George bought an abandoned tiny house. It changed his life

George Dunnett was just a child when he first walked past a ramshackle building that would one day become his home.

The Scottish influencer recalls being intrigued as a schoolboy by a row of three abandoned structures along a laneway in Kinnesswood, a small village in Perth and Kinross, Scotland.

One was shrouded in mystery; the second served as the village museum; the third had sat empty for more than 50 years.

In October 2020, Dunnett – then a freelance video editor – bought that third property. It was a decision that would alter the financial fortunes of his family.

The ‘fixer-upper’ was an understatement. The deal included decades of forgotten junk, zero insulation, no heating and no running water.

The “flooring” on the lower level was essentially just mud.

He paid £102,458 (about $196,820) in reno costs atop the £55,386 ($106,352) to buy the house.

Following the well-trodden path of young renovators, Dunnett posted a video to YouTube in January 2022 documenting the transformation.

“I bought my first home… an abandoned building in my village which was filled with old car parts and tools,” he captioned the video.

“Over the next year, I had the building renovated into a nice little tiny house cottage which I now live in and am very pleased with.”

The initial response was modest. In the first month, the video gained 8,000 views and earned him roughly US$40 (about $60). Then, the algorithm kicked in.

Two months later, the video went viral. It skyrocketed to 10.2 million views, earning him a staggering US$45,000 (about $62,000) in a single windfall.

“At this point, I decided to quit my video editing career and go full time with YouTube,” Dunnett said in a recent video.

While he admitted quitting his job sounded like a “manic gamble”, he insisted there was “some method to my madness”.

“I figured out that just from that initial viral windfall, even if I didn’t make any more money from YouTube, I could live off of that for 18 months,” he said.