Building Affordable Communities with Barndominiums: Levi Aberle’s Vision for Housing Innovation

Hello and welcome to the Raise Capital Legally podcast and YouTube channel, your go-to source for insights on raising capital the right way. We dive into topics that matter most to real estate syndicators and fund managers with live Q&A opportunities before we wrap up. I'm Krisha Young, co-host, business development director, and client success coach at Syndication Attorneys. And joining me is attorney Mola Bosland, senior securities attorney of Syndication Attorneys. Now, before we get started, Please note that audio and video from this event will be posted on our podcast platform, YouTube channel, website, and social media, and will be made available to the public. You can ask questions at the end of this broadcast by raising your hand or typing it in the Q&A. Please note that information discussed during this event is of a general and educational nature and should not be construed as legal advice. Now today we are discussing affordable housing, building affordable communities with barndominiums. Affordable housing is one of the biggest challenges of our time, and Levi Aberle is tackling it head on with creative— with a creative twist: barndominiums. After moving from Colorado to Indiana, Levi founded Fortified Buildings LLC to develop subdivisions of affordable, energy-efficient homes built with steel framing, radiant floor systems, and innovative construction methods. In this episode, Levi shares how his own journey building a combination horse barn and house inspired his business, why barndominiums are gaining traction across the country and how his company is creating homes that cost less, use less energy, and still look like traditional houses. If you've ever wondered how housing innovation can meet affordability without sacrificing quality, this conversation is for you. Hello, Levi. Hi, Mola.

Hello.

Hi there.

Hi.

Hi.

This is an exciting topic. I remember when we first met Levi, I was like, a barn door? What? And then Kim was like, a barn door? What? And Mola, like, we're all like, a what? So—

Not me. I watch HGTV.

Yeah.

I watch HGTV every day. There you go.

Yeah.

You know, it's, uh, we, we get that quite a bit. Quite a bit.

Wow. Well, you're here to talk about that with us today. So how about you start with telling us a little bit about your background and, you know, what inspired you to get into custom home building?

Yeah, absolutely. So the biggest trigger for me to get into custom home building was a relocation of my life. I met my wife in Colorado and her family is from the Indianapolis area, and we wanted to be closer to her family as we grew into having a family and everything of our own. So we moved back to Indiana. We bought a piece of property sight unseen and, you know, hired or got our loan on it. And we had, you know, about half down. So we financed the rest. After we closed on it, I scheduled to fly it out for a day and took a look at the property. And it was everything I could hope for. A couple of months later, we moved out to Indiana and started coming up with a plan. I started my business. With the, the idea that I wanted to build homes and how I was going to get there was very undetermined early on. So I got into everything from fencing and renovations and conversions and additions. And one thing led to another. Next thing I know, we were really, really at a tipping point. It's like we're going to do this now or we're gonna buy a house, you know, or it's gonna be put on the back burner for a long time. So we ended up jumping right into a home house build a year after living in Indiana. So it was, it was very fun.

Interesting. So with the first home build, was it just a regular standard home, or what did it automatically become, the barndominium?

It was the barndominium. So it fell into a really unique situation. My business being so, so new didn't qualify. I, as an employee and owner of that, I didn't qualify to get a mortgage. So we came up with a very strategic plan, and my wife had been employed and had steady income as a W-2 employee. which is favored from 90% of lenders, that she qualified for not very much money, um, but it was enough to get us a house built. It was $150,000 she alone qualified for construction loan. I ran every bit of it through my business to build our house. So in a flip side tax benefit strategy, We didn't pay a single penny of that as income because the whole thing was on loan and being married. But it all shows up on the, on the business as revenue. But that was kind of our strategic play that worked out very well.

Okay.

Very cool, though.

Yeah.

So for those that are not very familiar with it, can you like give us a definition of exactly what a barndominium is? Right. And, you know, why is it such a versatile housing solution?

Yeah, I love this question because there's no true definition of a barndominium. I think the term did originally come from people that converted old barns, particularly historical barns, you know, the big oak timber framed barns that are still standing today, and turning those into luxury apartments, and I think that's where the term originally originated from. Today, depending on what part of the country you're in, they can mean different things. So down in Texas is a big area for barndominiums, and pretty lavish luxury barndominiums. Those are traditionally steel-framed, um, wood, wood interior, big open concept, beautiful barndominiums. They typically will have large sections of garage and shop spaces attached to them. Where I'm at now in Indiana and in the Midwest, a barndominium out here is considered like a post-frame structure that is typically steel-sided, with or without a garage or shop, that falls into the classification of a barndominium. In the banking eyes, and from a lender's point of view, even today, that barndominiums are a high-risk experimental product. So we're trying to revolutionize that. Because it falls into the category of also being a stick-built structure when it's made completely out of wood. But we utilize methods in post-framing that bring it above expectations for, you know, a stick frame structure. So it really depends on who you ask, and it really depends where you're at.

