Buy a world-famous micro-apartment for $1 million

Buy a world-famous micro-apartment for $1 million

This isn't the tiniest apartment in the world, at 420 square feet, but it may well be the most famous micro-apartment.

It's been called a "Swiss army knife" of a dwelling for its compact efficiency and foldable nature. Internet entrepreneur and TreeHugger founder Graham Hill bought this then-traditional studio along with another small apartment in 2009, intending to showcase the possibilities of a thoughtfully pared-down life with "less (and better) stuff and space." The project was so successful that he formed a company called LifeEdited inspired by the prototype, his personal home, LifeEdited 1, or LE1 for short.

Now the little apartment is on the market with a very big price tag: just $5,000 shy of a million bucks.

(Click here or on a photo to go to a slideshow.)

The studio comes furnished with all the custom pieces you see in the slideshow and videos: multiple wallbeds; an accordion-style expanding table that can seat 10 to 12; all cabinetry; sound system, projector and screen; and more. Most of the transforming pieces available from Resource Furniture (whose  wonderful Italian-made pieces have helped make livable my own family's 600-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bathroom house -- even though my husband and I could afford only two pieces, desk/bed combos for our twin 10-year-old sons, and we're more than a little embarrassed at such a splurge). Our slideshow has some information on pricing and purchase.

It's in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood, where the average price per square foot is $1,600 (unfurnished). This unit amounts to $2,369 per square foot, but as LifeEdited points out, that's for an apartment that's fully furnished with materials that were "the best we could find," since the designers were aiming for a solid proof of concept before applying it "to replicable models for future cost-effective real estate projects." The renovation reportedly cost $365,000, on top of the $287,000 purchase price for the apartment.

Lest you think that Hill started to feel too cramped in LE1: His next home, LE2, will be even smaller, at 350 square feet.

Click here or on a photo to go to a slideshow.