Creating impact: How affordable micro- communities make homeownership possible

Zach Wojtowicz:

What’s up everybody? I’m Zach Wojtowicz, and today on “The Building Code,” it finally happened. I am so excited. Today, we have Jon Walker, chief technology officer at Buildertrend co-hosting “The Building Code.” Jon, how are you?

Jon Walker:

I’m great, Zach. Thanks for having me. This is a bucket list item for me to host “The Building Code” here, and there’s a reason Tom Brady never stepped off the field. I think Charley made a mistake. He went on vacation for his honeymoon to Italy. Big mistake. You don’t step off the field like that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m instantly … We’re capturing this moment. We’re saying, “Sorry, man, you leave and your job’s gone.” And Jon is here to stay.

Jon Walker:

Well thanks, I appreciate that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I just want to point out, if you can check us out on YouTube, John and I even, we match, we’re wearing the same outfit. We’re like, look at these professional podcasts. It took one hour for the chief technology officer to be like, “We got to spruce this up a little bit.”

Jon Walker:

Yeah. Anything I can do to outshine Charley I’m doing here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, it’s not an easy bar to clear, but good thing you’re so tall, and you just stepped right out over it.

Jon Walker:

Yeah, I should be careful. I might get hate mail. I know people love Charley, especially his parents who listen to this, and so I need to be careful here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. Well …

Jon Walker:

This is probably a one-time thing, but man, it’s fun to be on this.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s a one-time thing. Don’t write the check before we cash it, John.

Jon Walker:

Yeah for sure.

Zach Wojtowicz:

See how we do today. We’ll let the people decide. They’re like, “Oh, we want the CTO. Who are these directors? They don’t mean anything.”

Jon Walker:

Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Definitely Charley’s out of a job.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, right. Well, if it’s any consolation Charley’s hanging out in Tuscany, Italy for his wedding, so at the end of the day hopefully he’s feeling relaxed and refreshed. Let’s talk a little bit about our guest today. So, we have Booker Washington. He’s the CEO and founder of Techie Homes, he makes wait for it, tiny homes in Atlanta, Georgia.

Jon Walker:

Wow, that’s amazing. I am 6’9”. I can’t wait to hear this episode.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I know. I’m going to ask if we can get pictures of you kind of stuffed into one, and it’s like, “Anybody can live in a tiny home.” Great advertising.

Jon Walker:

Yeah, it’s really cool.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We’ll have to talk to a Booker about that.

Jon Walker:

I love that name, too. I’ve heard that it’s inspired by the inventor, which is really cool.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, I feel like it can’t be a coincidence, but let’s not delay any further, let’s get him in here. Let’s talk a little bit about tiny homes, Booker Washington, welcome to “The Building Code.” It’s great to see you. Thanks so much for spending some time with us today. How are you?

Booker Washington:

Absolutely. Man, Zach, I’m doing great. Nice to see you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. How are things down in Atlanta?

Booker Washington:

Oh, it’s heating up in good old hot Atlanta. It’s the start of good spring, and we’re going in the summer, so things are heating up, and it’s heating up in our world of Techie Homes, too.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s awesome. Well, that’s good to hear. And you were just saying that you’re actually a podcast veteran, so no pressure. I have a little different expectation when we have someone who has been on a podcast before. You don’t get that first time nervous pass.

Booker Washington:

Yes. Just one or two. I’ve been on one or two.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s right. All right. Well this is the best one you’ve been on, right?

Booker Washington:

Absolutely. This is the one I’ve been looking forward to.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love it. Well, it’s great to have you and we wanted to talk to you a little bit about your business and talk a little bit about what you’re doing down in hotlanta. Talking about tiny homes, which is even better because my special co-host today, Jon Walker, is 6’9”.

Jon Walker:

Yeah, I’m 6’9”. I’m really curious about this.