Okay.

But in essence, It is a modern way to build an affordable, energy-efficient home.

Okay, so when you're talking about, you know, taking it beyond the stick frame, right? So you guys really, you create the shell of the home, right?

Yes, so that's essentially where most of that definition lies is in the shell. Utilizing post-frame construction, we save on a lot of areas of the home, primarily at the foundation. We don't have to install a full foundation wall in most applications because all of the structure is being supported by posts. So we only need a footing that is beneath that particular post throughout the wall. that transfers the load back down to the earth. Stud framing has to have a full stem wall or a basement foundation wall because you have a load-bearing all the way across the exterior wall, and a lot of interior walls at that. Um, then we save on sheathing products. 9 out of 10 times, we don't have to plywood sheath or OSB sheath the exterior or the roof of one of these structures. So we save a lot of forestry products by having this method in place. So on top of that, I mean, you also have the other side of the advantages is that, is the steel recycled? I don't know, but it can be. You know, I don't know if the manufacturers are using recycled steel, but if you ever take it off, it is recyclable. So there's a savings there. So everything on the roof and the siding of the home is all recyclable.

Okay, so this also helps bring down the cost, right, for home builders and for the homeowners. So there you go, making it a lot more affordable. So with this, with the shell and the method and the posts and the— so now you don't have to really concentrate on a foundational slab, how does this improve the efficiency, like the energy efficiency for the home?

Yeah, that's a great question too, one that I love answering because thermal bridging is a huge, huge topic when it comes to stick framing. Stick framing has, in an average exterior wall, about 18 to 20% of that exterior wall is wood transferring energy from the inside to the outside. So by doing a post-frame construction, we have horizontal girts on the interior of, of the exterior wall and on the exterior of the exterior wall, and they're not bridging the gap in between. So we have virtually zero thermal bridging with an inherently thicker exterior wall. So in compound with a lot of the other areas, we're already just in framing method more energy efficient utilizing the same amount. It uses the same amount of studs, board feet of wood to build the exterior wall. We just don't put the sheathing on there. So that's where the wood savings comes in. So in the method, it's completely reduced the amount of thermal bridging. In modern tradition or modern methods on a stick-framed structure, people alleviate that with either engineered lumber. There's a couple of stud manufacturers that have created very efficient studs, or they'll wrap the outside with an insulation product before they sheathe, or ZIP also has a product that is insulation built into the sheathing. But again, adding an extra layer of expense. So to answer your question on that affordability, yes, it's directly transferable. So not only are you not paying for the labor to install that extra sheathing on the outside, but you're going to save on the energy efficiency itself when it comes time to heat and cool that structure.

Okay, well, speaking of heating, right, you guys use a radiant Concrete floor system, correct?

Yeah.

So how does that also contribute to the heating efficiency of the home?

Well, in a lot of ways. So I just did a series of YouTube videos about radiant floor, trying to weed out the tribal knowledge or the hearsay and the rumors. Also, the biggest misconception is that it's It's unaffordable. Well, if you're building a barndominium, you're typically building on a concrete slab anyways. So the inherent costs of putting the floor in are the same. It's still gotta be insulated and it's still gonna be concrete. The only thing you're doing different is you're adding radiant loops within that concrete that you're gonna pass your hot water through to heat up that structure. You already have a water heater because you're using it for your showers and your tap water. So you use the same hot water heater, but you don't have to put in a forced air furnace when you do a radiant floor system. You can, but it's redundancy. So that kind of— it's almost a null argument that it's inherently more expensive. At Fortified Buildings, we have done all of our own radiant floor installs. So that direct operation keeping in-house also saves clients money because plumbers will typically— there's not, there's not a lot of people that specialize in it, and to have enough work to do it becomes almost financially unfeasible. Because people just charge an arm and a leg to put loops down in the concrete before the pouring.

Right.

But by doing it in-house, it's, it's just a matter of a— we can have a whole house ready for concrete within 24 hours. So one day's wages, you know, on the guys, it's really what it costs. But incredible efficiencies when it comes to that radiant floor because it's not just radiating heat up through the house from the ground, which is where the heat needs to originate.

Hmm.

But it's a thermal mass, which creates— it's a battery. No matter how much cold air in the wintertime is infiltrating that structure, it's being absorbed by that concrete floor in a matter of seconds. I mean, you're talking a concrete floor that weighs more than the rest of the house combined. I mean, it's 90,000 pounds concrete in some situations. Just incredible amount of stored energy in the concrete.

Wow. You know, I think people get the concept of it being so expensive because when you do watch, you know, different shows on like HGTV and on YouTube, you're only seeing that being put into luxury homes.

Yeah.

You never see it being put into an everyday home. So it automatically has this high-dollar ticket price on it in people's minds, right?

