Episode 23 - John Geary, Abodu

Update: 2022-03-22

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Transcript

Prefab Review

Hi, my name is Michael Frank and this is The Prefab Pod presented by Prefab Review where we interview leading people in companies in the prefab housing industry. Today, we're very lucky to be speaking with John Geary of Abodu, an ADU builder that's, I think, primarily on the West Coast. John, welcome and to start, can you tell me about how and why you started building Abodu.

John Geary - Abodu

Yeah, hey Michael. Thank you so much, I’m excited to be here today. We started building Abodu back in 2018 when the conversation around ADUs was beginning to evolve here on the West Coast, so I actually got into this space. I was born and raised in a homebuilder household. My father has been building homes in California since the late 80's and you can imagine being raised in that household, you get quite a bit of exposure to the home building process, to the entitlement process, and the general challenges of building housing, particularly in Northern California. I think that the challenge and that process has always fascinated me which is why I ultimately ended up in what I would call the home building space with ADUs. We started working in 2018, literally with the goal of making the experience of adding an ADU painless and easy for homeowners, while delivering an exceptionally well-designed, kind of architecturally stunning, product behind it. It's funny we didn't set out to build a prefab company. We set out to solve the problems of homeowners that were trying to build an ADU and it actually turns out that prefabricating ADUs makes a ton of sense given that the majority of homeowners are seeing their challenges and just getting one of these ADU projects done. So you know here we are, fast forward three and a half years later, having you know a couple hundred projects underway at this point across Northern California, Southern California and the Pacific Northwest and Seattle in particular. We've really expanded that ability to bring ADUs to homeowners as quickly and easy as possible.

Prefab Review

Awesome! Thanks! That's really cool to hear. So I know a little bit about the company. So maybe you can provide some more color. But basically you have 3 models right now, right?

Abodu

Yep, we have our Abodu Studio, our Abodu One, and our Abodu Two. The Studio is 340 square feet, the Abodu One is a 1 bed, 1 bath that's 500 square feet, and then our Two is 610 square feet with 2 beds and 1 bath.

Prefab Review

Cool. We've done a lot of ADU projects with clients and our community and I think in California more or less, though you know these rules better than me. It's pretty reasonable to go up to like a thousand Square feet based on the ADU laws. So 610 is obviously right 61% of that. Why only 3 models and why only up to 610 square feet when you can theoretically permit 800 square feet or a 1,000 feet

Abodu

Yeah, great question Michael and it's one that we spent a lot of time thinking about as a company and as a business here at Abodu. We really see ourselves as a product driven company and our product is physical space, right? The Abodu Studio, Abodu One, and Abodu Two, but also the service attached to that right? So the experience of working with us from soup to nuts on your ADU project. I think one of the biggest things that prevents us from going much larger at least currently is just the amount of homeowners that can actually receive that big of a unit. But there's quite a few properties across California that can take, call it a 750 - 800 or 1,000 square foot unit but it's actually a lot smaller than you'd think. And so when we started off, how do you get really good at what you do? You narrow your focus on a few core products and get a lot of reps for those products and then expand from there. Our Abodu One with 500 sqft was our first product and really the goal there was or how we kind of settled on that sizing was looking at permit data across California and said, “what is the average size ADU that people are permitting across the state and you know, what is the rough dimensions basically like what are people building right now and how do we gain exposure to that segment? And you'll notice our studio gives us an ability to serve folks with a little bit smaller backyards and our 2 bedroom gives us an ability to serve folks with slightly larger backyards that are just demanding more and more space. You know I think over the course of this year, you'll probably see us come out with a product more on that larger square footage section like you're talking about, probably not all the way up to 800 or a 1,00 and the reason being there, is once you get over 750 square feet you're just subject to impact fees right? So really the sweet spot in terms of max size is right in that like 740 to 749 spot there if you're trying to maximize your overall value.

Prefab Review

This is specifically in California that you're talking about right?

Abodu

Specifically in California, yeah. And what we've seen is that people want the process to be easy. They want it done quickly, and you know if we've got a five hundred square foot, oftentimes that wins out against a custom build that's 750 sqft.

Prefab Review

That makes sense. Are you doing these modularly or as panelized? How are you actually building these?

Abodu

Yes, we use modular, which you know, the kind of key distinction within prefab is you manufacture or you factory build the housing. We're not going the manufactured route. We're building to local building codes, you know, in California that's Title 24 energy requirements in Washington, that's including the very heavy snow load requirements depending on where you are in the state of Washington which has made things a little bit more operationally complex on our side, but we think that leads to a significantly better end product for the homeowner.

Right? They walk in, they feel the sturdiness