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Show Summary
In this conversation, Dylan Silver interviews Pablo Arce, the founder of Efficient Developments, who discusses the need for sustainable and energy-efficient homes. Pablo shares insights on the challenges of traditional construction methods, the benefits of using steel over wood, and the importance of technology in building homes that are resilient to climate change. He emphasizes the need for a shift in the construction industry to meet the demands of modern homeowners, particularly younger generations seeking affordable and sustainable living options. The discussion also touches on the role of solar energy and community living in enhancing the quality of life for families.
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Investor Fuel Show Transcript:
Pablo Arce (00:00)
Yeah, there’s no wood in our homes. It’s 100 % made of American steel. ⁓ So that also is going to solve your problem of the termites, ⁓ the homes in places like California or even in Texas right now, there’s a lot of fires on New York. Our homes with the insulation that we use, the lightweight concrete, it will give you up to five hours of fire protection. you’re getting the product is steel and concrete.and that combination gives you a house that is acoustic, thermic, fireproof, thermiteproof, and basically hurricane proof.
Dylan Silver (02:10)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest is based out of Florida with a background in civil engineering. He leads Efficient Developments, a company focused on eco hybrid technology and sustainable energy efficient homes. Please welcome Pablo Arce. Pablo, welcome to the show.Pablo Arce (02:33)
Dylan, how are you? Thank you for inviting us.Dylan Silver (02:35)
Absolutely, it’s great to have you on Pablo. We were talking a little bit before hopping on here. You’ve got a very interesting background working with really ⁓ construction and builders from all over the world, international. But how did you get into the ⁓ energy efficient and sustainable home space?Pablo Arce (02:56)
Well,you know, over the last 25 to 30 years, I’ve been traveling around the world. And one of the things that really caught my attention is why in the United States we live in the same house. Why middle class don’t have access to design and to different technologies. If you look around, most of ⁓ people who live in homes between 300,000 to 600,000 dollars.
It’s basically the same home, not only in the exterior, but also the interior. It seems like we all live in a home, deep at home, right? So what I noticed is over the years, our quality of life has decreased, better, less ⁓ interiors, less ⁓ quality in the materials, more expensive everything. So my company was created for that. It’s our vision to lead the transition from
Dylan Silver (03:35)
Yeah.Pablo Arce (03:56)
conventional to sustainable construction. And for that, we are focusing on rewriting our engineering the way that we’ve built in homes in the United States for the last 40 years, which is what we need to do, re-educate our labor force.Dylan Silver (04:13)
wanna get a little bit granular here, Pablo, and ask you about the old guard, if you will, the old way of building homes versus the new way. think, especially now that I live abroad, I’m able to see just how there’s probably some holes in the game when you think about the majority of stick-built homes in the US ⁓ and so many issues that they face.not just with sustainability, also like disaster resilience and this type of thing. The last five years I spent in Texas, so we deal with our fair share of ⁓ all types of inclement weather out there. When it comes to the sustainable home front, I think this is something that’s gonna be more and more more more
imperative to people as we start to see how, you know,
really expensive, there’s no other way to put it. Homes are in general. So when you’re gonna be making this big investment, you kind of wanna feel like, okay, I’m gonna be living here for some time, maybe this is my forever home, but even if it’s not, I wanna know that my bills are gonna be ⁓ manageable. And far too often, that’s not even at all in anyone’s thoughts when they’re thinking about buying a new home, right?
Pablo Arce (06:21)
Yeah, it’s true. If you think about the process of buying a home is one of the most frustrating process in the United States because you always go to a general contractor and the price is $399,000. And when you walk out of the sales center, your price is $500,000. So it’s a very disappointing process because what we receive as product is a very, very⁓ It has a lot of quality issues in there about the product, the materials. So we have been now used to that situation. And ⁓ it’s our goal to give back ⁓ the quality of life to ⁓ the middle class in the United States. That’s where we’re focusing. I think that’s where we need to work. ⁓ Providing design.
Safety, our homes are climate ready homes. They have been tested in hurricanes for the last four years. We have been hit for around four storms and our homes really handled it really well. We didn’t have any losses or damages. The second thing is time. You have to build faster because it is very hard to understand how we can take 12 to 14 months to build that 2,000 square foot home.