Zach Wojtowicz:

He is like, “What can we do to help our not vertically challenged folks in the world find affordable housing and accommodations.” Because it’s not just … It’s all of us that could be affected by sustainability, right? And that’s what we’re going to talk about a little bit today. So, before we get into that topic, and we’re going to have a lot of fun today, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself and your business and your story?

Booker Washington:

Yeah, sure. My name’s Booker T. Washington. I am the CEO and founder of Techie Homes, also CEO and founder of South Park Cottages. A little bit of my background before I get into the development stuff, I’ve spent most of my career actually being a human resource executive. I spent a lot of time in some large corporations like Atlanta Falcons, Tesla, HelloFresh, and I spent a lot of time really building businesses and really utilizing human capital to really make companies great. And in my belief, home building development is about people. Robots don’t live in homes, humans live in homes. And so, I became very versed in learning everything about the impact to the human cost. So, it naturally led me into building and developing homes that impact people. And that’s what leads me into what we do with Techie Homes and South Park Cottages. South Park Cottages is the nation’s first minority-built micro home community.

It is 29 homes between 380 square feet and 625 square feet. It’s a very unique special community. People like to call them tiny homes, but it is immersed in a urban environment built much like a subdivision with amenities and walking paths and a lot of sustainable initiatives. And I know we’ll talk a little bit more about that, but for me, I wanted to build a community where I grew up in. I grew up in and around College Park, Georgia, which is in the south side of Atlanta. I’m an Atlanta native, and as a child and as an adult, I’ve always thought about making the biggest impact. And no better impact than providing homeownership to deserving people of incomes lower than the average person that’s buying homes today because the average home in Atlanta is about $450,000.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Wow. Yeah. The Atlanta market is just exploding, and that usually comes with inflation of housing costs happening across markets. John is from California, so he knows a lot about the housing market going a little higher than we’d like to see.

Booker Washington:

Oh yeah absolutely.

Zach Wojtowicz:

… you’d like to see.

Jon Walker:

Yeah, it’s interesting out there. Definitely you have this situation where land is way more than the cost of any construction of a house, and so tiny homes, and I actually hadn’t heard the term micro homes …

Zach Wojtowicz:

Me neither.

Jon Walker:

Interesting. But …

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m really interested-

Jon Walker:

… it’s a big thing out there.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, really interesting. When we have guests on the podcast, a lot of times their background is in construction or like yourself, they weren’t in construction and then find themselves in construction. So, that’s a really curious kind of position. You were working at some very large, even Fortune 100 companies as well from HR. What brought you, you obviously get a mission is important. Do you have a construction background at all? Is your family in the trades or anything or is it just like you just wanted to do something with your hands and get out of the cubicle?

Booker Washington:

Yeah, no, I just really wanted to impact people. And I thought by looking at some of the leaders that I worked around because I did work very closely to the CEOs of these organizations, I realized good or bad or indifferent on your opinions of these people. Dreams require a lot of work, and they require some hands-on ability. And any major leader of a corporation now would tell you they were down in the muck. They were up late on the computer, they were in the basement, they were in the garage. Jeff Bezos in the garage, Elon in the basement, working on codes and Mark Zuckerberg.

So, anybody that’s built anything major has always said, “I had to start by putting my hands on it first and then making that dream get realized.” And so, that’s what brought me into construction and impact. And seeing so many people falling out of home ownership and so many people looking for affordable homes, being in human resources just drove me to the cause. And I just always envisioned something like that as a child. So, I just went to work and put my hands on it. But South Park is special because we actually crowdfunded that development. We didn’t use the bank. We took to social media and asked the community to help us build the community, and we crowdsourced enough funds to be able to build a multimillion-dollar micro home community, believe it or not. So, we really wanted to prove a point about how innovation can really come to bear if you really want to foster it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

What an incredible story. First off, I love the connection to where you’re from. I think that’s really powerful, and it comes to the way that people live their lives and wanting to have a legacy and impact. Can you educate John on us on what a micro home is? I’ve never heard that either.

