Hello, my name is Booker T. Washington, founder and CEO of Techie Homes, and you are at South Park Cottages right here in College Park, Georgia. South Park Cottages is a micro home community on two and a half acres with 29 homes but we also have beautiful walking trails that go all the way around South Park Cottages and from the sky if you look carefully we've shaped South Park Colleges to be in the shape of a heart. That's right. South Park Colleges is the heart of College Park. It's the heart of this area and it's going to be right in your heart as a special community that you should visit one day.
What's good business is what should be good for people and if you can make both match you'll be successful for long periods of time. I went from investor to investor to believer to believer saying we got to build this community because I promise you it's like the field of dreams. If we just build it people will come and live in it.
But if we don't build it, people will never know the choice that they have before them. And if you really think about society and businesses, we are really strategically molded by what's available to us. So my dream was to create something that would be available to people to speak to their desires, because there are people who desire smaller spaces.
There are people that desire savings, not in just their household, but in their life, so they can go experience different things, they can travel. South Park Colleges is special not just because we have cool micro homes but because we have an entire community of all kinds of experiences. We have sitting areas, we have dog park, we have our walking trail, we have our pergola and fire pit areas, we have all kinds of connected living spaces. Also including our sustainable initiatives in our community, absorbent parking lots that retain stormwater.
and our solar lights for our parking lots and our amenity lights that are off the grid right here in a major metro area city. So South Park Cottages does micro, but we do it in a grand way. I grew up here in Atlanta.
I actually grew up down the street. My mom was a single mom. We lived in a lot of different apartment buildings, so we basically journeyed between apartment buildings in southwest Atlanta my entire upbringing. That's a lot of what has shaped me as a human and as an entrepreneur is growing up in this city.
Now, Atlanta is a melting pot. It is where a lot of people travel to. It has been a great area for being in business and trying to make your way from the bottom. It's one of the most successful cities that you can try to do that.
So my prior career before becoming a developer was being a human resource developer executive over 16 years and I've had the opportunity to work in some major organizations and learn a lot about business and life and philanthropy. I worked for Tesla, also worked for HelloFresh which is a great startup. for home meals and also work for Arthur Blank family of companies and Atlanta Falcons. So I've always wanted to shape my way around how I wanted to be an entrepreneur through my moral compass and that's where home ownership started.
And so for me, thinking about a community I've always dreamed of, of connectivity, because I grew up in a very cold environment, okay? You would run through alleys just to make it home safe. You would go down to the corner store hoping to make it back home with your chips and your soda without being shot.
And so all I dreamed about was a really cool area that I could make my own that would be safe, that would have a lot of nature. That's where my dream of South Park Con is getting from. My name is Eniola Martins and I am the owner of the Harlow House.
You would think it was not enough space but there's plenty of space and we love the fact that there's a lot of like outdoor area too. We have the porch area down here and upstairs as well so like you can indoor outdoors just it's a lot of space even though it's small it still feels big. Hi! I'm Alexia Gossier. I am a teacher living in Atlanta and this is my first home.
So this has been a great sort of home for me and my family. So currently me and my partner lives here and we have a five-month-old baby. The best thing about South Park Cottages for me was the layouts. When I saw the pictures on Instagram, I was instantly drawn to it and knew that I had never seen anything in Atlanta that was like it.
You know, modern homes are starting to look a little different. The big windows, lots of. Natural light and when I found out the price point I was like oh wow I can definitely afford this. My home is 675 square feet, one bedroom, one loft, one bath, a kitchen area, living space, a lot of outdoor space.
I love the patio and the bottom patio gives you an opportunity you know to have a TV and just like different lounge space so I love that extended space. I love my neighbors. They're all pretty cool. And because we're so close by each other, you know, we see each other a lot.
So we speak, we say, hey, we actually are planning some future events. So I'm excited about that. A lot of us are first-time homebuyers, too, so it's exciting to see women who are on the same path as me.