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Heated floors, heated kitchen floors.

Yes.

Floors is like, oh, that's some next level, right?

It's like, oh, when I get so much, I want a house like that, right?

Yeah.

And there's, there's no reason why it shouldn't be looked at in the sense of luxury, because it is, it is luxury. But it's also very affordable. It doesn't take a rocket science scientist to put it into the concrete. That for a couple hundred dollars in tools and staples, it can be installed before any concrete is poured. But what I really wanted to touch in on was that earlier comment you said about it being on How do I want to say it? Luxury meets affordability within that regard.

Mm-hmm.

But a lot of the high-end builds that you do see on HGTV or in magazines, they're also utilizing geothermal heating for their floor, which is another added layer of efficiency. But geothermal in itself is not affordable. It's a very expensive operation. So, but yes, it's very, very efficient when done that way.

Also, like a lot of those shows, it's like aftermarket, like the house is already built. Yeah. So you're ripping off the floor and you're adding something in. So I can see how that would like increase costs or whatever. But what you're saying is you're building it right into the foundation. Like it's just you're pouring the concrete anyway. So we might as well add some nice heating in there. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly.

And so this, this can handle like cold winters, like -30s and -40s, because you said you don't need a— well, that's Celsius. Sorry, I don't know what that would be in Fahrenheit. That's probably really cold, right?

Yeah, that's pretty cold.

That's pretty cold.

Okay, sorry, my Canadian is showing.

It could still do it though.

Okay, I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit, but that's cold in Canada. Because you said you don't need a furnace, right? So like in, I guess, a Minnesota winter, I suppose it can handle—

Yeah, so a furnace is what everybody's used to. Anybody that's lived in an apartment or a house has pretty much heated their space with a furnace. The inefficiencies of a furnace lie in that it has to turn over the air within the home. So it has to physically heat that space up every time it's turned on, whereas the floor can sit completely stagnant for hours. It doesn't run continuously. It only— once it dips below a certain threshold, it kicks back on and heats back up. But the air coming in the house through a window or a door, the thermostat's not reading that directly and saying, I need to call for temperature, because that's what you're feeling. You're feeling the coldness of the temperature, whereas radiant floors, they do just that. They radiate the heat to you. So you feel the temperature in a different manner than it just being cold in the house. It's a completely different category. But to touch on that, what you said about, you know, people adding radiant floor to existing spaces, that works great. But also— It's typically over a subfloor system, a very lightweight installation. So there's not a lot of thermal efficiency to that system either, right? So you're, you're only relying on the amount of energy that's coming out of the floor versus it being a thermal mass. Very cool stuff. Very cool stuff.

It's really nice to like walk on warm floor too.

When I turn it off in the spring, In my house, it's like, it's like I kind of wish I would leave it on because it's so warm on your feet.

Yeah.

Well, that sounds— I like that though. I want some cozy feet. I live in Florida even though it gets hot here all the time. But it's northern Florida. So—

Even if you don't heat the floor, you got to think that the, the natural temperature of the earth is like 65 degrees. So, and walking on that, it's, it can feel pretty cold on your feet.

Oh yeah. Oh, definitely, definitely. So, like, when people picture, like, a barndominium, right, and kind of picturing, like, these steel industrial-sized, like, buildings, you know, how do you design the facade so it looks more like a traditional home?

Well, in a lot of situations, the consumer wants some of that commercial-ish look. Which is kind of what brought them to popularity. I think that people like the fact that it looks a little bit commercial. It is a lot less maintenance than a, you know, a sided house or something like that, but at a very easy trade-off of it just being a steel product. The siding can be, can be whatever you want it to be. So the workaround to that is if somebody does want, let's say, James Hardie, you know, cement board, well, we can do that. We just have to sheathe before we do that. So to take full advantage of the, of the design itself, the steel product is your best and most affordable option. Secondly, maybe splitting that with maybe a little bit of a wainscoting, and that wainscoting could be 3 feet up of brick or stone or even an alternate steel product. Maybe we install the steel horizontally and give it a different break in the wall. So, but a lot of it also comes into roof lines. When you have just a simple box type of structure, it looks very commercial. It looks simple and functional. But you can add dormers, you add the porches, you add very very heavy beams on your porches and wood-wrapped cedar posts, it really brings it out to shine as a whole.

Yeah, somebody, um, I drive by one, um, every day taking my daughter to the gym, and they literally just finished the construction on it about a month ago. So you've seen like they're now starting to move in, and everybody, because of the way it's situated on the road, Like, you're always peeking in, you know, every day to see, like, where they were at, like, with the process. But it's— I mean, it's a beautiful home. And it's— they used black steel. So all their whole outside is black. The roof is black. But it looks just so cool, like this industrial barn in the middle of, like, this street. And then right behind it, they're building a brand new, like, regular development. So it's like you go right around the corner and now you see, like, regular traditional homes. But it's still a cool breakup and, like, just the scenery. Yeah.

