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Blokable is Revolutionizing Housing Development

Modular DevelopmentTM by Blokable is Here

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After 6 years and over $30 million of investment in R&D and prototyping, Blokable is ready to take on the housing crisis. With an estimated 3.5 million new housing units needed in California alone by 2025, the only solution to scale housing is modular development. When we reach full-scale advanced manufacturing, our next factory is expected to produce enough modular units (Bloks) to build over 2,000 apartments every year with a projected aggregate market value of well over $1 Billion. And with our highly scalable manufacturing process and building system, our strategy includes ultimately expanding into a network of factories across the country and around the world.

What Is Blokable?

Blokable is a developer of multifamily real estate – the strongest and most future proof real estate asset class there is – using a proprietary building system with cutting-edge technology and engineering that can build cheaper, faster and better.

What Does Your Investment Mean?

Your investment would be in a convertible note, at the same interest rate and valuation cap as Blokable’s major institutional investors.  Upon conversion to equity, your investment means ownership in Blokable itself and direct participation in the company’s ownership of the real estate projects it develops — giving you the opportunity to be part of the tremendous value creation that is possible from successful real estate development.

A New Paradigm For Multifamily Housing

Modular DevelopmentTM by Blokable is designed to capture the maximum efficiencies and value of technology, process, and business model innovation to deliver unparalleled returns to investors.

Our Solution

There’s a reason real estate development has a bad reputation.

That’s because development is designed to capture and keep wealth for the very few. It’s an inefficient, disorganized, and messy process that suffers from skyrocketing construction costs and a shrinking labor force.

The costs and inefficiencies of traditional real estate development are the fundamental reason for today’s housing crisis. Supply is simply incapable of meeting demand, and the shortage and lack of affordability of housing have only been getting worse over time. Innovation and disruption in construction will not bring meaningful change; we must disrupt development itself.

Modular DevelopmentTM by Blokable® is an end-to-end solution that offers a better way forward. It’s much bigger than a new widget or point of view. It’s one model that addresses the root problems for both market-rate and affordable housing. It’s a wealth creation movement that gives you access to the tremendous upside potential that real estate development offers on an unprecedented scale.

It uses manufacturing and technological advances to compress development costs and time, reduce risks, eliminate the unknowns, and organize an otherwise inefficient process. It creates higher-quality, environmentally sustainable buildings while achieving efficiencies and scale that the industry has never known.

It brings transformative economic, social, and environmental benefits to the world.

It revolutionizes development to fix the housing crisis and is designed to create real estate equity for investors, residents, and communities who support and embrace a better way of life.

Blokable builds real estate equity for individuals and the community.

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World-Class, Mission Aligned Investors

Marc Benioff

Cutting-Edge Engineering

$30M
Invested in building system and manufacturing engineering, prototyping, and regulatory approvals.
40+%
Reduction in materials in Blok design resulting from continuous design and engineering optimization efforts over the last two years.
10 – 400+
Apartment units that can be built in a given Blokable multifamily project – the flexibility of the building system allows us to build projects of any scale to fit virtually any site and market opportunity.
5
Number of stories in our building system engineering, which can be placed on top of a concrete podium or built on-grade.
2+
Years in partnership with the National Renewable Energy Lab (“NREL”) to measure and optimize building system energy proficiency.
2
Prototyping facilities.
2017-2019: 30,000 sq ft
2019-2021: 60,000 sq ft
Patent pending on conventional and seismically resilient structural joint, ready for manufacturing.

Revolutionary Modular DevelopmentTM

A State-of-the-Art Way to Build Multifamily Housing

"Land Agnostic" Multifamily Building System Blokable’s open and highly flexible structural system is engineered to build up to 5 stories of residential over a concrete podium (the structure below the residential floors that typically contains retail and/or building parking and amenities). It can be built in high seismic or high wind zones, in any weather conditions and on any soil types without the need for internal shear walls, bracing, or tension rods as structural support.

