BY ZAHID SARDAR ON THE RISE
won’t need to be plugged in; they will be taller
than other RVs and will also be made of lightweight aluminum so you can move them easily.”
Although the planned lightweight versions —
the BMWs of the tiny house movement — will
be expensive, current Wheelhaus home prices
range from about $76,000 for small RV-type
12-by-35-by-15-foot units to about $365,000
for larger modular homes that can be conjoined
to be as large as 1,200 square feet.
“They can all have decks with outdoor fire
pits on them, which provides more indoor/
outdoor living space,” Mackay says. “You
really don’t need a big house. They are a waste
of energy and resources.”
Perhaps that’s why Mountainside at North-
star, a ski-in/ski-out real estate resort near Lake
Tahoe with ties to the nearby Ritz-Carlton
hotel, recently approached Wheelhaus. Moun-
tainside’s new townhomes and residences are
designed by the San Francisco–based architec-
ture firm Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, and “they
wanted Wheelhaus huts as a way for people to
enjoy short stays and experience the spectacular
property before deciding to own a home in the
Mountainside development,” Mackay says.
Because they fit Mountainside’s chic, modern
aesthetic, Wheelhaus’s standard $95,000 homes,
which are now “Rendezvous Cabins” overlooking the Mount Rose Wilderness area at Mountainside, required almost no custom changes.
They can also be moved to several different
locations on the property, no matter the terrain. “That’s because every Wheelhaus is on a
chassis made of a structural I-beam,” Mackay
says with pride. “You can lift it with a crane and
literally put it anywhere, whenever you want.”
DOWNSIZING HAS A DOWNSIDE: STORAGE.
The smaller and smaller size of Bay Area residences has necessitated more storage close to
home, and along Highway 101 between Silicon
Valley and San Francisco, storage warehouses
are an ugly ubiquity.
Sensing an opportunity during their daily
commute, San Francisco entrepreneurs Mike
Pao, formerly head of product at Uber, and his
partner Jon Perlow, who used to work at Face-book, recently created a moving-plus-storage
concierge service called Trove.
“Normally, you have to rent a truck, get
boxes, pack and move,” Pao says. Not anymore.
“Trove streamlines it for you. We’ll send a
mover, pack up your items, catalog them (with
photographs) and store them,” he says. “It
can make it possible for more people to rotate
furniture seasonally in small homes. That luxury
can be just a couple of clicks away.”
Trove contracts with experienced movers with
insurance who have been in the business for
decades; they do the physical work and Trove
keeps track of things stored, even in its out-of-
the-way warehouses.
Within a short time, the new company has
attracted young and old subscribers, from
Novato to San Jose and from San Francisco
to Livermore. “One in 11 people use storage
currently,” Pao says.
With that number growing, a specialized
shared storage system could become daunting
or confusing. “You don’t have to store it and for-
get about it,” Pao says reassuringly. “We catalog
everything so that we can retrieve specific items
you want within a couple of days.”
Of course, he admits that if there were 15,000
trading cards and a client wanted just one of those
retrieved, it would be “my worst nightmare.”
There are definitely limits. wheelhaus.com;
mountainsidenorthstar.com; mytrove.com n
could be years before you want them or you
might want to store them just as long as it takes
for you to remodel your home or renovate a
kitchen, for instance. When you are ready, we
return your things to your doorstep.”
Pricing varies accordingly, but it is often lower
than for self-storage, and that appeals to some
of Trove’s typical customers, who want to have
frequent access to some cherished objects even
if there is no room for the items at home. For
them, storage becomes an extension of home.
The goal for Trove is to make moving items
to storage as easy as moving files into a folder
on a computer desktop.
“Typical life transitions that require storage
are when people are starting a family, consoli-
dating two apartments into one, or downsizing
so they can travel before returning to the Bay
Area,” Pao says.
“If we can make these moves into magical
experiences, we can also bring storage to people
who don’t use it,” he adds. “For example, at
the moment only affluent people with large
houses rotate their furniture by season, but we
Mountainside at Northstar’s
modern interiors mesh with
Wheelhaus’s standard homes
on wheels that can also be
adapted, top right, as an
open-plan yoga center.
