Tiny Mountain Estates in Franklin, NC: The Complete Guide to WNC's Best Tiny Home Community

Photo by Josh Withers on Unsplash

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  May 22, 2026

Tiny Mountain Estates in Franklin, NC: The Complete Guide to WNC's Best Tiny Home Community

There are two kinds of people who ask about tiny homes in Western North Carolina.

The first is the person who wants to simplify. They're tired of the mortgage, the maintenance, the square footage they never use. They want something smaller, quieter, and closer to the mountains they keep visiting on vacation.

The second is the investor. They've watched the Airbnb numbers in Macon County. They know what a well-placed short-term rental can generate in the Smokies corridor, and they're looking for a way in at a price that makes the math work.

Tiny Mountain Estates in Franklin, NC was built for both of them.

Tucked into the ridges of Cowee Township off Leatherman Gap Road, this is the only purpose-built tiny home community in the Franklin area. The lots are priced under $50,000. You own the land. The utilities are already in. And short-term rentals are explicitly allowed by the covenants.

This post covers everything: the land, the infrastructure, the rules, the views, and what it actually looks like to buy here.

Where It Is

Tiny Mountain Estates sits at 1800 Leatherman Gap Road, Franklin, NC 28734, in Cowee Township on the western edge of Macon County. The community is accessed via Kimberly Lane, a private road that climbs into the hardwood-covered ridgeline above the Cowee Creek valley.

From downtown Franklin, you're about 6 miles north on NC-28, a drive that takes you past the Cowee Baptist Church and through some genuinely beautiful rural Macon County countryside before you turn onto Cowee Creek Road and climb toward Leatherman Gap. The whole route from Franklin's Main Street to the subdivision entrance is under 20 minutes.

GPS works here. Plug in 1800 Leatherman Gap, Franklin, NC and it will get you close. The Tiny Mountain Estates sign is on the left.

Franklin itself is worth understanding as a backdrop. It's one of the more affordable small mountain towns in WNC, with a walkable downtown, a growing food and brewery scene, live music venues, and a genuine community that hasn't fully priced out the people who've lived there for generations. It's 67 miles from Asheville, 30 miles from the Georgia state line, and sits at the confluence of several major recreational corridors: the Nantahala National Forest, the Little Tennessee River, the Standing Indian Basin, and the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau to the east. If you want outdoor access without paying Asheville prices for land, Franklin is where you look.

What Tiny Mountain Estates Actually Is

Tiny Mountain Estates is a platted subdivision designed and built by Bill and Teresa Corkill specifically to serve the growing demand for legal, permitted tiny home sites in the Franklin area.

Bill brings real credentials to the project. He holds a North Carolina General Contractor license he's held since 2006, earned while also working as a Project Manager for Hewlett Packard. Before that, he spent 22 years in the United States Navy, starting as an E-1 electronics technician and retiring as an O-4 jet pilot. He later became a licensed insurance adjuster as well. He's not a developer who stumbled into tiny homes. He identified a gap in the Franklin market, a genuine shortage of legal lots where tiny homes are not just tolerated but specifically zoned and designed for, and built the infrastructure to fill it.

The community is located in Cowee Township, platted with Macon County, and governed by a recorded Declaration of Restrictive Covenants dated August 9, 2023. It's a real subdivision with real legal infrastructure, not a landlocked parcel carved up informally.

The Lots

The subdivision runs along Kimberly Lane and offers lots ranging from approximately a quarter acre to 1.55 acres. Most of the remaining inventory sits near the top of the ridge, which matters a lot when you're talking about views.

Every lot has a southern exposure. That means every lot gets afternoon light in winter and picks up the long southern ridge views across the Macon County landscape. The wooded settings include mature hardwoods and rhododendron, which gives the properties a layered, private feel even as the community fills in. You're not buying a cleared lot in a flat subdivision. You're buying a mountain site.

Current available lots run from Lots 3 through 20 on Kimberly Lane, priced from $34,900 up to $49,900 depending on size, location within the community, and view quality. The best elevated parcels with year-round ridge views sit at the upper end. Lower wooded sites with more shade and privacy sit at the lower end. Some lots have homesite pads already cut in. Others will need a modest amount of excavation to prep for a foundation, which is typical for mountain lots in this part of WNC.

This is land you own outright. Not a lease. Not a lot rental. Fee simple ownership, recorded at the Macon County Register of Deeds. That's a meaningful distinction in the tiny home world, where a significant portion of the communities you'll find online are land-lease parks where you own the structure but rent the ground beneath it indefinitely. At Tiny Mountain Estates, when you buy the lot, it's yours.

Utilities: What's Already Done

One of the most underappreciated features of Tiny Mountain Estates is how much of the costly early infrastructure is already in place.

Each lot is served by Duke Energy underground power service run to the lot line. Community water is in place through two shared wells constructed by the developer. Nine shared septic systems have been installed across the subdivision. These are not promises or future plans. They are existing, installed, recorded utility systems.

