Hi All - thanks for the replies! I'm filling in for my partner, Claire, who started this discussion originally.
@SndcxxJ - There is a way to put I-beams under the trailer and tiny house, use a crane to lift it up and place it on a low-boy trailer. Then, it would be safe and legal to move it. However, it would also thousands of dollars more expensive and bring a lot more attention to our efforts. The cheapest, fastest but likely illegal way to move it would be just to pull it here. We are worried, as
@FINate pointed out, that the current owners essentially built a regular house on a trailer so it is much heavier and not designed for the road. Might it be fine being moved ten miles? Who would be responsible for the risk? Is it worth it?
@FINate and
@Dicey are both kind of right. A tiny house in CA, specifically HCOL places like the SF Bay Area, can circumvent permit departments and expensive construction of a legal ADU. It also minimizes construction time at our site. Laws have changed recently from the state level that now remove a lot of the local (NIMBY) rules that severely limited the construction of ADUs. However, the new laws haven't addressed tiny houses, so they are still technically illegal. Some cities, like San Jose and SLO, have even expressly allowed and even encouraged tiny houses on trailers to be installed to help with the housing crisis.
In our case, by renting it, we would have a 3 yr payback after which, it would be enough to cover our mortgage. As discussed, transporting it here is an issue because of how it was built, so our demand of the seller is essentially going to be: we'll buy it but you deliver it. This brings the cost, complexity and risk out of our part of the equation. But it doesn't eliminate the risk of now owning and renting an un-permitted tiny house / ADU.
We don't want to draw attention to the tiny house. We are at the end of a private court. We share a long property line with one neighbor, who many years ago doubled the size of their house, including adding their own (permitted) rental unit. Their house is quite far away from our tiny house spot. Behind us a very large property with lots of trees and a natural drainage area that will never be built upon. The tiny house is 10 ft tall, has the same roof slope and paint color as our house. We'll put greenery and fencing around it. In summary, we don't anticipate problems from neighbors and it will fit in well with our house and property. However, it will still be somewhat visible from the street and definitely visible from satellite. If the tiny house isn't permitted, we will always run the risk of running afoul of local code. Is it worth the risk? What are the punishments?
To
@marble_faun 's question - we have thought about building our own tiny house and I have the knowledge and ability to do it, but that would involve many many stressful months of construction on our property (we have young kids) and annoyance to our neighbors. It would be nice to custom build it, but then too I would agonize over all the decisions and have to spend a lot of time shopping for the right materials and supplies. But buying one, used and local, would mean ~1 week of work to get it installed. In our area, the cost of permitted new construction is around $500 sq ft. (I've heard this from numerous reliable sources over the last several years). Our potential tiny house is less than $200 per sq ft.