Yep, yep, yep. If you, if you think back onto some of the methods of why traditional systems were the way they are, is watershedding. That was the primary reason for any house to be sided or to be roofed, was you had to get the water off of the structure. And the only way to do that was through a shingling method, and that could be a lap siding. Um, actual shingles, shake shingles, cedar shingle shingles were used for eons.

Yeah.

But that, that kept everything from getting through that with very low technology when it comes to house wraps. So the house wraps, in a lot of cases, you know, 1800s was, you know, some sort of tar paper or not at all. And They had to rely on the shingle effect to keep water off of the structure. In today's world, the steel does it all in one, not the house wrap per se, but we don't have to shingle anything. So it led to this culture of wanting that look. So everything was sided with the, the notion that we're going to imitate the traditional way things looked. And it just, it is what it is, and that's what people are used to.

Yeah, true. Well, do you face any challenges from like HOAs or zoning due to the fact of, you know, the facade and the way the homes look?

I would say so. In our experience, no, we haven't, because 90% of our clientele is rural or rural-minded anyways. Um, so no HOAs or zoning compliance with any of that stuff, which is, which is a really good reason why, um, I saw the opportunity moving to Indiana to start this industry, um, because of the lack of zoning issues that we would be running into. Now, I think it's a matter more of, um, education than it is a matter of compliance. I don't think anything that we're doing doesn't fall into compliance. Additionally, when we start building communities, the, the HOA actually originates with the developer.

Correct.

So I would have complete oversight as an organization to implement an HOA that is supportive of the homes we're building.

Right?

It would just make sense. But if we go into a neighborhood, we could also forego any thought of having an HOA and turn it over to the people in that neighborhood to start their own LLC to, or petition to start an HOA, leave it to their, you know, kind of right to choose, if you will. Um, I personally am not an HOA fan, but, um, I know that a lot of people do want that enforcement. But when it comes to compliance, we haven't ran into a single issue. In fact, one of our very first client builds was an FHA loan, and it met every standard it needed to, to be. The biggest issue we found was that their property was almost not big enough for their well and septic to be far enough apart, but we did achieve it. But the house itself passed with flying colors through an FHA loan.

That's, that's wonderful because they have lots of restrictions and requirements, just like, you know, any of the government-backed loans do. So that says, that says a lot.

Yeah, it does. And I'm glad we got that one out of the way because I was— I'm not going to say nervous, but I was a little hesitant on its Um, the pushback that I'd be getting on it. But the, the other thing that, uh, this, this used to be kind of a hush-hush, but I'm gonna say it out in the open here, is when you don't mention the word barndominium because it's a style and not a, not a traditional barndominium anymore That if you don't use the word when you are talking to a lender, it's probably never going to be brought up. But to simply call it a custom home, you know, a custom home build when you're starting this process, I think you're going to be a light year ahead than having any pushback on the term barndominium.

Okay, cool for marketing.

Yes.

It's cool for marketing, not so cool for the lender. Yes, exactly.

Not so cool for the lender.

It's a flashy, blingy word.

Yeah.

Yep.

Absolutely.

It's fun.

I like saying it.

Well, currently we are working on a project for you. So, and I know your current project, it's about doing the spec homes. So how do you feel that that fits into your bigger vision of creating the barndominium subdivision?

So what I really feel as a, as a goal, a personal goal, is to make this, make this known to people. Because I don't— there are people out there that don't like the look of a standard bar dominium. But once people see it more and more, I think they— the more and more they start coming around to it. However, it's a personal goal of mine to actually be able to deliver something that is fundamentally sound than not trying to— how do I want to say— push, push a narrative that is kind of misleading because the inefficiencies that lie within the traditional way of building homes It's an it's no reason why affordable housing is almost not a thing anymore, right? I mean, you you take you take a traditional home and on average maybe six eight months to build a regular home, normal crew. Well, there's overhead. to that house from day one. So no matter how long it takes, from 6 months to 8 months to a year, that overhead is still there, no matter the size of it. Okay.

Right.

So to, to make it affordable, you have to shorten the duration that it takes to build. So how do you shorten the duration without going modular and, you know, factory-built components which don't meet FHA requirements that you You get your shell up, you get your guys out of the elements instantly. So in 2 or 3 days, a whole barndominium shell can be built and you're working inside out of the rain. That is incredible.

Yes, that is.

So when you're— when you start comparing time frames and weather, inclement weather and all that kind of stuff, there's almost nothing that holds us back. Breaking ground is the hardest part. We don't want to do that in December and January where it's cold and hard. But if you could get your foundation in before that and get your structure up, you can come back to it in December and January when, you know, whatever you needed to do as an organization. But it's, it's about timeframes and it's about efficiencies. So by not sheathing the house, there's 3 days of an operation right there saved that they can't do in inclement weather, right? So by throwing our framing up and getting our steel on the outside, we're done.

