August 1

The Price of Popularity | Avoid These Tiny Home Scams

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Tru Form Tiny is honored to be your trusted tiny home builder with more than five years and over 300 tiny homes built and delivered to date. We are a family-owned business run day in and day out by husband-and-wife duo Jen and Malia, and a talented team of licensed and certified professionals who proudly handcraft all of our tiny homes in Oregon.  

Not only do we design and build innovative and unique tiny homes, but our designer spends hundreds of hours designing, staging, photographing and editing photos of our Tru Form Tiny homes. This often means our creative director and CEO can be found sweeping and vacuuming, wiping down the walls, cleaning glass, building furniture, and so much more, to get our tiny homes picture perfect. There is endless sweat, time and professionally-honed talent that goes into creating the beautiful content we get to share across our website and social media channels.

It is disappointing and unfortunate when our hard work gets shared under false pretenses. We love seeing people and accounts share our work, when done respectfully and with credit. However, recently there’s been an influx of people stealing and using our copyrighted materials for their own personal gain – and scamming people out of hard-earned money.

The Facebook group “Tiny Homes Under 70k” and their admin Robin Westfall have done this repeatedly. Additionally, the tiny home builder Vista Tiny Homes has falsely advertised they could build our exclusive product for under $70k. There have been multiple instances of Instagram users commenting on our posts, asking our followers to directly message them for pricing information and stating they could deliver our tiny homes for $50k. 

We cannot begin to emphasize how inaccurate and frankly impossible these false promises are. Our custom travel trailer chassis range in price from $10k-$20k alone. Add in our high standard of craftsmanship, finishes, appliances, custom built-ins, and our proprietary and professionally drafted plans, and you are well over the claimed $70k in costs (not to mention the overwhelming overhead it takes to run a custom home manufacturing company). While there are some DIY plans, tiny home sheds, and more affordable tiny home options out there, the Tru Form Tiny home is built to last, using the best materials available, handcrafted with heirloom quality, and therefore priced accordingly. 

Our website offers an easy design-your-own tiny home tool which helps guide you to select from a curated selection of tiny home customizations, and is a great place to get started pricing out your own Tru Form Tiny home.

Your safety and happiness is of the utmost importance to us – and we ask you to be vigilant and thorough in your tiny home journey to help prevent scams. Here are a few tips and resources to keep yourself, family members, friends and loved ones safe from the companies and individuals acting deceitfully. 

According to the Federal Trade Commission website, there are four key signs to look out for.

  1. Scammers PRETEND to be from an organization you know.

  2. Scammers say there’s a PROBLEM or a PRIZE.

  3. Scammers PRESSURE you to act immediately.

  4. Scammers tell you to PAY in a specific way.

More specifically, here’s how we’d recommend protecting your tiny home purchase.

Verify The Source

Buying a tiny home is no small feat – and is often a major purchase decision in people’s lives. Many of our tiny homeowners are investing their retirement and savings into their forever tiny home, which makes it all the more alarming if they don’t make this big purchase with a trusted and verified source. If you see Tru Form Tiny homes being sold on Facebook groups, or anywhere other than  from our company website, OR you are seeing our tiny homes being advertised as available for low costs, these are likely scams. With Tru Form Tiny, you will never hear from any individual on Instagram, beside our @truformtiny account. We will always direct you to speak with our expert sales staff via email or by phone, and never facilitate any purchases on social media. If you are buying a tiny home, call and speak with their sales representative, ensure your correspondences are occurring via secure email server, and read reviews about the company before sending any financial information. 

Beware of “Too Good To Be True” Pricing

Our intellectual property cannot be realistically replicated at the prices these individuals and companies are falsely advertising. If our $200k tiny home is being advertised as available for $50k, this IS too good to be true, and in fact is false advertising, copyright infringement and fraud. Our tiny homes are most often built-to-order, meaning each one is unique and one-of-a-kind in its own way. We rarely have more than one unit available at a time, and any and all tiny homes that may be available will be listed and available on our website with all of the specs and details required – verify the sale of your tiny home with us prior to purchase.

Do Your Research

There are many reputable and respectable tiny home builders, third party sellers and manufacturers of tiny homes available. We have the utmost respect for other builders in our industry who can be identified and contacted through quick and easy online research. Read reviews, visit the website, look for real photos of their tiny home builds, find their testimonials, verify their social media accounts, contact them via phone and email, and research their product before moving forward in the sales process.

We thank you for your continued support and understanding as we put our entire hearts into every single tiny home, and look forward to continuing our mission to build and deliver beautiful tiny homes and help people create inspired spaces in tiny places.

For more information, or to connect with our team of tiny home experts, please feel free to connect with us via email at support@truformtiny.com, or call our sales team at 755-502-0283. We are located at 1010 Tyinn Street in Eugene, Oregon and offer delivery within the US only.

Yours TRUly,

The Tru Form Tiny team

Custom tiny home builder are a husband-and-wife-duo Jen Carroll and Malia Schultheis

About the author 

Camile Tanner

With a background in journalism and media studies, more than seven years of PR/marketing experience, and a superpower for storytelling, Camile is a skilled communicator and copywriter with an affinity for design, decor and lifestyle. A published writer, award-winning PR pro, and self-proclaimed social media superstar, Camile strives to deliver timeless, authentic and intentional content and copywriting.

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