Minitopia's largest site is in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.Samira Kafala for BISingle older women are turning to tiny home villages after getting divorced.One US village said roughly a third of its residents are older divorced women.There's a major financial reason this group is "tremendously overrepresented," said one expert.Margot Hollander got divorced at 62. Among the many decisions she faced in 2023 as she navigated life after marriage was the practical question of where she would live."After the divorce, I had to settle somewhere," Margot Hollander said, sitting at the small dining table in her modern tiny home, her miniature dog at her feet.At the time, she was living in Eindhoven.
It would have been a long wait for social housing. As a retired dance teacher in her 60s with no steady income, she had little chance of securing a mortgage and struggled to compete on the private rental market with high-earning couples. Left with about 145,000 euros ($170,407) from the sale of her marital home, Hollander, now 64, knew a house in the city was out of her budget."Your choice is limited," Hollander told Business Insider.
Business Insider's Joshua Nelken-Zitser spent several nights in Minitopia, a tiny home village in the Netherlands.This story is part of his series exploring how living in the villages has affected residents' careers, lives, and finances. Then, while browsing online, Hollander came across Minitopia, a tiny home village in her hometown of Eindhoven, in the south of the Netherlands. A prebuilt tiny house was listed for sale.
She bought it in January 2024 in cash for about 143,000 euros, marking a new phase in her post-divorce life.There were a considerable number of offers on the property, she said, but "I was the lucky one."Margot Hollander, 64, lives in a tiny home with her dog.Samira Kafala for BITiny home villages are attracting divorced womenThe Minitopia Foundation works with local governments to turn derelict land into tiny house communities. More than 150 plots are spread across five sites in the southern Netherlands.Of the nearly 2,000 people on Minitopia's waiting list, across all five sites, one key demographic stands out, Rolf van Boxmeer, its cofounder, told Business Insider."A big part of it is divorced people," van Boxmeer said, estimating that around 30% of those on the waiting list were single women, many of them older and divorced."We've attracted a lot of these people," he added.
"They need a home, fast, that they like. They are a bit older and don't usually have waiting-list priority on social housing."Minitopia in Eindhoven, where Hollander lives, is the largest of the foundation's sites, with room for 100 tiny houses. Like Hollander, some buy their tiny homes secondhand, while others apply for a plot to build from scratch for as little as €5,000, though more typically closer to €75,000.Residents then pay ground rent to the foundation, usually a few hundred euros a month, depending on the size of their plot.
It's an affordable way onto the property ladder, and the model has proved popular.Divorced women often buy tiny homes with cashSidra Gifford, 54, who lives alone in a tiny home at another Minitopia site in Valkenswaard, said there are at least two divorcees in the 13-home community. In her view, the move into tiny-home villages is often driven by necessity, particularly the difficulty of finding a rental after a breakup.Tiny homes can offer an alternative for people who have cash after a divorce but lower ongoing incomes, making it harder to secure a rental or a mortgage, said Mariska van de Velde, a real estate agent helping Gifford sell her home.Tiny homes are usually more affordable than traditional houses.Samira Kafala for BIBecause of their size, they are typically more affordable than traditional properties.
But the homes are usually bought in cash, because in the Netherlands, they generally do not qualify for mortgages, as the land itself is not owned."For people who are recently divorced, most of the time, they've got a house that's going to be sold, so they've got the cash," van de Velde said. "So they're able to buy a tiny house to live in."It's not just a Dutch trendFor Minitopia, older divorced women make up a sizable chunk of would-be residents. There are similar examples outside the Netherlands of divorcees turning to tiny homes.
In Oregon, one woman built her own tiny-home village after struggling financially following a divorce. In Texas, another set up a community primarily for older single women.Escape Tampa Bay Village, a tiny-home community with 33 residents in Florida, told Business Insider it has also attracted a significant number of older divorced women. "Roughly one-third of our residents fall into the category of older and/or divorced women, many of whom seek a simpler, more manageable lifestyle," a spokesperson said.Alice Elizabeth Wilson, a lecturer in sustainability at Manchester Metropolitan University, whose Ph.D. focused on women's usage