We're—

it's downhill from there.

Wow. Well, since you just kind of walked us through some of the process of doing the exterior, then what goes next with the interior?

Interiors, um, interiors are fun because they pose some challenges with post-framing, but not, not as much as you would kind of think. Um, so for the hardest thing that we have to fight with the interior is relying on our plumber and our quality control methods to make sure that our plumbing's in the right spot. If that got moved or shifted or bumped during concrete pouring, it can move a wall a few inches or something like that. But we have to meet those requirements of where the fixtures are coming through the slab and build our walls around that. But as long as they're within tolerance or, you know, within reason of where they need to be, it is It's just simply framing out the inside. The insulation is also another heavy area to talk about, and I don't want to dive into it with this in this interview, but more so that with an 8.5-inch thick exterior wall with zero thermal bridging, using our go-to method of cellulose, is a 90% recycled product that is tried and true for a long time. It's been— it's actually been redesigned, I think, back in the '80s with the chemicals they put in it, but it's the cheapest product we can put in. When I say cheapest, most inexpensive, and it yields the best sound deadening, and it has a little bit of an advantage when it comes over spray foam. Now, spray foam is a great product, but in 9 out of 10 applications, it's more expensive and it's gonna be a lot less thick, so not a full cavity when installed. So the cellulose fills the whole cavity, which gives you the most sound deadening that we have. We can get. But framing the inside's easy. I mean, it's a matter of going across it. There's no load-bearing structure on the inside. It's completely supported by the truss systems that are designed for the house. If you live in a house for 20 years and don't like it, you could literally gut the whole thing and start over. You know, the only thing that has to stay the same is the— is your toilets. That's about the only thing that can't move.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And the flooring.

Yeah.

Yeah.

If you don't like the concrete, you can cover it up. People are, um, sometimes get distracted that they, they're like, I don't like concrete. Well, do you not like the look of concrete or you don't like the idea of concrete? Because you can cover it up with whatever you want. The only, um, limitation to it is you don't want to have different coverings within each individual zone of heating. So you don't want half of that zone to be carpet and the other half of it to be tile. You want to cover that whole zone so that it's radiating the same amount of heat throughout its heating zone.

I mean, you could have different floorings in different rooms though.

Absolutely.

Yeah, just not in the same room.

Okay. Okay. So we have learned about the efficiency through the shell, through the posts, through the interior with the cellulose. So what do you think is the long-term savings to the homeowner due to all of those different methods to make the home more heat efficient, cooling efficient? What do you think?

Um. I'd say there's 2 areas that I'm going to talk on there. One is, is the energy efficiency. So how, how affordable it is going to be to heat and cool that home, um, with it being paired with lifetime products that are installed on the roof and the siding of the home. So your maintenance costs are completely reduced, um, through the life of the home. You'll never have to, you know, unless you know, car runs into it or, you know, somebody hits it from outside with a baseball bat, you don't have to ever touch the outside of your home. Um, so maybe a, maybe a spring cleaning here and there, washing it off, something like that. But the primary is going to be in the affordability of the upfront cost, which translates to what is traditionally known as kind of an oxymoron, having an affordable energy-efficient home. You're going to save on your heating and cooling bills for, for decades. And then not only that, but the technology is getting so great with these boiler systems and on-demand water systems, their prices are continuing to come down. I remember buying my first in like 2016, my first hot water heater on demand. It was like $3,000. I'm putting them in all day long, high-end on-demand water heaters for $1,000.

Yeah.

So if that, if that ever goes out, you're only going to be out $1,000, you know, on that.

Whereas it would be like $1,000 to have somebody come out and fix it back in the day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there, if with the technology and the growing of YouTube, you could watch a video and probably swap it out yourself. Most people could.

Yeah, it's true. And so a lot of people now, depending on where they live, are opting for tankless water heaters.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And that's, and that's what I mean by on-demand water heaters, is the tankless ones. So they're, they're light. I mean, you can You just screw it to the wall and you hook up your gas line and your water pipes. Done. One other big thing that is kind of overlooked on the radiant floor heating method, if you're on propane, it's an energyless supply. So meaning you don't have to power it to heat, right? It's always there. It's got pressure on it as long as there's propane in the tank. And the same thing with your natural gas.

Yeah.

If you're using resistance heating or a heat pump for it, it's going to take more energy. But this system, if we had a blackout, the smallest generator that I can go buy at the store will heat my home because all I've got are 2 water pumps that circulate the water through the floor, and I think like 100 watts of power To— for the water heater to actually operate. It uses very, very little electricity.

Wow.

It's incredible.

