60-day homebuilder

By Shonda Novak

Outlet: Austin American-Statesman

Published on Mar 29, 2024

A breakdown of the day’s biggest local story.

A new way to build homes

Paul: One of the biggest impediments to housing affordability is the time it takes to build new homes. In addition to buying land, homebuilders have to cut through all sorts of red tape to get their projects off the ground. Even after construction begins, there can be hiccups procuring materials, hiring issues and all sorts of other impediments to a quick construction timeline. So when I read about new tech that can shorten the homebuilding process, my ears perk up. Let’s kick it over to Brian Bandell with South Florida Business Journal for more on how homebuilder Onx — which has an office in Austin and is set to start building homes in Texas next year — can build homes in less than 60 days. 

Brian: Startup homebuilder Onx Inc. is delivering houses in Florida’s Miami-Dade County in less than 60 days, and it aims to speed up the process even faster as it expands manufacturing capabilities.

The long lead time to build a house makes it difficult for homebuilders to keep up with demand. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2021 Survey of Construction, new homes took an average of 7.6 months to build. Recently, the timeline was often much longer in South Florida due to supply chain shortages.

The same can be said in the Austin area, where Onx is gearing up to build homes and where it has a factory planned in Georgetown.

The Carrollton-based company completed nearly 142 single-family homes in the Redland neighborhood of southern Miami-Dade in less than six months this year, President and CEO Ash Bhardwaj said. The individual homes were built in less than 60 days each, and his goal is to build homes in less than 30 days.

“The approach to building a home brick by brick or stick by stick is an old approach,” he said. “We are seeing what can be done to apply technology to this field and new design elements. How can we be the Apple of this industry?”

Onx has offices in Miami and in North Austin. So far, it has completed 300 homes in southern Miami-Dade County, and it expects to start building homes in Texas next year. It has 450 employees, with about 300 in Florida, Bhardwaj said.

Bhardwaj is a longtime entrepreneur and founder of technology and manufacturing companies. He started Onx using a patented method called X+ Construction that’s based on robotics and technology. Major elements of the homes are manufactured off-site and delivered ready to the job site, where they are quickly installed.

For more on how Onx builds its homes, follow this link.