Tiny Home Expo: Ten homes, lots of experts at this first-for-Fresno event

They may be small, but boy are they big right now.

Tiny homes are so popular that the Fresno Home Shows will host its first-ever Tiny Home Expo this weekend.

The expo will feature at least 10 tiny homes on display (possibly more), a weekend full of seminars about tiny home topics and nine tiny home manufacturers. There will also be a bus and a van converted to living spaces at the show, along with makers of yurts, travel trailers and Hobbit-like structures made from all-natural materials.

Part of the Fresno Fall Home Improvement Show, the expo runs from Friday, Nov. 2 through Sunday, Nov. 4 at the Fresno Fairgrounds. Tickets cost $8 and are available online. The price includes access to the tiny home expo and the rest of the home show.

Homes less than 400 square feet, usually with their own kitchen, living room and sleeping loft are booming in popularity, said show owner and promoter Julie Geistlinger.

“The tiny house is becoming a big thing,” she said. “Everyone is downsizing.”

Interest appears to be mostly coming from senior citizens and millennials, she said.

Seniors looking to downsize are often curious about tiny homes that give them their own private space, but are near family.

“They need to downsize and a lot of times they need to live with or near their adult children, so this is an answer,” she said. “They can put a tiny house in their backyard.”

Some young millennials are looking into tiny homes because they can’t afford a regular house, she added.

Although the home show has hosted some tiny homes since 2016, this is the first time it has organized a slate of seminars about them. It will also be the most tiny homes the show has ever displayed, with homes coming from Oregon, Washington and Colorado.

Seminars include how to build a tiny house and where to park it, along with sessions like “Can you downsize?” and another about inspection and certification services.

Fresno is a logical choice for the show because the city is among the first nationwide to allow tiny homes on wheels to legally be considered backyard cottages in the city’s zoning and development code.

The nearby city of Clovis has launched an incentive program encouraging people to build tiny homes in its downtown. The city provides a choice of three free building plans, saving the homeowner nearly $10,000.

Another growing trend the home show will highlight is the conversion of buses or vans into mobile living spaces. The internet is flush with blogs and YouTube videos about people who live and travel in revamped buses or vans.

One session will feature Bay Area News Group reporter Tracey Kaplan explaining how being priced out of an expensive housing market inspired her to join the #vanlife movement.

Another speaker, Kyle Volkman, will talk about what he calls his Yetibus, a converted 1968 school bus run on vegetable oil that he drives around the country for work and pleasure.