There's a lot of women that live here. It definitely feels more neighborly and I think it's because maybe it's coming from apartments. It's a little different like we actually purchased these so you know we have we are invested a little more invested so it's a great feel and knowing too that there are people around you.
that will look out for you. It is my belief, having worked for tech giants like Elon and Tesla, that everything we have about technology is human related. We wanted to build homes that all the technology smart home technology inside of a home connected to human experience. So some examples. The home we're in now has total voice activated music.
You can order groceries voice activated. Your refrigerator can send you alerts and tell you when the inventory in your refrigerator is going down. Smart door bells for safety security and a community tight-knit so when you get packages Your neighbors are helping you look out for your packages. That is how smart home technology connects with home, and that's why we call our company Techie Home.
But one of the bigger pieces of South Park Cottages, from an energy efficiency standpoint, is all of our homes are double insulated rated. So standard insulation in a home is somewhere between R15, maybe R30. The insulation within South Park Cottages is up to R40.
Making almost a soundproof envelope between the home and the exterior. Your experience at South Park will probably show you that although you're right next to a highway, right next to the busiest airport in the world, it's peaceful inside the home. And that's because we engineered the home not just to build a standard home, but to build an above standard home in a micro way. Those energy efficiencies will save you on energy from heat and cold escaping your home.
also with efficiency of your plumbing. So we use instant hot water tanks that provide hot water only when you need. All of our homes are all electric and all of that efficiency from the plumbing to the efficiency toilets that we put into the homes, allow the homeowners to use their money in the way of their life and livelihood than always sinking it into the home. And that's another thing we did from the building perspective in order for people to have a home that they can love for years.
South Park Colleges has three distinct different models ranging from 390 square feet up to 635 square feet. Now all of them have large overhangs to where you have a porch right off the front door to that you can sit by the front door and enjoy your space upwards to our largest model which is 635 square feet that has over 800 square feet of deck space and both bottom and top deck space. So can you imagine in a 635 square foot home entertaining 10 people?
You can do that here just because we mixed in both outdoor experience, porches, decks, and layout to where you can experience your home both in good weather and in bad. So our interiors, we wanted to make it grand. We wanted to make micro grand. So the best way to make anything grand is if you think about some of your larger homes, what makes them grand is that big foyer when you come on in with large ceiling, right? And large chandelier lights.
Two of our distinct models have over 20 foot ceilings. Those 20 foot ceilings were designed so while you're in the micro space and moving around, you're not capped by a ceiling that makes things feel smaller. or even makes things from a storage perspective be smaller because our 20-foot ceilings can be utilized to use zip lines to tie up bikes you can put up your kayak and tie it up to the wall and use pulleys i wanted to give you all the options you wanted although you were in a smaller space we're able to upgrade every other piece of the type of finishes and things people have in their homes by just limiting the size so for example we have modern shaker cabinets that don't slam they slow close We have upgraded tile finishes like polished tile, polished ceramic, even in our home, black marble.
Those are above average types of things that you get in a home that you purchase. Now, outside of the home, we also have other great finishes like fiber cement siding and board and batten and trim and tongue and groove wood trim accents that have great value and longevity to them. So for the value of your micro home, it can grow over time. The community setting of South Park is meant to connect.
If you look at the design of South Park, all the homes face each other. The parking lot is to the side of the community to allow for walkability and interaction. My name is Christy Campbell, first time homeowner.
I moved in June 2023. At the time that I put in an offer on my home, there was no house comparable price-wise. If there was something comparable... It basically had to be gutted.
This was the option that was best suited for me at the time and still is today. I love the people, I love the experience, I love the home. I love the location. I think if I could do it all over again, I would do it 10 times over. Tiny home, tiny girl, it works out.
I was looking for a community that I could invest in and I saw this community. I love the micro homes here and I needed an investment that was going to make sense for my family and where we are right now. We had a daughter. Her name is Harlow, hence the Harlow House.
She was born extremely early. She was born at 23 weeks old. She spent eight months in the hospital before coming home.
During that experience I really said, hey I need some type of investment that can operate by it. itself while we're spending these eight months in the hospital and we can still have income coming in. We couldn't work or anything like that.