That's, that's like, that's amazing. You know, I like— I, since I live in Florida, you know, we are the storm capital of hurricanes, right? So when we have no power, it's for days, and you're lucky if you have a generator that maybe powers your refrigerator and you could charge some phones. You know, forget AC. You know, you're just, you're just hot and you're miserable. So like to be able to still effectively like keep the house comfortable is that on an off a generator. That's amazing to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like that, that, that's not, not just a generator that like the smallest one you can buy. Like it's, it's gonna do it.

That's cool, though. So let me see. So where do you see the future of barndominiums in affordable housing market?

Oh, I think it's, I think it's definitely going to start evolving to be more mainstream. I think that once we prove a scalable model, I think there's going to be a boatload that comes in with the tide behind us.

Yeah.

I just don't— I just, I cannot see a world where people aren't understanding that a home can be built less expensive, bought for less, and be more energy efficient doesn't excel in today's world. I just, I just don't see it.

That's true. I, you know, when you look at people and the different alternatives, this is more of an actual home versus where you're seeing people with like the modular container homes, you know, because that's a lot of work to just convert an actual freight container, like a freight container, into some type of home.

Yeah.

So, and this is a way more affordable method. You know, you have a home like that doesn't need all those things.

Right.

And it's— and we're not getting crazy with our ideas. We're using systems that work, products that have been around for centuries, and just, just implementing them in a fashion that makes this whole thing come together. So we're not using, you know, I don't know if you heard of ICF, you know, insulated concrete forms. They're great. I mean, they're they're awesome. But it's it's a not everybody can just pick it up and go do it. I mean, when we talk about our post framing, I can hire any framing crew in the in the United States that I want to put the structure up. It's nothing different than that anything they can do. It can really go a long ways when it comes to. Lending operations, and like I, like I said earlier, compliance and zoning and all that kind of stuff. It's just really a matter of people being educated and understanding what it truly is. I will say that with certainty that if you got on some of the forums on, you know, Facebook or the groups, most people that want these want a bigger structure. Why? Because they can typically afford to go further with their footprint for the same amount of money. So why not build a community? Why not build a neighborhood that is regular, you know, affordable housing category, 1,800-square-foot homes with a garage that are cheaper and more energy efficient?

It's a win-win.

Absolutely.

It's a win-win for the homeowner. It's also a win-win for for the environment in that area, right? You've got a smaller carbon footprint, um, you know, the home's more energy efficient. You know, it's a, it's a win-win for everybody, for the community, for the homeowners. I, you know, I think it's a great idea.

Absolutely.

Yeah. So for all of our listeners who want to learn more, get involved, like, what is the best way for them to contact you and Fortified Building?

Um, Fortified Buildings can be reached directly through an email, which is probably the fastest way to get a hold of us outside of You know, my, my direct phone number. Fortifiedbuildings.com will take you to a contact page, or my email is just simply my name at gmail.com, leviaberly@gmail.com. And if you search my name on Facebook or Instagram, it'll take you to any of my business pages there where you can find a plethora of information. But Fortified Buildings at fortifiedbuildings.com is our website.

I put it in the chat for everybody who's here.

Yeah.

Do we have any questions from anybody who's here or comments or anything? By the way, I Googled -20. It's -4.

Yeah.

To answer your question, yes, it could still handle that. It would.

Okay, there we go. Now we know minus 20 is minus 4 though. We learned something else today.

Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, we have somebody who's raised his hand. Don McAlpine. Don. Okay, Don, I'm gonna allow you to talk, which I believe will bring you on camera here. Are you okay with that? Oh, and then Ronnie also. You guys can also put your Question in the question, the Q&A, or in the chat if you don't want to go on camera. So, Don, I'm going to allow you to talk.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity. A couple of questions. What do you do about cooling for the units?

Oh, that's a great question. So we typically will run a traditional HVAC system for cooling. There's a little bit of advantage to it because with the concrete, the AC duct typically has to go through this, you know, through the ceiling or through the rafter space of the structure, which is where cooling excels because it's denser and it wants to fall to the ground. That's just thermodynamics. Additionally, in the summer months, Your concrete floor is— it's shaded, it's naturally a lot cooler, so it doesn't take quite as much energy to cool it as if you had a subfloor system or a crawl space. That makes sense.

But you're gonna run some ductwork.

Yeah, so we typically always have a ductwork system for AC, which, you know, is not a direct In any of the HVAC systems today, they're typically zoned in 2 ways, heating and cooling. But when you're only doing a cooling system, it saves costs on the HVAC install.

Okay. And then you mentioned in the beginning, excuse me, talking about lenders, do you go to banks or do you use private money or third-party loans? Like, how do you get these things funded?

As a builder, as a customer?

As a builder.

As a builder. So we, we do it. So as, as Mola brought up, we're working with them to start a fund. So we will be raising funds in that regard. But in the past, we've always gone through bank lenders to get our spec homes built.

