
Show HN: Acre Designs (YC W16) - Zero-Energy Smarthomes as a Consumer Product - andrewksu
http://www.acredesigns.com
======
andrewksu
Hey, co-founder of Acre here sharing our wares. We make Zero-Energy Smarthomes
as a consumer product.

We are challenging the typical model, which produces uninspired homes that
consume far too many resources: time, energy and money. Our idea is to treat
the home-buying and home-building process more like a product. We offer
NetZero homes that are simple and quick to build, for a fixed, competitive
price nationwide.

Our first offering is upmarket a la Tesla, but will offer our own Model 3
(i.e. lower price-point) sometime next year. Vision is to replace standard
homes with high quality, beautiful smart homes that are powered by the sun.

We'd love to get your feedback, especially about driving sales online—how can
we get better at getting people to place deposits online? and about the longer
term vision of housing: zero-energy, but also sharing economy, mobile
lifestyles, density. We'd really appreciate hearing the thoughts and
suggestions of this community!

p.s. If any of you hackers are interested, we want to experiment with making
homes that go all-out on automation and logging. We'll do that at no extra
cost for anyone who found out about us through this thread.

~~~
brudgers
The hard problem of real-estate is that it's by definition local...in Theil's
terms, each parcel is a monopoly. This means that the first order aspirational
feature is location. Not design [that's why people will live in a small
Manhattan studio for the same money they could by a ranch in Wyoming].

The homebuilding business is about controlling land. The big boys option
hundreds or thousands of buildable lots a pop. In a metro area, that's still a
drop in the bucket. Controlling that many lots justifies a sales center, in
house financing, and creates one stop shopping.

Land converters, those who subdivide land into residential lots, usually
prefer to sell to home builders. It lets them deal with professionals and let
the homebuilders who buy lots do all the high touch consumer sales or take the
risk of building on spec.

The consumer oriented home design business is likewise bimodal. The big spike
is price sensitive: it's $500 online blueprints. Everything else is high
touch. Money is no object clients are both rare and tend to be high
maintenance. They must be cultivated socially...church, civic club, university
homecoming, whatever. They have options...those with buildable lots have even
more, including just sitting on it.

Regarding taking deposits, there's almost certainly going to be contractor
licensing laws in play. In the best case both a state homebuilder license and
a local business license. In the worst case, a local homebuilder license and a
local business license. Local homebuilders' associations are fairly active.
They will report unlicensed competition.

Legally, laws regarding construction are far more entrenched than those
surrounding other disrupted industries...they go back to Hamurabi. Unlike a
taxi or a rented room, construction is visible and can't be moved. The local
fire marshal has seen people die. The local council woman wants to protect
property values by preventing shoddy construction. Local home owners, want to
keep construction out of their backyard, unlike an Uber they're not likely to
become late adopters...it comes back to location.

Technically, the amount of variation nationwide is massive. There is a
combinatorial explosion of wind, seismic, snow, ASHRE, moisture, and aesthetic
requirements and preferences. That's before touching soils...every site is
potentially different. At best there are local and regional requirements
regarding radon and frost depth. At worst, there's rock to muck on adjacent
lots.

Anyway, it's an interesting problem.

Good luck.

~~~
andrewksu
Herein lies the business model magic that hopefully give us an edge.

We work with local builders, providing the fully designed/engineered packages,
with ALL materials needed to build that specific high performance home.

You are right, trying to do this in a fully centralized and detached from
community is not workable. We think our take leverages the strengths of both
parties and allows us to do this much more broadly.

Regarding technical challenges, we engineer our SIPS shells for seismic by
default and can accommodate most snow loads (Tahoe project in the works).
HOA's are a PITA no doubt, but urban infill is possible and green field is
always going on regardless.

From floor down is all local and must be adapted, so not so turn key there But
hey, can't have everything.

Gotta run, but like your approach. Maybe more later.

------
jprince
I'd be interested in such a thing but these homes are far from affordable. In
fact they're priced a bit more heavily than homes in nearby Elmhurst, IL, no
bastion of cheap home prices.

I'd be up for trying this if I could get it for around 250-300k for the 4br
and then that allows me to pick up the land for 150k and come out about 150k
cheaper than a standard house, but you're expecting me to pony up 500k +
whatever it costs for the land plot, when I can just buy a house for 550k in
the same neighborhood prebuilt.

My point is, your value prop isn't real. It's a great home, and a great idea,
but it's actually more expensive square foot for square foot.

My wife and I are going to be house hunting in the next two years, and we
would have considered this option but it's actually more expensive.

You can give the standard Tesla "but you'll have lower (gas/electric) bills"
argument but I like air conditioning, so I doubt that's true for me, and even
if it was, it doesn't really sell me either. "Because you'll save so much in
the long run(and we can't really prove you will), you need to pay an extra
150k up front!" doesn't ring well.