Booker Washington:

Yeah. So, look, enthusiasts of tiny homes would be insulted if you didn’t define it correctly. So, a tiny home is really something that is 300 square feet and less. So, fanatics of tiny homes would say anything over 300 square feet isn’t tiny, but a micro home is something under 1,000 square feet, in and around 400 square feet, which is more defined as a cottage. So, that’s the reason our communities are called cottages, South Park Cottages is because typically something between 400 and 600 square feet is defined as a micro home or cottage. So, that’s how we have micro homes.

Jon Walker:

So, would I be a better candidate for a micro home or a tiny home?

Booker Washington:

You, at 6’9”, you would definitely be a candidate for a micro home with 20-foot ceilings, which we have in some of our floor models.

Jon Walker:

Oh wow. That’s really cool. 20-foot ceilings. I love that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love that. And I feel like we got to get Jon down to Atlanta and get him in one of these actual 300 square foot tiny homes.

Jon Walker:

Definitely.

Booker Washington:

John, it would change your life, I promise you, man. It would definitely change your life.

Jon Walker:

I would love to do that. I’d love to come and see them.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m going to crowd source this and make sure to make it happen. That would just be fantastic. We’ll talk to our CEO. We’ll pull some strengths we’ll make. This is on the budget. This is the most budget “The Building Code’s” ever going to get by having John in here. We got to take advantage of it. Okay. Now, I also love that you went with the cottages, I guess South Park micro homes didn’t maybe sound … It sounded a little futuristic almost. It makes me think of, so I love the brand choice. That’s amazing. The crowd sourcing is so interesting. How did you go about getting people invested in developing that area in South Atlanta?

Booker Washington:

Yeah, no, actually is probably more historic part of it as well as building a home. We just looked at where we are. As Jon said earlier about land costs and things. There’s so many factors against construction right now that you just can’t go with the status quo. And building can be expensive, especially when you’re talking about building a density of homes. And that’s another reason why inventories are low and builders aren’t building as fast as they used to. And a lot of it has to sometimes do with funding.

So, the government allowed for crowdfunding a few years ago when they passed some laws to allow you to raise up to $5 million as a regular person under some general rules from friends, family and people that you connect with. So, we just started out to social media one person at a time talking about what if we all got together and built this really cool community with solar panels and absorbent pathway retention ponds and walking paths and vegetable gardens and fruit gardens. That would be really dope. And the more I talked to people, the more they said, “Well, if you’re brave enough to do it, I’m brave enough to do it. So, here’s 500 bucks.” But 500 bucks led to 1,000 bucks and 1,000 bucks led to 5,000 bucks. And before you knew it, we raised $2 million.

Jon Walker:

Was it an investment model or was it just a charitable model? I know there’s actually platforms for real estate crowdfunding, and I was wondering if you used any of those.

Booker Washington:

No, actually because I was novice to it all we didn’t even use the platform. We just used plain old Instagram and Zoom, no different than what we’re on right now. And it spread like wildfire. Man, you won’t believe once you start sharing to a group of people or a village how things can just spread, much like the popularity of this podcast, it just spreads the more you talk about it. And it was an investment model. We gave those everyday people a chance to make 10% or 12% on their money, which is better than anything you’re going to get on average out there anyway. And they were part of something really cool in building homes for people and home ownership.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How …

Jon Walker:

That’s so inspiring.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, I’m buzzing over here. I’ve never heard anything like this. It’s incredible. I’m curious how many people live in the community now?

