As the housing market continues to boom and the prices for wood products used in making new houses are at record highs, some are starting to build their homes with unconventional materials.
With the U.S. facing a housing shortage of more than 5 million units, Amit Haller, a technology entrepreneur known for developing a Bluetooth communications chip sold to Texas Instruments for $50 million in 1999, is building what he calls the Tesla of homes.
While housing issues have been a real issue since the start of the pandemic, Haller’s company has actually been building in unconventional ways for some time now, USA Today reported.
Haller shared that he went into real estate just as the housing bubble burst in 2008, and in 2019 his company Veev stopped using lumber in the homes it built.
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Now instead of using traditional building materials, his San-Mateo-based company uses steel and slabs made of a mix of acrylic and minerals that bind together where wood would be used instead.
The use of new materials allows the company to build homes at least four times faster than traditional construction, and it is cheaper, the company said. Throw into the mix the shortage of conventional materials, and Haller’s company is starting to get more business than ever before.
Last October, the company partnered with Habitat for Humanity and the City of San Jose to construct a 78-unit shelter for homeless residents in the area. The project was finished after just 90 days.
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The components of the home are built in the company’s California factory, and it is hoping to cut down the layers and stages of the construction process, including the number of people involved to install the homes.
“The amount of labor we need to build a house is about 10 times lesser than we need to build a traditional home because we prefabricate all of the components,” Haller said to USA Today. “At the same time, we’ve managed to take the quality of our buildings to new levels. We are building the Tesla of homes.”
The steel walls it manufactures have mechanical, electrical, and plumbing hookups already in place, making them easy to transport and assemble.
With the new designs from Veev, single-family homes, townhomes, and condominiums can help shorten the timeline for construction while cutting project costs and possibly being more environmentally sustainable, USA Today reported.