We had to focus on her care. So just picking an investment like this in the community and we love what we saw online. and it's funny that we end up getting a micro home because she's and we call it the Harlow house she's a micro preemie so I kind of just went hand in hand she's doing so good now so she just came off of oxygen yeah so she was on oxygen she had a feeding tube but when I tell you like she's feisty she's a fighter she's beautiful first of all they told me I couldn't have kids so for me to even get pregnant and like half her is just a miracle so she's all miracle baby Although we're investors, we are still active and in communication with all of our neighbors.
And if they need anything, we're close by. And if we ever need anything, we can just like reach our arm out and they're right there. So we love that. The average medium home price for 1,100 to 1,200 square foot home in Atlanta greater area is $437,000.
To buy a $437,000 home either you as a single person or couple needs to be making over $160,000 in order to purchase that. Now, if you went to college, you have a good paying job and this job could be paying you $80,000 or $100,000 a year. Guess what? You still can't be a homeowner.
Guess if we built a community by the community? What a change that would be. What a charge to the status quo would that be if we didn't depend on banks to give us permission that we as a community built what we wanted? So I went from one person, $4,000, to another person for $1,000.
250 different people to raise $2 million to build a community we saw fit. Because if we had the capital to build it, no bank or anyone, one could tell us how to build it. And if we had the capital to build it, the city would have faith and belief in us that we could accomplish it.
One big part about crowdfunding for the development is that we were able to do wealth building two different ways. The person who invested got an average return of 12 percent, which is better than you would get in your average stock market return. People saw it as an opportunity to invest and grow their particular savings or wealth, right? But it But at the same point, by them investing, they have now given people the opportunity to buy a home.
And buying a home, by all other means of wealth building or capital building in America, real estate is still the number one way towards financial freedom, ultimately. So by doing that, and by orchestrating a well-designed plan, we were able to build homes that would be twice below the medium home value in a major metro urban area. that they could buy in mortgage. And now people are able to buy, at the time, a $200,000 or $210,000 home at a mortgage, which is now only $1,400 a month if you break off a mortgage payment over 30 years.
Now, the median rent-to-price in Atlanta is $2,100. This makes a great stepping stone for the next thing because we purchased this property with instant equity so regardless of the timeline it definitely is a great stepping stone. I could use it as a rental property, potentially Airbnb, just things like that. So it puts me in a great situation.
Having to minimize by moving to South Park Cottages has been quite interesting because I never considered myself a minimalist, but I wanted to challenge myself. And this has been the ultimate challenge. Living here has made me appreciate the small things and also made me consider the things I need versus... want. So it's like, okay, do I need this?
Will it fit in the space? I have to consider that. So it gives me the opportunity to save. So that's one bonus and thing that I love about living in a micro home or a tiny home.
So our next project is Union Park Cottages located in Union City, Georgia, which is just a six minutes South of where South Park Cottages is located. Union City, Georgia is still within the major metropolitan area of Atlanta. But Union City is becoming a big populace for industry because Atlanta has become such a big city for film industry, TV industry and technology.
So because the city of Atlanta has gotten more and more unaffordable, the population is moved south of Atlanta, which is where Union City is located. So Union City actually was just voted the number one growing city in the state of Georgia. We broke ground. in early spring, 24, and we just started construction and we're already halfway sold out. In the 60s, Sears was selling 600 and 800 square foot homes out of catalogs.
And that's how your great-grandparents and grandparents started in homes, right? Most original homes were small. They didn't build big homes. But the reason why the small homes helped your grandparents and great-grandparents grow wealth and have historical family legacies is because they were able to build It's because they owned something no matter what the size was earlier in life. That's how you build wealth in this country.
And that's actually how you build financial freedom. And that's another reason people go tiny. Thank you for watching our video and for stopping by Tiny House Expedition.
I'm Alexis and I'm Christian. Don't forget to Like, Comment and Subscribe. And for more tiny home tours and stories click the videos below and join us on Instagram for bonus content including face-to-face conversations with us. We hope to see you there.
Thanks guys. Have a good one.