This breakthrough approach allows Bloks, and even an entire building, to vary in size and shape without any change in required engineering or manufacturing, thereby enabling an efficient assembly process that uses a minimum number of parts and creates Bloks that leave the factory 95% complete.
Unparalleled Architectural and Floor Plan Flexibility The versatility and sophistication of the Blokable Building System allows for tremendous architectural and design flexibility to meet any market. The advanced engineering enables Bloks to be combined into a virtually limitless selection of optimized floor plans and unit types, with the ability to offer the unit features that renters expect – including open floor plans, 9-foot ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and expansive balconies. The system also supports highly varied exterior articulation and cladding that provide for the ideal building aesthetics to fit into any neighborhood.
Extraordinary Environmental Sustainability Blokable’s Modular DevelopmentTM platform leverages the all-electric, smart home technology based, Net-Zero Energy Ready engineering of the Blokable Building System to capture the potential of building industry innovations in greener and more efficient materials, systems, products, and commodities for greater aggregate impact. Without assembly line manufacturing, much of the savings possible in building industry innovation are diluted by inefficient and wasteful site build processes.
Highly Innovative Business Model Blokable leverages its standardized building system to develop multifamily housing that requires no new laws, code amendments, or zoning requirements. At the same time, it reorganizes the process flow and responsibilities between and among engineers, architects, contractors and other key industry players to minimize total development costs and build time and to mitigate risks.Unlike other modular companies, we don’t sell a product to developers, we develop housing using a more efficient, cost-effective process that maximizes returns, and we receive more favorable tax treatment as an owner of real estate rather than the seller of goods and services. This unique business model can be up to 30 times more profitable than the product sales model that other modular and prefab companies follow.

Ready For Manufacturing

Since 2016, Blokable has invested over $30M in building system and manufacturing engineering, regulatory approvals, software systems integration, and prototyping to create a building system that can be manufactured for development of 5-story-over-podium multifamily housing in the State of California, which has the strictest building code requirements in the country. The ability of the system to build projects with up to 5 residential levels represents the vast majority of the multifamily development opportunity in most markets. After completing the Phoenix Rising project in Washington State, Blokable shut down its prototyping facility there to focus on 5-story building system engineering, Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Bill of Materials (BOM) systems development, and to prepare to ramp up manufacturing in California.

Taking Control of Development

Building real estate equity for individuals and the community

Unlike modular and prefabricated construction that simply sell goods and services to support developer profits, Modular Development™ by Blokable is a movement that is revolutionizing an entire industry for the greater good. Any business that sells a commodity into the building process will make a small margin at best. Even if profitable, a low margin company can never be worth much as a going concern given the cost to achieve and maintain scale, and it faces never-ending challenges from alternative manufacturers, economic uncertainties and market saturation. Modular construction cannot be sustained as a commodity. The only answer is Modular DevelopmentTM.
Blokable and its investors benefit from technological and business model innovations that capture all wealth that the real estate development process can create from cost savings, development fees, refinance proceeds, operating cash flow, and asset sale proceeds. And with our ability to build cheaper, faster, and better, we expect the value of the equity in our projects will be much higher than traditional developments, especially as costs for traditional builds continue to escalate. At scale, the same innovation also provides for the development of affordable-to-own and affordable-to-rent housing at a fraction of traditional costs, allowing the creation of real estate equity in underserved buyers and the community at no cost to Blokable and its investors or to government.

Capitalism perfected.

Unprecedented Scale & Value Creation

The existing housing shortfall in the United States has been estimated to be as high as 6.8 million units, and it continues to grow significantly each year. In California alone, where housing starts lag well behind job growth, as many as 3.5 million new housing units are expected to be needed by 2025. This massive supply-demand imbalance, along with the fact that housing is an essential need for all people, is why multifamily is considered to be the real estate asset class with the strongest fundamentals and lowest risk. As a result, vast amounts of capital continue to flow into this sector. According to leading real estate brokerage and research firm CBRE, multifamily investment volume was approximately $279 Billion in 2022, and the Mortgage Bankers’ Association reports that 2022 multifamily loan originations are expected to total $459 Billion – constituting over 50 percent of all commercial real estate lending.With such enormous demand, and traditional development unable to meet it, the multifamily development opportunity for Blokable is virtually limitless. After 6 years and over $30 million of investment working out of prototyping facilities and perfecting the building system, Blokable is ready for this moment. We are entering into a lease for a manufacturing facility of up to 320,000 square feet in Northern California and expect to be operational in late 2023. At the same time, we are in pre-development on a showcase multi-story project in downtown Sacramento and continue to source new opportunities for the development pipeline.As we ramp up our manufacturing capabilities over the next few years, we expect to build several hundred apartment units with a projected aggregate market value in excess of $170 million. By the latter part of this decade, when we hope to have optimized our production processes and achieved full-scale advanced manufacturing, we expect to be producing enough Bloks in our first California factory to build over 2,000 apartments every year with a projected aggregate market value of well over $1 Billion. This output and development volume are expected to be significantly higher in the long-term, as our business plan includes the expansion of our California manufacturing capabilities as well as additional factories in other regions of the country and around the world.

