My 1400-square-foot home has never seemed to me to be particularly large, certainly not in comparison with the 3500-square-foot house I grew up in (albeit with my parents, two brothers and a couple of dogs). But my home is mansion-like compared to the latest housing trend to hit Columbus: microliving.
These apartments, some of which are less than 300 square feet, are being marketed as a less-expensive alternative for those who wish to live in the hip Downtown and Short North neighborhoods but can't afford $1,300-a-month for a typical one-bedroom unit. These tiny apartments rent for between $750 and $850 a month.
That comes to more than $2.50 a square foot per month. Were my mortgage to be equivalent, I would have to be paying $3500 a month (which I'm most assuredly not). But, if those able to pay $750 a month for rent are able to qualify for a mortgage, they could, at today's interest rates, afford a $125,000 mortgage — and pay taxes and insurance — on a home in the city of Columbus. And there are plenty of homes of roughly the size of my own in safe and stable, if unfashionable, neighborhoods available at that price.
But, as they say in retail, location is everything, and folks who could afford to build equity while living in a larger home are choosing instead to reside in little more than a single room in a hip neighborhood.