StartupRealities

Startup No 178 - StartupRealities 2020 series ExperienceHousing is a subscription service that allows prospective house buyers to spend a full week living at a shortlisted location to help them decide if they would want to buy and live in the given house/apartment long-term. The service allows the subscriber to experience the complexity of living at a new place, including facilities, sound and heat insulation, neighbours, transport services and the environment for a week on average. On the other hand, the service also allows sellers to benefit from an income stream while selling their place as houses for sale usually cannot be rented out during such a period. CEO QUOTE "Our service creates a win-win: the buyer has time to explore the details of living at a given venue, while the seller gets some short-term revenue. The annual subscription allows up to five weeks of living at up to 5 different locations. However, for more expensive properties, the allocation of days is red...

StartupRealities No 169 LandfillConverter is a real estate developer which acquires landfill sites and sewage treatment plants in urban areas, relocates the waste operations to outside the city and converts the sites to residential and commercial real estate. The company's business model is partly based on the increase in value of the sites after they are developed and partly on receiving local and national subsidies for reducing pollution in urban areas. The landfill and sewage processing sites are levelled and the ground is sealed with layers of polymer and concrete to guarantee a clean environment for the residents and workers at the new developments. CEO QUOTE "Cities around the world keep growing and often outgrow their essential services. This is how landfill sites, recycling plants and sewage works end up in relatively central locations or even end up surrounded by the city. This happens to airports as well but airports are easy to convert into real estate. While ...

StartupRealities No 41 MoveOverRails is a real estate developer which builds multi-storey shopping malls and residential housing on top of train depots and railway lines. The company utilises the free space above railway infrastructure in busy densely-populated cities. Its buildings create a virtual tunnel for trains running underneath, separated from the occupied space by solid sound insulation. CEO QUOTE "If you haven't been to Hong Kong, you should go visit. Their metro network, the MTR, is amazing. It is primarily financed by revenue from the real estate developments above underground stations. These multi-storey shopping malls and residential towers make the best use of space in the closest proximity to public transport. The MTR was the inspiration for MoveOverRails. Our buildings, in a similar fashion, are always above railway lines and train depots. We build as high as planning regulations in the area allow, so we are making a significant contribution to expanding ...

StartupRealities No 31 PolychromeHome is a real estate developer that builds minimalist sustainable houses packed with facilities which minimise space requirements. The sustainability principles it abides by require that the maximum living space is 20 square metres  (215 square feet) for a single person or 80 sq m for a family of four. The company paints its houses in bright colours to make them stand out and attract attention to the feasibility of living sustainably without sacrificing comfort or convenience. ECONOMIES OF SPACE PolychromeHome has five main ways of economising space: 1) All attics are fully functional bedrooms and offices. 2) Staircases are foldable and attached to the wall, which creates space in the hallway / living room. 3) Beds can be folded into cupboards against the wall, Japanese-style. 4) Storage cupboards line the ceiling corners of all rooms. 5) Insulation panels are attached to the outside walls, which creates more volume within the house. CE...

StartupRealities No 21 FlattenHills Limited is a construction and real estate company which buys coastal hills, mines the rocks in the hills for construction material, and converts the flattened plots into seaside residential developments. INTERVIEW WITH THE FOUNDER "Two people have inspired me to start my business and they lived more than 2,000 years apart," FlattenHills founder and CEO Phil Halls told us in an interview. "The first one is Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing. His ports and properties empire makes perfect commercial sense. When the shipping and ports business is down, he converts port sites into prime seaside real estate. This business model cannot go wrong," Halls noted. "My other inspiration is China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang. He said he would dig out the mountains and fill up the valleys. I am not sure why he said that but it makes sense if you are building a road, for example: you remove the obstacles and the rubble from the obsta...