Real World Application Solving Real Problems

In 2020, Blokable unveiled Blokable at Phoenix Rising, the world’s first Modular DevelopmentTM, delivering high-quality and energy efficient rental housing in Washington State. At a total cost to the State of $125,000 per door and completed as a design-build project at a guaranteed cost, the project cost less than half the County average for new apartments, in a region that faces a severe shortage of affordable housing. Developed on land owned by Valley Cities Behavioral Health Care, in Auburn, Wash., Blokable at Phoenix Rising is a community of five studio and seven 1-bedroom apartments, which are reserved for individuals earning 30% of the Area Median Income.The project was financed by an ‘Innovative Housing’ fund created by the State of Washington to identify and finance scalable innovative technology and business models that can reduce the total cost of housing creation. The community also has significantly lower utilities costs, and it meets strict energy and environmental metrics that are becoming the standard for new construction in many states and municipalities — including all-electric systems and a highly energy efficient, Net Zero Energy ready building envelope.
Lower Cost to Heat and Cool

In addition to costing less per door, this state-of-the-art housing development costs significantly less to heat and cool, which lowers operating costs as well as utility expenses for residents.
Quiet and Comfortable

Each unit is quiet, all-electric, efficient, and ventilated with fresh air, using energy recovery ventilation to mitigate bacteria, molds, and other unhealthy air particles.
Innovation from Start to Finish

Blokable at Phoenix Rising was developed and manufactured by Blokable to be a comfortable, safe, and healthy living environment that saves tenants money and offers them housing stability for years to come.

Our Leadership

Co-CEO

 

Nelson Del Rio

Nelson has been with Blokable from the beginning – as an advisor since the company’s founding and as co-CEO since 2017.     ...Read more

Nelson Del Rio

Co-CEO

Nelson has been with Blokable from the beginning – as an advisor since the company’s founding and as co-CEO since 2017. Nelson graduated from Harvard Law School in 1987 and has been an active and continuous member of the California State Bar since 1987. Nelson began his career as a Mergers and Acquisition Attorney at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and then went on to become an active impact investor, developer, and philanthropist. In additional to his retail, land and other type of real estate acquisitions and development, Nelson is best known for his efforts in early single asset securitization, as well as the creation of the public-private partnership, design-build paradigm in use today in connection with government and other facilities. More specifically, Nelson designed the structure and drafted all related documents in connection with the creation of credit tenant lease bonds for a public-private waste transfer facility and a private company’s headquarters and manufacturing facility. In each case, Nelson acted as a principal in bond creation and then resold the bonds to institutional investors. Each of the transactions was among the earliest commercial real estate single asset securitizations. Nelson went on to apply his prosperity-centric development model to commercial real estate where he utilized a novel design-build-finance-manage-operate structure to realign interests of all participants in the development process which drastically reduced risks, lowered costs, cut development time, greatly increased build quality and finishes, provided a better occupant experience, and resulted in highly efficient and resilient building, while also creating wealth in the community at large. To accomplish this outcome, he structured the first rated, insured and publicly traded off-balance sheet financings of public-private-civil society partnerships (P3s) developing public facilities. In total, Nelson structured, designed, financed, and developed three welfare office projects at a cost of approximately $145 million and gave away the residual value of the projects to impacted communities through not-for-profits he administers to this day. These early P3 efforts became the prototype for an industry of design-build-finance-operate-manage projects around the world in the years following. Through application of his prosperity-centric wealth creating model, Nelson effectively used capitalism to privatize risks and socialize wealth creation — later P3 efforts often did the inverse. Nelson is bringing this same prosperity-centric wealth creating structure, process, and creativity to the implementation of Blokable’s approach to creating housing wealth for its shareholders and for the underserved.

Co-CEO

 

Aaron Holm

Aaron’s background is building products, systems, and businesses that transform industries and in 2016, he launched Blokable.     ...Read more

Aaron Holm

Co-CEO

Aaron’s background is building products, systems, and businesses that transform industries and in 2016, he launched Blokable. Aaron has founded and led businesses and product teams, notably solving difficult product and business problems to enable the launch of Amazon’s first two physical retail businesses, Amazon Go and Amazon Books. At Amazon, Aaron saw first-hand the opportunity to apply advanced technology, supply chain and logistics to enable innovative and integrated business models in the built environment. Prior to his time at Amazon, Aaron, among other projects, co-founded Mylio, a software startup that protected and organized large libraries of personal photographs and memories. Prior to Mylio, Aaron co-founded Industrial Color, a global leader in digital media Software as a Service, where he built a world-class team and digital media infrastructure that serviced customers like NBC, Warner Bros, Victoria’s Secret, Sony Pictures, Gap/Old Navy, CBS and Publicis. Aaron was CTO and head of the GLOBALedit software business and was at the forefront of the media industry’s transition from analog to digital photography. Industrial Color sold in successive private equity transactions for over $100M. Aaron is applying his expertise creating advanced technology that transforms traditional industries to Blokable to create the product development, technology, logistics, and investment platforms necessary to enable Blokable’s Modular DevelopmentTM model.

