Courtesy of Panoramic Interests. Artist concpetion of micro apartments.
In the past year, a craze has been sweeping this country–no, we’re not referring to Downton Abbey, or Draw Something, or even Tebowing.
We’re talking about micro apartments: tiny living spaces injected into vast metros, with virtually every piece of furniture in the entire (single) room serving multiple purposes.
Gracing cities from San Jose to New York, the latest tiny housing fad offers tenants a mere 220 square feet of total space—150 square feet considered livable (300 square feet in The Big Apple).
That’s 6 and ¼ times smaller than the average home in San Francisco.
Interesting enough, but we weren’t stopped in our tracks. What we really wanted was to find some even crazier numbers about the new intimate-not-optional apartments.
To accomplish this feat, we looked at how the miniscule living spaces stacked up to some of our favorite historical buildings. Turns out our beloved White House equals the size of 250 micro apartments. Fun, right?
That’s just the beginning.
A Home Is a Home, No Matter How Small
If you haven’t quite grasped the size of a micro apartment (and just how absurdly small one is), we’ll help you out.
You know your local Starbucks? Of course you do. (If you don’t, you should really head over to one and buy an overpriced cup of joe, see what it’s all about.)
Back to our point though. Here’s how your resident siren-logoed coffeehouse compares to a micro apartment:
- Average Starbucks size: 2,200 square feet
- Micro apartment: 220 square feet
- Times smaller than a Starbucks: 10 times
That means the size of your apartment would be about equal to the space behind the counter allotted to the baristas. Next time you visit one, maybe check that back area out (but we can’t be blamed if you happen to get into trouble).
No wonder they’re fondly referred to as shoebox apartments.
These apartments sound nothing short of amazing.
In fact, we’ve already contacted the company building the San Francisco units about applications. Though this is mainly because the miniature studios run about $1,400 a month—much less than what we’re already paying for our equally dinky apartments.
Micro, Micro, Everywhere
All this talk of downsized living spaces left us asking one question (well two, technically)—How did the tiny apartments come about? And how many of them could we fit into our ginormous Moon House?
Both good questions, no?
Apartments in big cities have been notoriously small ever since people started moving there in droves (unfortunately for us). But recent spouts of overcrowding, combined with a growing urge to live solo, have spurred large metros to think outside of the box. Or rather, start thinking in it.
Defenders of micro apartments do have quite strong proof to base their argument on, namely the living styles of big-city residents. In New York, 30 percent of residents live alone; in San Francisco, over 40 percent (those lucky bastards).
If you think about it, us Americans are actually late to the party. Other densely populated cities have been squashing people into rather tiny apartments for a while now:
- California already has many micro-friendly cities, including Santa Barbara and San Jose
- Parisians manage in living quarters as small as 96 square feet–not much larger than an actual quarter
- A Tokyo one-room apartment with a bedroom-kitchen combo runs 194 square feet
But don’t worry–your home won’t recreate the final scene from “Saw V” unless you want it to.
Now on to the good part–answering our second question.
So Small, It Could Fit in These Homes’ Back Pockets
So just how small is a micro apartment? Let’s compare it to some of the more impressive architectural structures that we’re familiar with and find out.
It’s true that these miniature abodes sound pretty ridiculous when measured against a Starbucks, or even the average size home.
But it’s harder to imagine how they stack up to even larger buildings–which is why we did it for you. You might be surprised to learn just how many micro apartments could fit into these structures:
- Oprah’s House: 105 apartments
- White House: 250 apartments
- Bill Gate’s house: 300 apartments
- MGM Grand: 709 apartments
- Baltimore Estate: 813 apartments
- Largest house in the world (400,000 square feet): 1,818 apartments
- Empire State Building: 10,220 apartments
- Movoto’s Moon House: 76,444,281 apartments
Talk about living large. Maybe making better use of our space and electing to downsize our homes isn’t such a bad thing after all. (Further proving the point: our Celebritize Your House calculator.)
Because really, why does any family need a 27-story home with 400,000 square feet of space? A shoebox should do just fine–for singles who only need a place to eat, sleep, and change, anyway.
The Movoto blog is a service of Movoto Real Estate. If you’re looking for a new home, keep us in mind. We have up-to-date real estate listings and local agents throughout the country. When you want to take a break from browsing homes, you can keep coming back to read awesome blog posts like this one.
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