I Started a New Housing Company in NWA. Looking for Honest Feedback.
Hey everyone,
A bit about me. I’m an immigrant and grew up in a family that struggled financially. Housing was always a source of stress, and that’s a big part of why I’m working on this. I also have 16 years as a first responder across volunteer and paid roles and served in the Marine Corps.
I got into real estate as a lender working with investors so I could understand the industry from the inside and find ways to help more people access attainable housing. After meeting my construction partner, we started our company Themelios to democratize real estate investing and to take what we learned from the investment side and apply it to helping regular people build homes for themselves.
It doesn’t take a genius to see the housing market is broken. Incentives are misaligned. Existing homeowners and large builders don’t actually benefit from more affordable housing because cheaper homes mean less equity and thinner margins. The system is designed to only go up. We’re trying to find creative ways to work around that.
One thing we discovered: housing comps (and therefore housing values) aren’t affected if no MLS transaction occurs. If a home isn’t bought or sold on the open market, no comp is created. That means existing homeowners’ equity isn’t impacted and existing builders’ margins aren’t undercut if someone were to build their own home for his/her self.
That’s the idea behind our Foundation Homes program. We want to empower anyone to build their own home. Think old Sears catalog homes with a modern twist, since regulations and skills look different now than they did back then. So instead of building the Sears home yourselves, one of our local partner builders does it for you.
We’re just trying to give people another option. No bidding wars, no guessing about the condition of an old home. A brand new home built by vetted local builders who care about delivering quality attainable housing in NWA.
If this speaks to you, feel free to reach out here or at https://themelios.io. Currently we are planning on starting in Bella Vista due to the accessibility of cheap lots, but we are open to other areas in NWA as well.
If you think this is a terrible idea, please comment too. We don’t want to waste anyone’s time. The goal is attainable housing at scale. If this approach isn’t the answer, it’s best to know ASAP so we can pivot and keep working on the problem.