There's very little overlap in the Venn diagram comparing tiny home reporting and celebrity home reporting. I've seen enough Tiny House, Big Living and AD Celebrity Home Tours to know that. But then there's 5629 25th Ave. S., a pint-sized cutie in south Minneapolis that manages to thread the needle.
First some background, per my 2020 City Pages writeup...
Welcome to the smallest house currently available in the greater metro region. Built in 1900, the 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom, 376-square-foot (!) Nokomis property is a whopping 34 percent smaller than the previous tiny champ in Longfellow. It hit the market Sunday for $150,000, also making it the most affordable single-family home on the Southside. Realtor Phil Beaumia is aware his listing is the tiniest in town, and he's extremely familiar with it: He handled its last sale and managed it as a rental before that. "People are like, '376 square feet?!'” Beaumia laughs. "But you walk in there, and it doesn't feel cramped—each space has its own space."
Two things jump out here:
1) I should have noted that, when a home is listed as being built in 1900, that's often the clerical default for when early 20th century property records have been lost, according to what an architectural historian once told me; 2) Minnesota music star Jeremy Messersmith ended up buying the damn place!
And now, after marrying last year, the singer-songwriter has outgrown the space, which officially came in at 411 square feet when it hit the market at $195,000 this week. (None of the city's recently sold tiny properties dip below 400 square feet; for more on the south Minneapolis "back-of-lot" tiny house phenomenon, consult this feature from the Strib's Nancy Ngo.)
Messersmith says he was renting in Uptown when he came across that CP post, caught the tiny-living bug, and made a $155,000 offer that was eventually accepted.
"I guess I needed to buy a house, but I didn't really want to buy a house, and the tiniest house is the least amount of house," he tells us. "In my experience, the bigger the house the more stuff just the universe kind of throws at you to accumulate, and I wasn't super into that."
Another much more pervasive bug—the novel coronavirus—was wreaking havoc at the time, which made the professional musician something of a homebody in his new home. A hunkered-down Messersmith says he began remodeling the space by discovering DIY skills he didn't know he had.
"I changed just about everything except for the bathroom—it just needed someone to love it a little bit," he says. "One of the things I found out over the pandemic is: I can use a power tool by watching enough YouTube videos."
Among Messersmith's many updates: a fence made from reclaimed wood, new kitchen cabinetry, fresh paint throughout, updated lighting, the addition of a basement sauna (!), and a piano-shaped brick patio. He received some guidance from a friend with experience in tiny-living design, plus (smartly) some assists from a licensed electrician.
"My wife and I joke that it's the absolute perfect-sized house... for one person," says Messersmith, who has a new live album coming out soon and a Fitzgerald Theater show later this month. "We both work from home, and thought, 'This is getting ridiculous,' so we moved into a new place a few weeks ago near West River Road. To be honest, I'm still fairly heartbroken about leaving the tiny house."
There's an open house at 5629 25th Ave. S. this Saturday from 2 to 4 p.m., and Messersmith hopes the foot traffic doesn't prove overwhelming. "I've been to a bunch of open houses, and some of them have swarms of people—hopefully the size will kinda weed people out," he says with a chuckle.
Can't make it? Enjoy this infinitely spacious photo tour, courtesy of Barbara Palmer with Lakes Area Realty.
