A Revolution In How We Live
What ever happened to the American dream? Why has it become such a struggle for young people to afford housing these days? The average first-time home buyer is now 40 years old, ten years older than in 1990. Since then the average U.S. home price has increased approximately 300% while average household income has grown only 55%. For millennials and Gen Z, homeownership has become a distant dream.
Instead of giving up, a powerful grassroots movement has begun to percolate in garages and back yards all across the globe. People started converting vans and busses into homes on wheels, building tiny houses and skoolies. What emerged were rolling micro homes with solar roofs, battery banks, composting toilets, water filtration systems, and Starlink dishes. Thirty years ago this kind of thing was a rebellion. Today it’s a migration.
The cultural response is resounding. Videos with #vanlife on TikTok have reached over 12 billion views. Twelve billion. That’s not a niche, it’s the largest housing conversation happening on Earth. People aren’t just curious about mobile living, they’re fantasizing about it, researching it, buying into it, and reshaping their lives around it. The old dream sold permanence, this one sells possibility.
Van conversions are climbing towards $7 billion, tiny houses are surging past $22 billion. 8 million US households currently own an RV, with 16 million strongly interested in purchasing one within the next five years. The US RV industry contributes $140 billion in annual economic impact, supporting nearly 680,000 jobs. Motorhomes are projected to expand at a 13.13% CAGR through 2030.
The strange thing is, even with this tidal shift happening right in front of us, industry leaders are still building RVs the way they’ve always built them - great for vacations, terrible for actual living. Cabinets rattling, off-grid capabilities as afterthoughts, design locked in the 90’s. They keep building road-trip vehicles when the market’s begging for homes.
We see something even bigger. The US auto industry generates roughly 1.5 trillion annually, while the US residential housing market is worth $55 trillion. Not to mention the massive hospitality market that’s not as necessary when you can take your house with you wherever you go. Nomad sits at the intersection of housing and mobility, longterm market potential is enormous.
We’re not building “camper vans.” We’re building beautiful, self-sufficient houses on wheels. Daily-livable, architecturally thoughtful, battery-rich and solar-native, designed for people who aren’t playing weekend warrior but actually living full-time, working, creating, raising kids, building businesses, building lives.
But the home itself is only half of it. People want mobility, but they also want belonging. Every major revolution requires infrastructure. Cars needed gas stations. Phones needed cell towers. The internet needed broadband. Mobile living needs safe and modern places to land.
That’s our intent with Nomad Villages. Purpose-built communities across the country where Nomad owners and fellow vehicle dwellers can dock, recharge, gather, collaborate, cook, celebrate, exercise, and co-exist peacefully together. Not trailer parks or RV courts. Vibrant hubs for nomadic life, distinct in local culture, connected by modern roadways and electric powertrains. Places that make mobile living practical and exciting, not precarious and daunting. It’s the shift from “I live in a vehicle” to “I live in a network.”
The conditions for this transformation aren’t speculative, they’re already here. Remote work is now mainstream, affordability is gone, culture has evolved, and the technology exists to make mobile living a superior alternative to traditional housing. We’re not betting on a trend; we’re responding to reality. Nomad is building homes that move, villages that connect, and a lifestyle built for a generation that prioritizes experiences, flexibility, and authenticity over the status symbols and material possessions. It’s a new direction for human living.
Or perhaps, if we’re honest, it’s something even deeper: an instinctive yearning to return to our roots as a species. For most of human history, we were nomadic. We followed seasons, opportunities, abundance, and curiosity. Permanent settlement is the historical anomaly, not mobility. Maybe we’re not inventing something new at all. Maybe we’re just remembering what it means to be human and building the tools to do it better than ever before.