Dylan Silver (07:39)
you.Pablo Arce (07:45)
It’s basically the same time that you’re required to build a small high-rise. So that means that the bottom, is residential construction, ⁓ has a problem and it needs to change. And the way that we see that change is through technology. Reducing time of construction, including ⁓ high-efficiency ⁓ insulations, ⁓ recycled materials like the steel.every ⁓ home of ours is the equivalent of recycling five cars or we save around an acre of forest. So all of this, when you create that combination, then you are providing a more affordable home with better technical characteristics. That’s basically what we do in our company.
Dylan Silver (08:34)
I want to get again a little granular here. So you mentioned steel, right? And then saving an acre of forest. So these are not, when we think of traditional stick built homes, there’s a lot of wood in those homes, right? These are not ⁓ predominantly wood. that, am I hearing that correctly?Pablo Arce (08:51)
Yeah, there’s no wood in our homes. It’s 100 % made of American steel. ⁓ So that also is going to solve your problem of the termites, ⁓ the homes in places like California or even in Texas right now, there’s a lot of fires on New York. Our homes with the insulation that we use, the lightweight concrete, it will give you up to five hours of fire protection. you’re getting the product is steel and concrete.and that combination gives you a house that is acoustic, thermic, fireproof, thermiteproof, and basically hurricane proof.
That’s the technology at a very affordable price.
Dylan Silver (09:33)
want to ask you about why haven’t we done this already? Why is it with 2025, right? And so many places have already adopted a lot of this. Why is it that we’ve been so slow to ⁓ move away from from stick built homes, right?Pablo Arce (09:51)
Yeah, it is a simple reason. In the United States and Canada, builders, they don’t go to university.It’s a skill that you learn probably from your parents or something like that. Only engineers and architects go to school. So basically, you take a test. In Texas case, it’s not even a need to be a general contractor to build in Texas. So what we have done for the last 40 years,
is that we’ve taught builders and general contractors how to build the same home. So nobody has challenged that process until now. And why is the moment to do it? Because labor is getting scarce. We’re losing a lot of people in the construction industry, not only for immigration, but also because young people do not want to join the construction field because it’s basically heavy and very
labor involved process. So the only way to do that is through technology. We need to involve technology in construction and we need to evolve from that dependency of labor, cheap labor, and move into technology. And that’s what we offer. Our homes are built with four people. So we’re reducing also the amount of people and in only six months.
Dylan Silver (11:50)
I’m thinking about, I mean you mentioned the weather, the inclement weather, hurricane resilience, the fires, termites, right? People don’t think about this, but if your home is made of steel, termites and insects are not gonna eat through the steel, but yet it’s a huge issue. So when we think of older homes, which is what a lot of the people that I work with as distressed.a wholesaler and a distressed realtor, the older homes, potentially you have dry rot, you know, have termite issues, you have so many issues that can come up with the older homes. When you have a home that’s made from steel, it’s not gonna have those same types of ⁓ forces that are working against it, even after, you know, a long period of time.
Pablo Arce (12:41)
Yeah, that’s true. Basically, and we’re in the moment that in America, ⁓ is going to become one of the main products. You see all the political directions we’re taking to protect American steel. So I think it’s a good time to transform the way that we’re building. We see everything that happened in the Midwest, especially with tornadoes, where basically full neighborhoods are blown away.because their homes are stick homes. In the case of steel framing, we’re providing a solution that is a whole solution. We’re not giving you the structure, we’re giving you a turnkey home. When you get our homes, you get mirrors, vanities, quartz countertops, solid wood doors, high-end appliances, ceramic tiles. So we just give you a house for $400,000 to $1,000 square feet.