Okay. And then Lastly, is there any government incentives to build these types of homes since they're so energy efficient and you're, quote, you're building, you know, affordable housing? Is there any financing available from the government for these or tax credits or—

Yeah, you know, that's really an area that we haven't dove into research-wise because I'm sure they probably do. I'm sure there's definitely credits and grants and stuff out there for this. But where we're really trying to dominate is just simply offering an affordable house to people that people can just afford. And, uh, but to answer your question, I don't know off the top of my head. I'm sure, um, there's plenty of affordable housing professionals out there that would probably be able to give me some Really awesome information, but I just don't know off the top of my head.

And for the structures themselves, do you have suppliers that you're ordering? Are these kits, or like where are you getting the the home?

Yeah, that's that's a that's also an awesome point. So I get calls all the time from people who want a custom home or a barndominium built, and they say, "Hey, you know what's what's the price? I found this kit. Can you put it up?" Well. There's two sides to that because kits are awesome for people that want to do it themselves. We design our houses to be ordered from a supplier with everything built to our specifications, so it's it comes on a truck as a kit, but everything is raw product. We're cutting everything to size and putting it together just the same way as a. you know, a stick frame house would be. You call your lumber supply and you say, hey, I need, you know, X amount of 2x4s, 2x6s, sheathing, so on and so forth. Ours comes the same way, but the kits typically will cost you more than if you have a builder supply the materials. And I say that because I've seen it a lot of times. People will get it and they want it installed There's a lot of inconsistencies for— or I want to say slowdowns. Menards is a great company, but they supply barn kits, okay? When we've installed those in the past, we end up having to buy more materials because if you don't follow their— they don't number anything, they don't lay it out in a user-friendly manner. So if you use it It comes with exactly as many boards as you need. If you cut one wrong or whatever, you are going back to the store anyways versus us just factoring that in and having it delivered once. So I hope I answered that question.

Yeah, that was great. Thank you very much. Very interesting. Perfect.

So it's like if you lose the little Allen key from your IKEA furniture.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Yeah, I gotta go buy a whole Allen wrench set because—

Yeah, you gotta buy the whole kit.

All right, Don, I'm going to remove you, and I hope it doesn't remove you from the whole entire webinar. If it does, please come back. Just removing you from here.

No problem.

Now it says he can't remove from the webinar. I don't understand how this works sometimes. I'm just gonna hide you there.

You're still here.

It doesn't do what it says on the tin, Zoom. And Ronnie, just, he doesn't have his hand raised anymore. He just wanted to say that the correct website address is fortifiedbuildingsllc.com. So we forgot the LLC.

I think it routes in both ways, but—

Gotcha.

Probably right.

Yeah, there we go. Any other questions or comments from anyone here? such a fascinating— what's the resale like? I mean, I'm thinking when I'm in this conversation, I'm thinking, gosh, we are in such a housing crisis and people really need homes. And so many people just can barely afford rent, let alone buying something. And so this seems to be a really nice solution going forward for people. But then there's the flip side of it where people buy houses for that resale and hoping that it's going to make money and then they can retire on that money or whatever. How does that work with, with these types of properties?

So this is a, this is a great, great rabbit hole that I catch myself going down all the time. So if we're offering communities and selling individual homes to people, our goal is to sell them with equity. Because if we can If somebody can go to the bank and it's appraising at 80% of value or, you know, where our asking price is 80% of value, that's a zero down payment. They can— they don't have to put a single penny down to close that loan. That's awesome. And then they've got 20% equity on day one. That's where the glory of this whole process starts coming together. But when it comes to resale value down, you know, 5, 10 years down the road, These are lifetime products that are on the outside of these homes. As long as the inside, you take care of it like you do any home, you still have the same standards and maintenance inside. But you can wash your house, have a power washing company come out, clean it up, and it's going to look just as good 10 years from now as it did the day you bought it. So I don't think there's anything else that's going to stand that test of time like, like the steel products do.

Right. Can you paint steel? Like, what if you don't like the color?

You can, you can, but it'd probably be more affordable to simply swap it out. I mean, you, you can— it wouldn't take you but, you know, somebody with a simple hex driver and an impact gun could swap out a steel panel or do a whole side of a house in no time.

And I'm assuming it's easy to add like additions, like can you build Stories.

Oh, it's perfect for that. It's absolutely perfect. So the infrastructure is already there, ready to be tied into when— if you wanted to do an addition. In fact, a lot of our homes, because people want to maximize their footprint, and with appraisals being the way they are where we are— I say that because they don't factor in value to a lot of the shop or garage space square footage. So people end up putting that into a little bit bigger of a home. But they do it, they build just the house, and then they're going to do the garage next year once they refi, once they're, you know, got— can pull a little bit of money out of it. That's the glory to it. And it's the same, you know, it's, it's easier than a traditional house where you've got foundation tie-ins, you've got a lot of stuff to think about.