Booker Washington:

29. We have 29 homes there. We have 85% of it is owner occupants. And so, we have some part-timers and secondary home people, bi-coastal people from California to Atlanta. But the average home cost of these homes are $200,000 to $215,000. A thirty-year mortgage on that, even at today’s rate are like $1,600 for a mortgage. And you compare that to average rent in a major metropolitan area, a decent apartment, one, two-bedroom. You’re paying well over 2,200 bucks. I don’t know what it is in California, but I know in Atlanta it’s well over 2,200 bucks for a one bedroom, two bedroom apartment. And if you’re in that stage of life, and you’re living already in a small space, the average apartment size around the United States of America is 712 square feet. People are already living in micro homes. They just don’t define it as that. They call it an apartment. And so, building it construction-wise and giving them the benefit of saving while owning and gaining equity and gaining wealth and gaining choice in their life is what the purpose of building those homes was.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I think people, when they hear things like micro homes or tiny homes, they assume they’re not actually built on foundations. Are these established structures or are they actually mobile homes by definition?

Booker Washington:

No, these are foundation homes mortgaged by all kinds of mortgages, FHA, US, DA, VA, conventional. These are no regular different than any standard home you’ll purchase. They’re just smaller. And they’re foundation, and they’re nestled in a subdivision makeup around all kinds of cool things like vegetable gardens and fruit plants and solar amenity lights and parking lot lights. And it’s just a really cool thing to be able to do. And we did that on 2.3 acres.

Jon Walker:

Wow.

Zach Wojtowicz:

What? That is unbelievable. You’re going to change America, my friend, that is like, how do we get this into …

Jon Walker:

Sign me up. I want to invest.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, yeah, there you go. You got a fish on the line here. You got to close it.

Booker Washington:

Let’s go, Jon. Let’s do it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, I guess so you did it in this neighborhood, and you have plans to expand it to do more to, are you going to follow the same model? I imagine you’re just getting started. I’m only half joking about changing affordability for homes, but what’s your long-term vision?

Booker Washington:

Yeah, no, absolutely. The other part of the story of South Park Cottages is we sold out of those homes, fully contracted all those homes before we even broke dirt. And it also tells you a lot about the demand of affordability and homeownership. And so we already are into our second community, Union Park Cottages, located in Union City, Georgia, also a suburb of south of Atlanta in the major corridor of Atlanta. And that community is already halfway sold out, and we just broke ground three weeks ago, and that’s going to be the first ever mixed-use micro home community in the United States as it’s going to be 26 homes with a coffee shop and bakery.

Jon Walker:

Wow, that’s so cool. It leads me to a question of, there’s a notion with affordable homes that sometimes there’s a negative viewpoint around them, and it seems like you’re doing something so different that it’s a real positive. How do you feel it affects the community around you to build these developments and what’s the positive impacts to the community?

Booker Washington:

That’s great. Well, first and foremost, people feel excited about being involved in the process. Sometimes development and construction people feel is behind curtains or closed doors because it involves big banks and people in the ivory tower making these communities. But we sit and have so many residential conversations and meetings with people talking about what they want, and that’s how we came up with the bakery because we defined, “What would you like to see?” “Well, we want to see a cool community that also allows the community to enjoy it as well.” So, we made the bakery in a lounge for people outside the community that don’t own homes to come.

And then we built the homes in a great sustainable way, and people want longevity in their community. They don’t want transient behavior. So, if you build a really quality product, and you build things that allow people loyalty in the community, it impacts everything. Tax revenue, municipal connection, voting, change, seeing real things done. And so, it’s been such a positive thing and if we can put cool, smart home technology and innovative solutions into those homes, even the better. And that’s why I think we’ve had so much excitement starting out here.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Have you built relationships with the municipalities around this, too? I’ve got to imagine this is solving a major issue in a lot of ways, even just from their tax base, people moving to Atlanta, just safety. What’s that dynamic like with the city?

Booker Washington:

Oh man, it’s been phenomenal. They call me. Imagine being a contractor or a developer and the city call you and reach out to you asking for solutions and asking for you to sit at roundtables and asking … Because look, I tell people as disclaimer when I start discussions, I might sound very different than your normal developer, and so, hold your ears if you’re sensitive. But I believe in pure engagement in order to make developments happen.