EDIT: To clarify, I basically feel like in order for this business to work at
all, it has to be a much cheaper option than a normal home, because there is
an accompanying huge risk in investing in one of these. It's resale value may
be next to zero, and all it's fancy gadgets will be out of date by the end of
next year.

~~~
andrewksu
Fully agree. Our overall mission is replace the average American home with a
ZE home, no additional cost and no energy bill to boot.

This first series is the first DVD player. High end, priced at a premium and
for early adopters. It'll help us push the edge of our product and fund
development of tech/engineering that pushes future price down.

We should be able to launch homes in the $225K range next year that can be
built spec and start helping that average family. That is no easy task and
nothing else is commonly available anywhere. The early adopters will pave the
way for everyone else, just like the Roadster and Model S is doing for the
Model 3 and spurring on the rest of the industry to pay attention.

Currently Net-Zero homes start around $250/sqft, with many that push well
above that. We aren't really targeting the mid west, where this does tip the
scales (we are originally from Kansas City, so appropriate the gap). In major
metros in CA, OR, CO, WA, etc, this is actually a good deal for a normal home
and a steal for a turn key zero energy home. Our current home in Redwood City,
CA is zillowed at $1.6M and would be $220K in KC. It's all relative.

I'll disagree on the resale. The principal of the home is based on passive
heating/cooling, good design and great materials, so performs well regardless.
Solar will last 30, quality is significantly better than par and even the
software can be updated.

Keep posted, we will have a model home available via AirBnB late summer and
you can see how truly different (better) these homes are. By the time you are
ready to buy, we should also have our next series available.

~~~
rrowland
How many sales have you had so far? I can see the "DVD player" logic working
for DVD player, cars and other possessions that are expected to lose value
over time but I don't see this working for real estate and other assets that
are commonly seen as investments (Whether they are income-producing or not).

Regardless of which area you're building in, the bottom line seems to be that
I'd pay $400k this year for something I could get for $225k next year. Whether
I'm in KC and it's worth $220k or Bay Area and it's worth $1.6mil I'm still
immediately losing $200k at the time of purchase for no benefit other than
having the property a year earlier.

~~~
andrewksu
Clarification: The current version (Origin series) is the Tesla Model S of
homes; high end, luxury, max performance, premium tech, blowing most Mercedes
and BMW's out of the water in every way.

Next year we will offer the Tesla Model 3 version in addition to our premium
version. Average price, above average performance, cool tech and blows away
Acura's, Fords and Chevy's, but lacking the flash and bells and whistles of
the higher end.

------
krapht
These are some seriously expensive houses. If net zero is about reducing total
cost of ownership, these don't cut the mustard. I personally would be more
interested in factory-built modular housing with the minimum of fancy gizmos -
just the basics of high R-value insulation, good seals, appropriate placement
of windows, and energy efficient HVAC. If net-zero is about reducing our
carbon footprint, then I'd be buying a used house and doing some light
renovations to make it more energy efficient.

You can get 80% of the way there by blowing foam into the walls, sealing
leaks, investing in good windows, and making sure your HVAC system is
appropriately sized and used only when needed.

Disclaimer: I used to work on this:
[http://ecomod.unm.edu/](http://ecomod.unm.edu/) so I might be somewhat
cynical.

~~~
andrewksu
We'll get there next year, but to take the price leap, we have some new tech
to get ready for market.

CA has Title 24, which mandates net zero for new homes, so that is the long
term focus.

Check out the home we just completed for $145K, looks great, great performance
and very comfortable. It's just hard to do at scale with out a bit of a war
chest.

As you know, blowing foam, sealing leaks, upgrading HVAC, and good windows
will run most folks close to $60-$100k to upgrade. That will still leave it
fairly leaky, have an un-insulated foundation and be an older structure. Wish
there was an easier solution to upgrading existing homes, but that is a tough
business.

~~~
krapht
Sure, renovated old stock isn't airtight, but nobody needs that. I've been in
some passive houses - net zero by virtue of the fact that they ventilate the
bare minimum of air. Soon as you get some nasty furniture outgassing tons of
VOC, ugh! Living quality goes waaaay down. Headache central. Same thing if you
put a lot of people in one room - the bare minimum ventilation will cause CO2
concentrations to go up and again, headaches, dizziness, etc.

I don't believe in local stick build kits for your business. Every customer is
going to consider the total cost of labor for your houses. I don't know if
it's possible, but I hope you consider partnering with a modular home builder
with an existing sales network. Clayton Homes or whatever. Then you only need
to build to one standard (Fed DOT... I could be wrong though, never looked
into the regulations too deeply) and you can leverage their sales and
financing force.

------
ph0rque
Very neat. I've been thinking about applying the concept of tiny houses to
something that is a bit larger, enough for a family of six, while reducing
wasted space: Maybe 1200 to 1500 square feet with 4-5 bedrooms. I'll be
following your progress!

~~~
andrewksu
Please do, we've got some options right in your lane. Thanks

------
williamle8300
What kind of things do you have to hack on? I'm interested!

~~~
andrewksu
If you're really interested in a home, we should talk! Would love to have an
advanced user to help showcase the tech features. Email me:
andrew@acredesigns.com

~~~
williamle8300
I would _think_ you'd want one central hub to effectively control the whole
home. That makes sense to me. Like a thin UI wrapper to control EVERYTHING
displayed on an LCD panel... in the living room(?). This makes sense because
your selling point is a turn-key home. It would stand to reason that if the
hardware is turn-key, the software should be too.

Bringing this all under one central control hub would probably take an equal
stakeholder in your business. It's just as important as the material aspect of
the home. If you don't have the wherewithal for this, you should probably
avoid doing ANY kind of fancy electronic stuff. I know the PV panels are a
non-negotiable... but I would suggest not going beyond that until you can
create an SDK. This manages expectations, and paves a sane "upgrade" path for
the hardware. Simple is always better than fancy.