Sounds really cool.

I want one.

Does it come in any other color than black? AJ, is that—

Yes. In fact, the printing companies— I say printing because traditionally Sherwin-Williams has dominated the market when it comes to the steel coatings, the bake-on epoxies that they coat the steels with. Nowadays they're printing them in a fashion where you can do so much. I mean, they're doing wood grains, they're doing metallics. When I say metallic sparklies, they're They have crinkle coats nowadays. So, but to do a custom color that's outside of like the 15 or 16 standard colors, you would have to buy, and depending on how big your project is, might, might be beneficial, but you'd have to buy a full coil of stock, which would be thousands of dollars to get a custom color. But you could, you could literally choose any color you wanted.

That's fun.

I love all the colors.

That's our advantage to working directly with the manufacturers who are making the products.

So you could have like a rainbow house. You can have a—

You could.

Yeah.

I recently saw on Facebook, one of the groups, a guy did a big American flag with different color steel on the ceiling of his shop. I mean, wow, it's really cool.

Yeah, I like this. Yeah, I want one.

Well then, are you moving to America?

No. Well, I was just gonna say come to Canada.

Maybe, maybe in a, maybe in a little while we might be coming to Canada.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Vancouver definitely needs some affordable housing because out there's There's no room for housing.

That's why it's expensive. I mean, it's so dense here and it's this tiny little island where everybody wants to live, you know. So we'd have to go outside. Yeah, there's more room in Ontario and the rest of the, the rest of the country. It's just not—

Yeah, yeah. Well, that, um, talking about demographics or geographics a little bit, the, um, these can be built anywhere. The hardest part of building any of these is going to be within city limits. And like you said, the building in a neighborhood that has existing HOAs, that's going to be the hard part for anybody wanting to build a custom home. But again, you can design the facade of it to look like a regular house, um, but they meet higher wind standards wind load rating than traditionally stick-built homes. So they're inherently stronger, they're thicker, more energy efficient, cheaper to build, and longer lasting. I don't, I don't know what else to say about it.

We need some more of those in Florida. Yeah, hurricane season, you see. So, so, I mean, yes, Florida has rated the building code, you know, especially after Hurricane Andrew over the years, and they've done it multiple times. Yeah, you see the devastation, you know, I mean, these homes just fall apart, crumble.

Yep. Yep. Yeah, you see videos of them literally being pulled off their foundation. I mean, it just, it's crazy. But yeah, and, and a sad reality is that we're To build homes that really withstand hurricanes and tornadoes and stuff like that, there's pretty much no workaround to combating that kind of environment. Regardless of the windows you use, regardless of the structure, unless it's completely made out of concrete, which is a huge cost.

Right.

People can't afford it. Right. It's just, it's just going to cost a lot more to build.

We have a builder out here that they gave an option on certain models. You can choose to have the stick frame or have a concrete house. So like, but the price difference was crazy between having a traditional stick frame home and a concrete home.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's always been a weird Curiosity of mine is like, we, we live in the 21st century. Why do we allow hail to damage our roof? You know, like the simple things, right? It's really crazy.

But yeah.

Hopefully we can start revolutionizing the industry and start making this type of thing more common so that people start coming on board with utilizing methods and technology of the 21st century.

I mean, we're seeing— you see more, a lot more people are now starting to use the steel roofs versus shingles, right? Because they have a 30-year lifespan.

Yeah.

And so much more efficient than having to keep replacing your roof after a storm or, you know, different parts of your roof. So you're seeing that pick up way more out here.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And they, they're even around here, people that are replacing the roofs are going with steel.

Yeah.

So, and it's standard for us. So, right.

Wow. So fascinating. Well, we're at the top of the hour. This has been a really interesting conversation. Thank you.

Yes.

Yeah. And like, I see, I'm a futurist, right? I see, you know, future trends and things like this. And this is definitely one of them for sure.

I think this is one of them for sure. For sure. Yeah.

So just keep going.

We're going. It's, it's, it's all or nothing.

Yeah.

Wonderful. And thank you for being here. Don said this was awesome. Thank you. Thank you, all of the attendees. Thank you, Mola. Do you have any last parting words, Levi, before we let you go?

Um, no, but if anybody hasn't Um, I, I would, I would start bringing this up in conversations more and more, you know, start, start mentioning this idea to people because really getting the information out there or people hearing the term barndominium, I can't tell you how many times I, I run into somebody and they're like, what's that?

Mm-hmm.

You know, like you said at the beginning, the more people that hear it, the more people are gonna research it. Not only am I gonna get more work, But it's going to start growing us societally. So, right.

Yeah, wonderful. All right, thank you. All right, everybody, so go spread the word. Yes, barndominiums. All right, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Bye, everyone.

Thank you.

Bye.