Chief Product Officer

 

Timothy Miller

Timothy connects the dots between user experience, technology, and business Through the lens of architect, human-centric     ...Read more

Timothy Miller

Chief Product Officer

Timothy connects the dots between user experience, technology, and business Through the lens of architect, human-centric industrial designer, and business strategist, he has successfully created and expanded on customer experience for industry leaders including Boeing, Best Buy, Amazon, and LATAM Airlines. Tim’s professional experience merging physical environments and digital technology into holistic customer experiences has made him a sought-after conference speaker and graduate lecturer. He has worked as a design leader within both agency and corporate environments, most notably with AmazonGo, TEAGUE, and HOK Architects. At Blokable, Tim’s career has come full circle, bringing his unique experience to the challenge of creating a new category of housing.

Chief Development Officer

 

Steve Chun

A veteran real estate development and investment executive, Steve brings to Blokable uniquely broad-based, vertically-integrated     ...Read more

Steve Chun

Chief Development Officer

A veteran real estate development and investment executive, Steve brings to Blokable uniquely broad-based, vertically-integrated multifamily expertise that encompasses all phases of the real estate life cycle – from acquisitions and financing to development to asset management and operations. Prior to joining the Blokable team, Steve was Managing Director in the Executive Office of Lerner Enterprises, the largest private real estate developer and owner/operator in the Washington, D.C. market. At Lerner, he led the acquisitions and joint venture efforts of the company, as well as key elements of the development and asset management platforms. He orchestrated the top-to-bottom transformation of Lerner Residential – the company’s 5,000-unit multifamily division – achieving financial results that significantly outperformed the market. Before Lerner, he was an executive at Woodridge Capital Partners, a leading real estate development and investment firm in Los Angeles, with deals and projects across the United States. In addition to extensive real estate transactional experience, he possesses highly-diversified residential development experience that ranges from low-density multifamily product to luxury high-rise towers, as well as master-planned residential communities and large-scale mixed-use projects.

Earlier in his career, Steve was a corporate lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions and private equity for Oaktree Capital Management and Milbank Tweed – the Wall Street law firm of the Rockefellers and Chase Manhattan Bank. He holds a B.A. from Dartmouth, an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School.

I am a Latino/American Indian, raised in poverty, who dropped out of high school in the 10th grade then left home. In my heart, by solving market rate housing development through Blokable, I am simultaneously building a home for my mother, my younger brother, and my five-year-old self. At scale, we can provide generational wealth to every parent who is struggling to pay rent, to feed their children, and to give their children the opportunity to live and grow up like kids with privilege.

My path shifted when I was accepted into college as a dropout through an educational opportunity program. As my life was made possible by people who worked tirelessly to promote social equity and justice, I in turn have dedicated my life to establishing a business and finance model that creates private wealth while simultaneously addressing social and economic inequality. Modular DevelopmentTM by Blokable is based upon my decades of business, legal, finance, tax, contracting, and development experience and is an application of that model.

Nelson Del Rio

Founder and Co-CEO

I was raised by a single mother in a low-income environment. We lived in nine different apartments in two cities before I was 10 years old, moving constantly in search of affordable rent, frequently at the risk of eviction. Somehow, I was fortunate enough to find a path to opportunity, but there are millions of kids just like me whose latent talents are invisible, whose path could easily lead to addiction, criminality, or other social ills, simply because they are raised in survival mode without adequate or stable housing. Housing is at the root of health, education, and opportunity for a well-functioning society. We created Blokable, as a fundamentally different business model and a revolutionary movement, to provide the next generation with a solid foundation so they can be free to flourish and find their own paths to opportunity.

Modular Development™ is the future of housing development, leveraging every dollar of technology innovation and manufacturing investment to reduce the economic, social, and environmental cost of housing creation and to create wealth for our business, our investors, and our community.

Aaron Holm

Founder and Co-CEO

NREL Projected Impact: Building 10,000 Units by 2030*

2.4M
Tons of emitted carbons avoided*.
91%
Reductions in construction materials waste*.
67%
Reduced vehicle miles traveled by residents*.
60%
Reductions in greenhouse emissions*.
*NREL's Peer Reviewed Technical Report

As Seen In

cnbc

Design and Innovation Awards

2021 Core77 Design Awards Runner Up in Design for Social Impact
2022 Edison Awards Gold Winner in Productivity Solutions for Living & Working Environments
2022 Fast Company World Changing Ideas: Finalist in Urban Design,Honoree in General Excellence
2021 Fast Company Innovation by Design Awards Honoree in Real Estate
2021 International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) Gold Winner in Environments
2021 Spark Design Awards Bronze Winner in CleanTech

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