Going, going … almost gone. Twelve of the 13 lots available for lease at a new tiny-home community in Lake Dallas already have been snapped up, and the project has just broken ground.

Terry Lantrip, developer of the Lake Dallas Tiny Home Village, was joined February 9 at the project’s groundbreaking by Lake Dallas Mayor Michael Barnhart, other members of the City Council, and future homeowners.

Residents are scheduled to settle there by April or May; only one lot remains unspoken for.

The village sits in downtown Lake Dallas, about 30 miles north of downtown Dallas between Denton and Lewisville. Nearly 8,000 people live in Lake Dallas, a Denton County town.

“Our village will be the first of its kind in the United States — and probably the world,” Lantrip says.

Lantrip says this will be the first tiny-home community “built from scratch” — not a retrofit of an RV or mobile home park — within the city limits of a municipality. All the homes will be on wheels, he adds, and will adhere to an international building code adopted in 2018 for tiny homes (defined as houses totaling less than 400 square feet).

Every one of the 13 lots for the tiny homes will be leased to residents for around $500 to $550 per month. All of the lots will be occupied by homes that residents have purchased on their own.

Each lot measures to 900 square feet, Lantrip says, and each home will be roughly 200 to 350 square feet. By comparison, the average hotel room in the U.S. covers about 325 square feet.

Amenities at the village will include a laundry facility, a community garden, a shared courtyard, a shared backyard, and a built-in smoker for cooking.

“Lake Dallas made a big step in being the first city to allow a tiny-home community within the city limits,” Lantrip told CultureMap in 2018. “The Lake Dallas Tiny Home Village will bring quite a bit of visibility to the city and shows that we’re very open to development.”

A second phase of the tiny-home village is planned, Lantrip says, but that “will be years down the road.”

In the meantime, Lantrip is developing 14 duplex “bungalows” next to the tiny-home community. Each unit there will measure 750 to 1,100 square feet.

Lantrip is now a full-time real estate developer following a 21-year stint as owner and publisher of The Lake Cities Sun in Lake Dallas.