Portable cabins: where it all began

Jul 18, 2019

The original idea for residential portable cabins in New Zealand came from the RoomMate Cabins founder, Dennis Trotter, back in 2002. Dennis was working in real estate and property development at the time and found there were a lot of families that needed to upsize as the kids got older, particularly teenagers who were struggling to share a bedroom with younger siblings.

Dennis thought about the fact that some of this upsizing wasn’t a long-term issue. The kids would be leaving home in a few short years and the parents would then be left with a house with extra space that they no longer needed.

Selling and buying houses is a costly exercise with fees, so Dennis put his thinking cap on
and came up with the portable and rentable residential cabin solution. And so, the idea of cabins as a temporary accommodation option was born!

Where we are now.
This was 17 years ago, and now RoomMate Cabins have franchises throughout New Zealand.
Thousands of New Zealanders have benefited from having a cabin to solve their space issues and keeping families together.

Originally thought of as “an extra room at your place” mainly for bedroom purposes, our cabins are now used throughout New Zealand as work-from-home offices, teaching spaces, tearooms, worker accommodation, hobby rooms, building site offices, holiday accommodation and so much more.

We love hearing from our customers of how a RoomMate Cabin has helped them. It’s great to be in
an industry where the key objective is helping others.

It truly is amazing what started as a thought has grown into an amazing industry.  Thank you Dennis!

Dennis (front left) and some of the RoomMate Cabins team.