One of the most damaging things you can do as a Tiny House business owner is to publicly make inaccurate or misleading claims. Stating “No council approval required” on your website and social media is one such claim.

The  simple fact is this- there are currently 577 LGAs/councils around Australia, and each of them has a different Tiny House policy- or none at all! Yes of course there ARE councils that are happy for people to live in Tiny Houses full-time and don’t require a permit or approval process. But they are few and far between right now.

You don’t know which area your online followers are wanting to live and therefore which laws might apply to them. SO making a blanket claim that no council approval is required may very well be false information for a large portion of your clients.

 I want you to imagine for a moment you are part of a government body looking to legislate for Tiny Houses (this is actually happening right now). You spend a lot of time online researching what it’s all about and what kind of industry this is (this is also actually happening). THEN you see business owners making outrageous and misleading claims, which they assume to be a blatant sales pitch that doesn’t have the best interests of the consumer in mind.

How do you think this will impact their decision?

It would be FAR EASIER for them to maintain the status quo and keep current legislation as is.

Yet those same builders will be the first to say “I just wish council would change their policies!”

Our recommendation?

 

The safest decision is to ditch this claim entirely. You are opening yourself to actions against you when a client buys from you based on this claim and they later run into trouble with council because you misled them.

Alternately, if you really want to use this claim where it is applicable- you need to be 100% certain of your facts, and articulate this in detail with a full explanation and an * beside your statement.

We are shortly adding an ENTIRE Legislation module inside the member Toolbox which will cover off the legislation in every single state and LGA around Australia- and will be kept up to date as legislative change is made.

It is absolutely crucial that any business working in the industry has this knowledge readily available.

If you’re not already a THIA member, apply to join via the website HERE.