Smaller, affordable homes are a niche the current housing market isn’t filling, said Megan McDonald, a senior planner with Tompkins County.

McDonald said family sizes have remained low in the county — 2.8 people per household — and have decreased slightly since 2009, creating a demand for smaller homes. The recently released Danter Study found the demand for condominiums had its highest potential for growth existed for properties priced less than $250,000.

Tiny Timbers has an advantage, McDonald said, because most developers don’t build at that price point because the profit margins on the less-expensive units aren’t as lucrative.

Dolph is able to produce homes that cost between $100,000 and $200,000, including labor, because he and local architect Noah Demarest have developed floor plans for a set of homes that are based off a 15-foot by 15-foot timber-frame block Dolph can prefabricate in his workshop.

Hobby to business 

Buzz Dolph was having a hard time retiring, said his son, Caleb Dolph. The former stone setter and landscaper started building as a hobby, constructing a compound of eclectic structures around his Quarry Road workshop, across the road from the Llenroc quarry his family had owned for years.

Buzz Dolph and his wife had a vacation rental business already with Stone Quarry House, located on the same property. As he started working on carpentry projects during his downtime to relieve the stress of city worksites and project managers, he found a passion, Caleb Dolph said.

Caleb Dolph, left, and Buzz Dolph, owner of Tiny Timbers LLC, stand in the unfinished interior of a tiny house prototype on their property on Quarry Road. Buzz sees his idea, a modular tiny house, as a potentially $10 million if he can sell 200 each year.

It all began with four tiny, timber-frame houses on the Quarry Road property. Buzz Dolph saw them as a way to entertain himself in retirement and bring in some additional money to supplement the rental income. At some point during that project, he wondered: What if you could prefabricate the 15-by-15 block and draw up several floor plans building off of that in three-foot increments? Building each component in a workshop, he thought he could feasibly produce fully insulated houses that could be assembled in just over a month for costs well below the average price of a new home, making new home ownership accessible to a bracket who otherwise would be unable to afford it.

He went to Noah Demarest, and the pair worked together on a set of floor plans for homes from 525 square feet to 1150 square feet, all based around that cube. The plans each contain a kitchen, living room, bathroom and loft bedroom.

Tiny Timbers kits are easy to transport — the walls come ready for sheetrocking, with structurally insulated panels taking the place of traditional, unwieldy fiber insulation in the walls and roof – and assembly, with the pieces already set to go except for the basement and the interior finishes. From basement to finished house takes about five weeks, Buzz Dolph said. It’s not a new concept: Washington-based company, Fab Cab has been in the modular timberframe business nearly a decade.

But the Ithaca-area housing market gives him an opening to make this work locally.

The upstairs bedroom of a modular tiny house built by Tiny Timbers LLC, of Ithaca.

McDonald said Ithaca, unlike other cities in the region, has little vacant housing stock to renovate into the types of homes people seek and, in the coming years, solutions like Dolph's may become more prevalent in solving the housing stock equation that has created ripple effects in the rental market by forcing prospective homeowners to rent, rather than buy.

One challenge? Tiny houses don't work everywhere, and finding parcels to build where the pocket developments like the one in Varna meet zoning laws, including setback and lot-size regulations, can be difficult.

Varna has design guidelines and zoning for infill development in the hamlet, which Demarest helped adapt the development to. Even with the legal issues sorted, Dolph had to create a project neighbors were on board with.

“I’ve become very disenchanted with the construction situation in this town,” Dolph said. “Nobody tries to build for anyone who wants to live here long-term. People commute to Ithaca to work. It’s BS. And developers are getting seriously rich. I feel they’re overbuilding for the wrong people.”

Beyond Varna

Dolph says the Tiny Timbers homes are still in the research and development phase. He has a handful of prototypes on his property and several projects lined up around the county lined up. He’ll use those to perfect his process for the modular kits, now on the third prototype. Next up after Varna is another pocket neighborhood, also with Demarest, on Campbell Avenue in the city.

The exterior of a home built by Tiny Timbers LLC. The dark wood on the outside is a timberframe "exoskeleton," with the interior walls applied directly to the inside of the frame.

He’s dreaming bigger than Ithaca or Tompkins County, though. Dolph said once he’s built about 60 homes in the area, he’d like to expand the business to the national level by assembling the basic components on his property and licensing the methods and materials to a network of contractors around the country.

At home, meanwhile, he thinks he can make a major change in how home ownership is perceived in an area where rentals are king and ownership is only a dream for many. McDonald agrees change is coming to the Ithaca housing market

"We're going to see some changes, whether we decide not to build anything — which means more traffic and more employers shipping in their workforce — or because we're agreeing to build new housing," McDonald said. "You can either change by choice or let change happen but either way, it's going to happen."

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