GeekWire noted that, “According to an SEC filing, Blokable is looking to raise approximately $3 million and so far has brought in about $1.36 million. The document lists Jason Calacanis, an investor and entrepreneur known for the popular publishing site Weblogs that sold to AOL in 2005, as director.
Aaron Holm, Blokable’s CEO, declined to comment.”
DigitalTrends said, “When you work at Amazon, you learn about scaling your business in a hurry. Now, Aaron Holm, former Amazon product manager and burgeoning entrepreneur…”
Those kinds of statements merited a look at what this factory built housing startup was planning and doing.
Make Housing As Easy as Ordering A Car
Holm was reportedly interested in container housing (see our most recent reports on that trend, linked and here). He visited Detroit in 2015, and was “convinced that the only way to free up the housing market was by making housing that you can order and configure as easily as buying a car.”
Bockable’s website said, “To achieve this, we’d have to design a building system that could produce different lengths, achieve different square footage, and give customers the ability to create different designs, forms, and price points. The biggest need and where we could provide the most benefit to start was to enable developers to reduce the cost and complexity of building housing.”
Produced in Vancouver, Washington, the firm is looking for projects in a 1000 mile radius of their base.
DigitalTrends said there first few projects were focused on emergency housing shelters for the homeless.
The prefab modular housing units themselves are described this way.
“The units the company aims to produce are aptly named “Bloks,” and are available in lengths from 18 feet to 38 feet. Customers will also be able to add basic and premium bathrooms and kitchens, as well as other modular additions like stairs, railings, and window units. The price per square foot is expected to range from $150 to $300. Finished units are estimated to cost between $25,000 and $100,000, depending on size.”
The price points are higher than some of the container housing stories we’ve done recently, such as the one linked here or here. But these units seem to have more panache than many container designs boast.
We’ll keep an eye on Blockable, and other industrialized housing trends too. ##
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