You can make money as a developer as well as make impact. You don’t have to choose one or the other. I think people feel that developers are forced to choose one or the other, but you really don’t if you really want to make it happen. So, the cities really reach out to us and thank us for not just building beautiful community, but engaging them. Asking them for what they want and leaning in and saying more yes than no, and not being really obstructionist. Because we bought the land of South Park Cottages late 2022. We changed it from a single family residential zoning to a cottage dense zoning entitlement in three months, broke ground in five months and built the entire community in 18 months. And it’s just now May, 2024.

Jon Walker:

I love the stuff where it could apply to lots of builders, and there’s a lot of builders that have to work with communities and some of them that are even doing affordable homes. And so, it seems like it’s really interesting, kind of the thread I picked up on there is that you were really listening to all the parties involved. It’s funny, that’s Zach and my jobs is Zach works on the Customer Success team. I work with building the product. And a big thing that we’re both a big part of is listening to customers and understanding their needs. And it’s just you seem to just have really latched onto that very successfully.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. And the thing that I actually have a background in political science, so we studied public policy. And so, I have friends in that academic space, and we talk about this stuff a lot and they’re like, “What are you hearing from your customers and how are they addressing these issues?” Because they are building in a different macroeconomic environment. We’re getting real above the actual depth here. But what’s interesting is I always respond, or I would even tell my students when I was a teacher, people are really good at innovating. They will find ways to solve the problems based off the cards that they’re dealt. And Booker, man, you are doing it. It is just so amazing to hear that you’re tackling bureaucracy, building relationships, improving the community. It’s just … I want to plaster this all over every … This is just really, really cool stuff. Shout out to you and the team. How many people are working with you now within Techie Homes? Obviously, the driver of making this happen.

Booker Washington:

Yeah, I started as an army of one of course when I lept off the bridge for South Park Cottages. But we built a solid team of five core individuals. We utilize a lot of relationships with our construction management partners and subcontractors to build out the communities. And look, we are more than a fan of Buildertrend. We have utilized it in what we do. It’s made us a lot better. It has shown us that we can connect the innovations of how we build our certain set of homes and combine that two regular general construction practices and everything that we need. And so, we brought on our project manager, we brought in Buildertrend, we built out our systems, and that’s why we’ve been able to move more efficiently because you can move efficiently and processes for development if you have your act together.

And Buildertrend helps us put everything in flow. It keeps a lot more people in communication together at one time because you have so many different variations of conversations that happen in a day that sometimes a central repository of those things is the best tool, and that’s what innovation is. It’s like evolution in some degree like humans, right? No matter what constraints we get, Covid, stay in place for a year or two years and everything that goes, humans will still evolve. Construction will inevitably evolve. This is one new version of it because our goal is to introduce micro homes as a mainstream option for below $250,000 eligible buyers in a marketplace of major metropolitan areas that no longer build that product.

Go look at any city, Miami, Charlotte, L.A., Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, and look at the inner cities of those markets. It’s either apartments or half a million dollar or more condos, and that’s the only options you get dealt. And we’re trying to change these infield lots that people have forgotten about and abandoned and change them to real dense community because people still want community, believe it or not. People still want to sit on a porch, talk to their neighbor, drink some lemonade, talk about the day, talk about politics, talk about their community. People still want connection, regardless of how much attach boxes we build in the air.

Jon Walker:

I mean, you mentioned technology with Buildertrend and you’re a very thoughtful guy, I can tell. And so, you chose the name Techie Holmes, and so, I’m really curious, and you also even mentioned some of your models were tech leaders like Elon Musk. I’m really curious. I’m sure that was intentional. What were you trying to communicate, and to who, with the name?

