Big Living in Tiny Homes: The Rise of Micro Apartments

With rents soaring and home prices continuing to balloon, some renters are turning to a small solution to their big housing problems. Micro apartments, which offer minimal square-footage in what are often highly expensive markets, are becoming increasingly popular.

While these kinds of units have existed for over a decade, adoption has rapidly increased in recent years, according to Steve Spett, CEO and co-founder of Resource Furniture, which has worked with a number of multifamily developers to furnish these units.

It has been less than a decade since the completion of Carmel Place, New York’s first micro apartment development and the winner of New York City’s adAPT NYC Request for Proposals. Yet amid rising costs and a shortage of housing, more cities are adopting the micro apartment trend.

“While we’ve seen the most activity in larger cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, we see a lot of adoption in smaller cities—Buffalo, Tampa, Minneapolis—which share a need for transit-oriented, workforce housing,” said Spett. “We’re seeing developers much more apt to include micro units because tenants see the value in living in less space, while developers see a higher return on investment in that smaller spaces can yield much higher rents per square foot.”

In fact, in Washington state, a recent bill encouraged the development of micro apartments in most residential buildings, a reversal of a 2010s policy that essentially banned such housing in Seattle.

In demand

Keith Schwebel, principal of KSNY, which developed the Nest Micro Apartments in Jersey City, believes that “micro apartments… make sense in any urban environment where rents are high and density is high.” He observes that people are interested in making the trade-off between space and location.

At Nest, rents are 20 to 30 percent less than the average studio in Manhattan, according to Schwebel, and apartments come pre-furnished, while the building offers luxury amenities. One thing Schwebel does point out, however, is a slightly higher turnover rate than a traditional apartment. Renewals trend lower as people grow out of their spaces. However, Nest stays more than 90 percent occupied.

Saving space

There are options for those who would choose these dramatically smaller-than-average units. Some are fully functioning micro apartments, while others may be part of a co-living arrangement with shared hallway bathrooms. With the latter, innovative design and pre-furnishing are often used to attract renters. Spett points out that spaces that “transform seamlessly and efficiently… see less turnover at premium rentals.”

Utilizing multi-functional furniture, such as Murphy beds or transforming tables, can enable a single room to function as two or more spaces. “We like to say a tenant can only be in one room at a time, so the most efficient use of these smaller spaces becomes their ability to allow for as many functions—living, dining, working, sleeping, working out, entertaining—as possible,” said Spett.

Since the pandemic, work from home components have increased in importance for renters. While some developers might offer this through co-working spaces in the building, others offer in-apartment work spaces as an alternative to—or in addition to—coworking spaces.

In addition to the furnishings, the design of the units “needs to pay attention to a sense of space, light, efficiency, and detail,” says Eric Bunge, FAIA, Co-Founding Partner of nArchitects, which designed Carmel Place.

“Those who visited the building in person invariably remarked that the units felt surprisingly spacious,” Bunge said of Carmel Place, crediting this to design features like the units’ 10-foot-high ceilings, 8-foot-high sliding glass terrace doors and Juliette balconies.

“One other trick we employed was to create two distinct zones through the use of two different floor materials—porcelain tiles and wood—to make the unit more functional, but also feel bigger,” Bunge added.

New amenities

Much of the appeal of this type of housing comes from the shared amenities, particularly for single residents who intend to spend most of their time exploring what their cities have to offer.

At Schwebel’s Jersey City community, for example, a rooftop deck, gym, pool lounge and ground-floor restaurant complement the vibrancy of the building’s location and proximity to Manhattan.

Both micro units and co-living “rely on well-designed and plentiful shared spaces,” noted Bunge. “The incorporation of outdoor space is now more important and will continue to be so in the future.”