Current Projects Snapshot

A few photos bubbled up on my photos app this morning. A memory from December 6, 2019. Three years ago, I was out in the cold building a backyard playhouse for my daughter and the project got, well, a little out-of-control. The way designer’s projects for their own family always do.

What started as a glorified lean-to turned into a fully electrified, insulated, 2/3rd scale cabin. With 2/3rd scale sliding doors. And 2/3rd scale operable skylights. And a monochromatic sage green color scheme, with painted metal roofing. A working prototype of future designs.

A lot of fun crafts have been cooked up in that backyard hut. It was also the start of HUTS. The first little place for someone who needed a little space.

Now, three years later, things have grown far beyond the backyard. The HUTS team has developed a series of fully-resolved home design products - we call them Standards - that make home design and modification faster, more efficient, less expensive to permit / document, and removes a whole bunch of unknowns. We’ve created a catalog of fully-detailed ADU models with build-ready plans for DIYers and professionals alike.

Most importantly, we’ve made sense of how to pull together the disparate characters and parties needed to build a new home, particularly in a rural setting. The process of getting a home is broken, and we’re making it way better, bit-by-bit.

We’ve crafted a soup-to-nuts development sequence to streamline the trip from raw land to completed home, with less worries and more fun for our customers. Today, we have almost 40 home projects in the HUTS design and development sequence, and we’re growing to help more people get the homes they actually want in the places they actually want to be.

Let’s take a look at our collection of current home projects (note: no ADU projects are included here).

Location

We initially launched by focusing on a couple of counties in the Catskills. It’s one of our favorite areas to work and a tough place to get things done. The lessons we’ve learned here continue to improve our efforts in upstate New York. They’ve also been invaluable as we expand into new parts of the country where we’re bringing the HUTS design and development approach.

National Distrubtion of HUTS projects

Catskills & Hudson Valley distribution of HUTS projects, by county

Distribution of current HUTS projects by state. We are now ready to tackle projects across most states - Get Started HERE.

Status

Our home design and development sequence is both a dinner party and an express train. Early in the design process, it’s a dinner party - we’re speaking casually about dreams, immediate and generational aspirations, lifestyle choices and how all of that may be articulated into an executable home design. Your home is the scenographic background for the vision of your future self - let’s hear what you have in your mind. It’s also an express train. As early design gives way to production, we’re keen to hit milestones to improve your project’s value and press towards the delivery of your home and cash- and equity-positive asset. From raw land to improved lot to entitled parcel to construction and completion, we understand our slate of projects by their progress along the track.

Sizing Distribution

Several of our projects are best described as compounds. Collections of structures with a main house, amenity spaces and satellite guest suites. Almost hospitality scale. We love these placemaking projects, but for the purposes of mapping our current projects’ home sizes, this only accounts for the main structure on site.

Square footage distribution of current HUTS projects.

Use

Our clients come in every imaginable age, shape, orientation and family structure, but their intended home use falls into one of three categories. First, there are folks looking for our support to design and develop their primary home. Not surprisingly, these tend to be the largest homes with correspondingly high build costs. Second, there are clients looking for a second home - a getaway from the everyday - for personal use with no intent to offset their costs through any rental activities. Last, our largest customer segment, are clients looking to design and build a flexible asset. A place they may use a second home, or maybe WFH there for a period of time, or utilize sometimes as a pure cash-flowing investment.

Distribution of uses of current HUTS homes.

Let's work together.

While we fine-tuned our product and process, we were very selective of our project workload and were unable to respond to all of our inbound requests. Today, with our Standards in place, our process vetted and oiled, and an incredible, growing team in place to help our clients execute on their vision of home, we’re taking on more projects for 2023 in more areas. And, we want to hear about yours. Our team is ready to respond to every project inquiry into our Get Started form and field your questions.

Let's Do Something!

• Do you have land and are ready to move forward with a home design and development project? We're ready to chat about it, in most parts of the country. Get Started HERE!
• You can't design and develop a home that's floating in space (yet). You're gonna need some land. Start with LAND. We've worked our asses off sourcing, documenting, researching and presenting the best buildable, affordable (150k and less) and beautiful lots within 4 hours of NYC.
• Have a smaller budget? Or, want a small cottage that can support a big life? Our ADUs are remarkable structures and no matter what you have in mind - guest cottage, rental unit, small home while you wait on construction, whatever - the construction cost vs. value on our ADU designs just make sense. Buy your plans HERE.