Booker Washington:

So, if you think about technology as a whole, all technology is activated by human. AI is a learning platform from human interactions, Google searches, things we do. Every piece of technology we have has to be activated by a human. Humans live in homes. Home experiences can be channeled by the use of technology. Let me give you some points. So, a lot of our homes, we use smart refrigerators. People travel a lot now. People work two or three jobs. People have side jobs. So, a smart refrigerator with cameras inside that tell you when your inventory levels are low or if you’re on a plane and your cousin is coming to visit, and you forgot, and you want to do a Instacart order and replenish your refrigerator and you want to do all of that hands-free. You can do that by just logging in, looking at the camera in your refrigerator, ordering Instacart, having it delivered to your home.

Your cousin gets there, and guess what? The home experience is great because you have technology in the home that benefits you. We have surround sound speakers and Alexa apps and things that allow people to order from Amazon without touching their tablet. We have USB and USB outlets instead of standard electrical outlets. So you can get rid of that big brick that you always hate to lose when it comes to your charging devices because let’s face it, we’re charging everything now. Your headphones, your remotes, everything gets a USB charge. So why not build a home for people out front with the influences and things that they’re going to need anyway? Because humans will always want comfort and efficiency, and we should build homes that don’t add that as an extra cost that we included in there, and that’s where we got Techie Homes from.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love it. This is why when we talk about the future, and people get kind of afraid of AI and technology. And it’s like how do you embrace it to bring you a life of convenience while still having those connections that, ultimately, will always be innate to human nature? And you’re marrying those two things perfectly. One other thing related to the ability to get people into these homes. Have you created or worked with financial institutions to help bring programs to get people into these houses? What’s your profile of getting individuals to access these homes and how does that process work?

Booker Washington:

The other cool part about building micro homes is we understand in the marketplace that we get a lot of savings as a developer that I can pass forward. So, we communicate and work with the different governments for down payment assistance. But one cool thing that we’re able to do is we’re able to, based on the affordability of building a smaller size home is passed those forward. So, for example, in South Park Cottages, the developer and the development provided $180,000 in down payment assistance to all of those buyers.

So, again, just in pure cost of construction, right? Another reason we built micro homes are not just because we’re fans of small homes is because economically it makes sense for the builder and for the builder, we’re able to save money against market prices in order to impact accessibility. A big term we use is not just affordability, but accessibility. Accessibility means that people do have diminished savings. How can you impact those savings by builder credits and different things that you can do? And then by doing that, you allow the other entities, the municipal governments who have down payment assistance or even FHA or other organizations that provide those things to be additive to what you’re doing. And you’re not restrictive as a builder in getting people in the homes. That’s the main reason why we sold out of our homes before we ever built them is because they were just so doggon accessible to people of many different incomes.

The average home price in Atlanta is $437,000. The average person that can afford that home needs to be making over $125,000 a household. The average income in America, 79% of Americans make less than $60,000. So, why would it make sense to continue to build home product for 20% of America that can’t afford the homes, where 79% of people can afford the type of home products that we build, and it allows them that chance to get into the homeownership cycle. Now, again, people’s families grow and you can’t always be in a micro home, but when you do grow, your income grows with you. And that’s a good part of social impact that we want to have as well.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, and so much of the ability to get into the housing market creates those equity gains that then let you move on up. It’s upward mobility. It’s a ticket to the middle class to have property. It’s all interconnected into really developing well-functioning communities, to your original point. Booker, I think we could go another hour talking about this. Jon, do you have any last minute questions that you feel like you got to get out of Booker before we wrap up?

Jon Walker:

It’s so inspiring. I would just love to know how can listeners support your mission and get involved in advocating for more affordable housing?

Booker Washington:

Look Zach’s on first. If you need anything added to the budget to get you down to Atlanta, just let me know. We’ll send the jet. Whatever we got to do.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, I’m in. I’ve never … Yeah, I’m in. Say no more.

Jon Walker:

You got Zach with the jet.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Easy. All right. We’re keeping this in the episode everybody. Don’t edit this part out.

