[sam_schneider]

To date, every infill residential project is custom. Even if its a pre-designed plan on the internet, its a different city, different material supplier, different local architect, different contractor--every time.

We just put the whole process on rails--a few material options and designs still have exponential customization, but represent drastic reduction in overall project complexity and project-to-project variance.

With a kit of parts we can automate design and management, and with 3d scanners in everyone's pocket, we can mostly offsite QC with similar or better quality outcomes.

Because we're a repeat provider, we offer builders, cities and suppliers consistency that's only been available to date in tract housing, which is incredibly environmentally destructive.

One specific example:

When an affordable architect specs a house, they almost never spec a shower valve (let alone cabinets, specific flooring providers, etc). When you buy a shower fixture, the valve doesn't come with it. This means you or the contractor has to either drive to home depot to buy a 6 dollar valve, or install the wrong valve to pass inspection and then wait and reinstall the correct valve.

If they spec the materials themselves, it isn't much better: their preferred suppliers never get shop drawings, often are out of stock, and are not able to scale with them.

We make sure there is always an interchangeable backup part, that any specific finish material or fixture is on site before the time it's needed. Designs specs are updated in real time to deal with supply chain disruptions.

That is just for a shower valve—it compounds as custom plans are changed, materials are out of stock, items don't fit as planned.

Prefab solves for a lot of these issues, but because of transportation costs and capacity constraints, it usually is costlier and longer to delivery from start to finish, even though the install is quicker.

We can scale with demand: because their cashflow velocity is so much quicker than working with homeowners, contractors always want to bid on our projects.

For Sb9 we'll use prefab where it makes economic sense—we are solution agnostic!

For existing homeowners, our liquidity is provided by in-house debt backed by the future lot asset.

For purchasers, we own part of the purchased home & that interest is transferred to the new lot when it is split!

[treis]

>When an affordable architect specs a house, they almost never spec a shower valve (let alone cabinets, specific flooring providers, etc). When you buy a shower fixture, the valve doesn't come with it. This means you or the contractor has to either drive to home depot to buy a 6 dollar valve, or install the wrong valve to pass inspection and then wait and reinstall the correct valve.

This is kind of an eyebrow raising statement.

You definitely can buy a shower fixture with a valve.

They're not $6. Cheapest is like $40 retail and they can be hundreds for fancier models.

Nobody is installing a valve and then reworking it after passing inspection. It's pointless and will cost hundreds in wasted material and labor.

If your desired trim kit is out of stock you're only going to find out after the wall is waterproofed & tiled. Nobody is ripping out thousands of dollars of work to change a valve. You'd just buy a different trim kit that matches the installed valve.

I dunno, maybe they do things differently in California. But what you said there doesn't match any sort of construction experience I've had.

[coryrc]

Somebody still needs to pick that trim kit (has to match the other fixtures) and buy it and get it to the location. You can't install mismatching parts in a new $1.5M home like you can doing a repair in your old house. What GP says makes perfect sense to me.