Ship cabins inspire home design

When pondering how to construct smaller homes that young adults and renters could afford, Wisconsin home builder Tom Hignite turned his attention from the land to the sea. Cruise ships, to be exact.

He studied how the cabins in cruise ships were able to shoehorn essentials of living into a small space, then figured out ways to incorporate some elements -- such as built-in bunk beds and wooden lockers instead of closets -- into a house containing a little more than 1,000 square feet.

The result is what Hignite, owner of Miracle Homes, calls the "Mi-Pad" -- a home with three bedrooms, 21/2 bathrooms and a fireplace for as little as $89,000. So far he's built two models on spec in Mount Pleasant, Wis., and is waiting to see if they catch on.

"They're contemporary in look," Hignite said. "They are little bit more in size than a garage. But they're extraordinarily compact, using cruise ship technology and cruise ship design architecture to create cabins instead of bedrooms. Some of the bedrooms are 6 feet by 9 feet, and they sleep two."

While a far cry from the roomy McMansions that sprang up during the housing bubble of the past decade, Hignite's houses pack lots of amenities in a small space. One model includes a 10-foot by 12-foot attic play loft for children. Master bedrooms are shaped to handle queen-size beds. High ceilings help to blunt the smallness of the homes, which, facing the road, are only 26.5 feet wide. Patios are out the back door.

Although construction of houses the size of the Mi-Pad was common during the 1950s, houses got bigger and bigger in the years that followed. Now, such huge homes have become harder to sell in a weak housing market and in an atmosphere of high unemployment and wide-scale foreclosures.

There is no shortage of existing homes for sale in today's market. Houses selling for less than $100,000 often are foreclosed properties that need a lot of work.

"We kind of looked at repo prices and decided to create a product line that would compete with that sort of repo price area of $90,000 to $150,000 -- and get you a new home," Hignite said.

The final cost of a Mi-Pad varies depending on what's included and where the lot is located. One model can be developed to have five bedrooms, Hignite said.

"These are targeted at renters. There's a one-car attached garage," Hignite said.

"They are meant for people who have a no-car garage right now," he quipped. "There's a large marketplace in rentals that could segue into this for the same cost as rent."

Mike Ruzicka, president of the Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors, said Hignite may be on to something. Ruzicka said construction of such small homes presents a "back to the future" scenario because small homes were built en masse in the post-World War II era. They could be an alternative by offering an all-new product instead of a foreclosed property that may need repairs, he said.

Currently, single-family homes measure an average of 2,400 square feet, a slight decrease from an average of 2,521 square feet just five years ago. Industry professionals who were surveyed by the National Association of Home Builders believe that this number will drop to about 2,150 square feet in 2015.