Booker Washington:

But no, we just encourage people follow us. You can follow me at Mr_Booker_T or follow our organization at TechieHomes, all one word. Visit the website, techie-homes.com. You’ll see our exciting communities, our floor plans, our innovative things we’re trying to do, and we just asked you to, if a micro home isn’t for you, share it to someone that is. Affordability is in both spectrums of the economy. It is not just for people starting out, it’s also for people starting over. You have people that are downsizing. You have people that are empty nesters. You have that version of the economy as well, and they also want affordability and great home choice and experience. So, if you’re just part of just innovation and great cool things, follow us, spread the word, get involved. Listen to this podcast, first and foremost, and continue to spread the word on building more communities like this around America.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Amazing.

Jon Walker:

Awesome.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Booker, you’re an inspiration. It was so great to meet you, and you will be coming back on “The Building Code.” Okay?

Booker Washington:

Okay. We will, hey, whatever you guys need. I’m here. Love what you guys are doing. Product is phenomenal. I can’t sign it’s praises enough, and it supports what we do. We can’t do cool things without cool products and Buildertrend’s cool product and whatever I can do, guys, just let me know.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Thank you so much. We’ll definitely be in touch.

Booker Washington:

Awesome.

Zach Wojtowicz:

We just had Booker Washington, CEO and founder of Techie Homes here on “The Building Code” and our special co-host, chief technology officer John Walker. I always ask Charley, what’d you think? What’d you think?

Jon Walker:

Oh, gosh, that was maybe the most inspired I’ve been in a long time. Just what a mission,

Zach Wojtowicz:

What a co-host episode that you get. You drew it out of the hat. We’re talking about, we covered everything. Land costs, we covered affordability, technology, all of it, all everything.

Jon Walker:

I love that there was a lot of lessons. He builds tiny homes and micro homes, which we learned about, but I love that there were lessons that any builder could listen to and get something from.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, I was sitting listening and all I could think was this really aligns with Buildertrend’s change the way the world builds. That phrase is about the technology obviously, enabling people to build homes in a different smarter way, but it’s also like that ethos, that mission to really push the industry forward too. And Booker, he is doing it, and it’s amazing.

Jon Walker:

It really was a total twist on how people typically view affordable homes, and he’s trying to provide them even a technology forward experience. It’s just unbelievable.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah, I can’t wait to really deep dive on the development and check out the website if you’re a listener. He dropped it. It’s techie-homes.com. Go check it out. I certainly will. I want to see these communities. I’m not even joking. We joked about flying down. I wanted to just go see it. I just feel like it’s almost aspirational in a way. A lot of communities need this type of innovation in cities across America.

Jon Walker:

I love that. You got a show notes drop in there. That’s good.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Hey, we got to honor our boy Charley even when he’s not here, right? We’re making a trip down to Atlanta.

Jon Walker:

I’m going to make this … this is going to be an extra special episode, and we’re going to follow up, and we’ll go down together.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, we’re going to get a whole series out of it. Oh my gosh. And somehow Charley will get to go, and I’ll be stuck back here. In the greatest twist of irony.

Jon Walker:

You can’t replace a star on a movie series that’s really hitting it out of the park. So, Charley, he’s going to be out for it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Things are looking shaky. What an amazing episode. Booker, thank you so much for joining us. I would love to have you back on “The Building Code.” We’ll make sure we’ll be reaching out. Jon, any closing thoughts as your first time and not the last time, co-host of “The Building Code?”

Jon Walker:

I do feel fortunate. That was amazing. It’s so great to hear from our customers and wow, that was an inspirational message.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Well, let’s wrap it up for today. Thank you so much to our listeners. Don’t forget to like, review, subscribe. We can bring great content like this. Check out Jon, in all his height and glory on YouTube and me. I matter, too. And we will see you next time on “The Building Code.” Thank you so much.