The 100k House in Philadelphia

I've been a fan of the 100k house website for almost 3 years. Chad Ludeman has created an innovative home building and marketing business model, an accomplishment that no large builder in America could ever do.

One recent post sums it up: High Performance Houses

They've nailed it, pure and simple. Contrast it to a subdivision that was nixed by Golden. Golden has no idea of what it really wants, but they had this feeling they didn't want this. Over time, they'll understand that they want 100k houses and neighborhoods.

Does anyone else besides me think Denver is ready for something similar to 100k? The biggest difference in the two markets is that Philly has thousands of low-cost vacant lots ripe for redevelopment. In Denver, a vacant lot in a good neighborhood doesn't exist, so scrapeoffs in lower tier neighborhoods may be necessary. Let's finish the infill process in Denver and scrape or renovate worn-out houses as required before we tear up irreplaceable open space in Golden.

Their list of innovations really covers every phase of the business, except maybe the use of realtors. Lots of folks thought realtors would become obsolete because of the internet, and it just hasn't happened, and doesn't look like it will happen. Postgreen (the 100k development company) however, has pre-sold a high percentage of their homes. This means that they haven't really needed the conventional realtor relationship.