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...

Startup No 171 - StartupRealities 2020 series BarnPartitions  is a construction company that converts rural barns into residential homes by lining the walls with insulation and installing a movable suspended ceiling for heat insulation in the winter. The suspended ceiling is inspired by the retractable lining on heated swimming pools, which conserves the heat of the water during the night. CEO QUOTE " Barns are great places to live in during the summer: spacious and cool. It is the winter that makes living in them a bit of an ordeal. This is where our insulation technology makes the big difference. In the summer you can enjoy the spacious interior of a tall barn, all the way up to the roof. In the winter this space becomes a liability when you have to heat it up, so we install retractable suspended ceilings that keep your heating bill to a minimum. " - said BarnPartitions founder and CEO Barney Pebble . Barn in New England (image source: Wikipedia ) Barn interior...

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 115 ChurchPooling  is a real estate developer which converts disused churches into community swimming pools. The pools designed and built by the company have a characteristic Gothic atmosphere as the structure and interior of the church is preserved in the transformation process and the roof or dome is visible from the water. The foundations of a church usually need to be dug out and strengthened to accommodate a pool at ground/basement level. Fancier projects are sometimes implemented where the water level of the pool is up to 2 metres above ground level, which requires strengthening and waterproofing the walls of the church to support the weight of the water column. CEO QUOTE "We often get asked if we discover interesting objects when we dig inside churches, 'Tales from the Crypt'-style. Occasionally we do find bones in the oldest churches as the church floor was traditionally used for burying nobility and clergy in the Middle Ages. However, most...

StartupRealities No 103 WaveGenergy installs wave power generating facilities off sea coasts threatened by wave erosion, which slows down or stops erosion altogether while also generating electricity. These facilities consist of interconnected polymer sheets on the surface of the ocean and are installed along the coast to dampen the power of the waves that reach the shore. The company's primary focus are erosion-threatened populated shorelines and built-up coastal strips with high real estate valuations. In almost all countries the shallow waters off the coast are owned by the state, so contracts for installing these wave power generating facilities are awarded by governments under a formula that takes into account both the land saved from erosion and the electricity generating potential. CEO QUOTE "The ocean is a blessing in so many ways, but its destructive power should not be underestimated. We turn the negative of wave erosion into a positive: coast protection and ele...

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...

StartupRealities No 11 SinoIrishCastles Limited is a Chinese real estate investor and weddings & events organiser which buys up castle ruins in Ireland, restores them into functioning castles and offers them as wedding venues to Chinese couples during the warmer and sunnier half of the year (April to October). CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY The company restores castles using on-site 3D-printed plastic bricks and components using recycled plastic bottles as the raw material. The bricks are printed to fit exactly the missing parts of walls and towers. Every plastic brick interlock with the existing parts of the building and with other plastic bricks, which gives the building additional strength. FINANCE The acquisition of castle ruins and the adjacent land is financed with bank loans that are repaid with the revenue flow of wedding fees charged to Chinese wedding planners/agents. MARKETING & OPERATIONS SinoIrishCastles works with the leading Chinese wedding planners under a ...