Gabriele Campana displays a rendering of the prototype residence of his principle for prefabricated properties on May 11, 2021. The picture was taken at the website where by the prototype property is scheduled to be unveiled in February 2022 as an addition to an present home in South Miami.
When he was a kid expanding up in Venezuela, Gabriele Campana used many weekends with his spouse and children in the coastal town of Morrocoy. Which is in which Campana’s father, who was an inventor, had designed an off-grid, picket household on stilts total with plumbing.
Now, Campana is carrying on his father’s legacy with NU-Habitat, a maker of prefabricated residences that offers customers almost almost everything they require to assemble their own just one or two-bed room house (land not included). The thought acquired an Honorable Point out in the 2021 Miami Herald Startup Pitch Levels of competition.
The kits, which are envisioned to be priced at $120,000 for a 1,000-square-foot unit and $170,000 for a two-tale, 2,000-square-foot device, involve anything conceivable, from precut galvanized steel structures to use as the backbone of the dwelling to bathroom and kitchen tiles and floors.
“What we have carried out is to simplify design,” reported Campana, 60, the CEO of NU-Habitat, who has 35 several years of experience sourcing and selling dwelling-making materials to huge-box sellers this kind of as Home Depot and multinationals this sort of as the Kohler tub and kitchen arm of Sterling. “We have digested all of the suffering that goes into construction for you. You only have to have a battery-operated screwdriver to place the framework yet again.”
Like the Sears kit homes of yore, the company’s first solutions will be marketed as added dwelling models — smaller residences that can be additional to the garage or roof of your existing home. A prototype is scheduled to be unveiled in February 2022 as an addition to an current residence in South Miami.
Even nevertheless assembling an IKEA cupboard provides a overwhelming challenge for most men and women, Campana said that his company’s goods — which were being made with input from Florida International College and the College of Miami, and are thoroughly compliant with Miami-Dade’s rigorous constructing codes — can be concluded in 90 days and save the consumer at the very least 50% in development charges.
“You will require a subcontractor for issues these kinds of as electrical wiring and plumbing,” he reported. “But these units could make a significant dent in the inexpensive and workforce housing segments, and they’ve by now tested to be productive. In Los Angeles alone, 10,000 of this variety of dwelling were designed last yr.”
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Rene Rodriguez has labored at the Miami Herald in a variety of roles given that 1989. He at present writes for the small business desk masking authentic estate and the city’s affordability disaster.