What this means in practical terms is that your upfront unknowns are dramatically reduced compared to buying raw land. With raw mountain land, you're often starting from nothing: drilling a well, obtaining a septic permit (a process that can take months in Macon County), running power from the nearest transformer, and paying for all of it before you can break ground on anything. At Tiny Mountain Estates, the big ticket infrastructure items have been done. You're responsible for running connections from the lot boundary to your structure, which is standard for any subdivision lot, but the systems themselves are already there.

Verizon cell and data service at the property is described as good and fast. For a mountain location in Cowee Township, that's a real selling point.

What the Covenants Allow and Restrict

The Declaration of Restrictive Covenants runs 41 sections and is publicly recorded with Macon County. Here's what matters most if you're evaluating this community.

What you can build: Tiny homes, small park models, and stick-built homes under 1,000 square feet of heated living space. One bedroom maximum per structure. Detached garages and outbuildings are permitted if they're built to match the primary structure in materials and appearance.

What you cannot build: Anything over 1,000 square feet. The covenants are clear and specific on this. No manufactured homes. No mobile homes or trailers on a permanent basis, though a lot owner may live in a mobile home for up to 12 cumulative months while their tiny home is being constructed.

Short-term rentals: Airbnb and VRBO are explicitly permitted. The covenants state this directly. There are no owner-occupancy requirements and no restrictions on rental income from your lot. This makes Tiny Mountain Estates one of the few purpose-built tiny home communities in WNC where the STR use case is actually written into the rules.

Gardens and personal touches: Allowed. Clotheslines must not be visible from the road. No commercial signs except for-sale or for-rent signs.

Pets: Household pets are permitted. No livestock, poultry, or farm animals. Pets must be kept under control and not allowed to become a nuisance to neighbors.

Firearms: No discharge of firearms of any kind within the community, including BB guns and air guns.

Lighting: Exterior lights may not exceed 15 feet above grade and must be turned off when not in use. Motion sensor activation is fine. The intent is to preserve dark skies and night views, which is a genuinely thoughtful covenant for a ridge-top mountain community.

HOA: The Tiny Mountain Estates Property Owners Association (TMEPOA) is the governing body. The annual assessment is $480 per lot, covering road and water system maintenance, with a $5-per-year increase built in. When you begin construction, you owe a $2,000 road impact deposit, refundable if your construction activity causes no road damage.

These are sensible, low-friction covenants. They protect property values without micromanaging how people live. The STR allowance, the low HOA, and the flexibility around gardens and personal touches give buyers real latitude.

The Views

The views from Tiny Mountain Estates are what close buyers who visit in person.

The upper lots sit near the ridgeline and look south across the folded ridges of Macon County, with long layered views across the Cowee Valley and beyond. Fall color here is exceptional, as Cowee Township sits at an elevation that catches the early-turning hardwoods in October. The developer has included view preservation language in the covenants, allowing for selective cutting to maintain sightlines for adjacent lots.

The lower lots trade the big views for deeper woods, rhododendron canopy, and a more private, forest-immersed feel. Neither is objectively better. They serve different buyers.

The Investment Case

For anyone evaluating this as a short-term rental investment, the math is worth running carefully.

Entry points start at $34,900. A modest turnkey tiny home, park model, or custom stick-built structure under 1,000 square feet can be placed or built for anywhere from $60,000 to $150,000 depending on specifications, finish level, and whether you're bringing in a prefab unit or building on-site. All-in, you're looking at a total investment in the $100,000 to $200,000 range for a finished, rentable property in a Macon County mountain setting, with views, utilities in, and legal STR use.

The Little Tennessee River, the Nantahala National Forest, the Highlands-Cashiers Plateau, and the Nantahala Gorge are all within driving distance. Franklin draws steady year-round visitation from hikers, anglers, gem hunters (Macon County has several operational ruby and sapphire mines open to the public), and seasonal leaf lookers. The market for well-positioned short-term rentals in this corridor is real.

That said, any STR investment in WNC requires a realistic underwriting. Season length, competition, management costs, and financing structure all matter. A conversation with a local broker who knows the Franklin STR market is worth having before you commit.

Who This Is For

The buyers who fit Tiny Mountain Estates well tend to fall into one of three groups.

The first is the person in their 50s or 60s who wants a mountain escape and is done paying $300,000 for a second home they'll use eight weekends a year. They want something small, manageable, and genuinely beautiful. A tiny home on a Macon County ridgeline with views and privacy checks every box.

The second is the investor who understands mountain STRs and wants a lower-capital entry point than a traditional cabin. Under $200,000 all-in for a finished rentable property is compelling when comparable cabins in Macon and surrounding counties routinely trade above $350,000.

The third is the full-time downsizer. Someone who has decided that 900 square feet of intentional living in the mountains beats 2,500 square feet of suburban maintenance. Franklin has the services, the community, the healthcare (Angel Medical Center is in town), and the outdoor access to support a full-time life at this scale.

How to Buy

Available lots are listed on the MLS through Jon Tharp Team at Keller Williams. Each lot on Kimberly Lane has its own MLS number. You can view all available homesites at smokymountainhomes4sale.com/tiny-mtn-estates or contact the Jon Tharp Team directly.

Tiny Mountain Estates 1800 Leatherman Gap Road, Franklin, NC 28734 Kimberly Lane, Cowee Township, Macon County