Dylan Silver (13:10)
Yeah.Pablo Arce (13:38)
that you don’t have to go and say, you know what, I need to upgrade the windows to impact windows. I need to upgrade the roof to metal roof. We sell the package completely because what we are is an engineering company providing a solution. Our next step is the new growing, bringing general contractors who are interested in transition from that 40 year old school type of construction to what the future is.Dylan Silver (14:07)
I want to ask you about Florida. I love Florida. I’m probably in Florida five or six times a year. I’ve had a lot of guests from everywhere in Florida. Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, of course Miami and Fort Lauderdale. I love Fort Lauderdale. I love everywhere honestly in Florida. But if there’s ever going to be a place that would adopt this type of technology quickly, it would be a place likeFlorida I’d also throw in a California. I’d also throw in a Texas in there where you’ve seen a lot of these Disasters take place, Louisiana Are you seeing in Florida specifically lots of interest from people who not just might have been impacted recently by a disaster? But are also thinking of planning ahead they might be living in an area which hasn’t been hit recently But they might be thinking you know we have an option here. That’s not a stick built home
let’s go and invest, because that’s what it is, it’s an investment, in something that we can really ⁓ be confident in for many, many years, even if there is, God forbid, some type of ⁓ extreme black swan event that happens.
Pablo Arce (15:55)
Yeah, our market are people or families that are 45 years and below. What we have seen is a shift in your generationto get in homes that not only are safe, like our homes that we call them time and ready homes, but also they provide a wellness in your lifestyle. All the interiors that we have have UV lighting.
Dylan Silver (16:18)
Right.Pablo Arce (16:22)
to purify their conditioning. Our homes are climate ready and ⁓ positive, energy positive. So you won’t pay electricity because all homes will come with solar panels. ⁓ yeah, so basically what we’re just providing for young people a way to live in a house that is properly designed, has all these features, but also is gonna give you what we call generational wealth.Dylan Silver (16:38)
wow.Pablo Arce (16:52)
That is, when you can ⁓ get to the next generation a house that is sustainable, not only in the way that was built with the materials, but also in the way that you live inside the house.Dylan Silver (17:04)
I didn’t know that you did the solar. I actually am a big fan of solar. One of the things that I frankly don’t like so much about solar is that when people are adding the solar to their home, the home wasn’t necessarily built to have solar in tandem with it. So sometimes it looks a little bit clunky or it could just not necessarily supply enough that you might need and you might still have an electric bill. But I think having a new build with the solar is a great idea.Are there other people that are doing this? To me, this is a fairly uncommon thing that you’re doing, but it’s a great thing, a new build that has solar on it already.
Pablo Arce (17:43)
⁓ Really in Florida our project, Almeria, is the first net zero net positive project that is going to happen in Florida. We basically, not only are people not going to pay for electricity, but are going to have an excess of production of electricity. So we see communities like the Bitcoin community or the cryptocurrency community that is growing a lot and we say, you know what, if you are a crypto miningcompany or crypto mining person and want to pay lower electricity bills, move to our homes because you’re to have an excess of around 30 % of electricity. So that is the idea today. As you know, ⁓ it’s more expensive, your electrical bill than leasing a Honda perhaps, right? It’s just in the United States, just last year, electricity costs has increased in around 30%. So we’re tackling that giving back
⁓ hundreds of dollars back to a family. If you can save $200 a month and you think in a year, you can go to Dominican Republic with your family for a vacation because your home is saving you money, right? And because young people are looking for the future, it’s changing really rapidly the purpose of having a home. You not only want a home to live in the home,
you also want to be able to pay the home, right? So the only way is by reducing the cost of owning a house. So the affordability problem goes beyond the pricing. Also your lifestyle, because if you only have certain amount of money, your lifestyle is going to be extremely limited of what you can acquire. So we believe that we need to go back. ⁓ This is…
Basically, we are inspired in the 60s and 70s, first communities in the United States, and in the 30s and 40s, when you used to be able to buy a house via ACR’s catalog, right? We need to go back to those communities where you create communities, Lennar, all the big developers. What they have done is they have broke the communities. You don’t know anybody.
Dylan Silver (19:42)
100%.Pablo Arce (19:56)
inside of those 1500 homes. You don’t know your neighbors. You don’t know anything. You and I grew up probably in a street playing with a ball with, you know, with all the kids around. So we want to go back to that part. And we believe solar panels, batteries, sustainability and a community that give you that is a new lifestyle that people are going to be not only ⁓Dylan Silver (20:01)
Yeah.Pablo Arce (20:26)
trending but demanding from general contractors.Dylan Silver (20:30)
I think everything that you mentioned, mentioned the community, mentioned the affordability, you mentioned the sustainability, you know, and new build, right? I think so much of this is so direly needed. I am a full supporter of everything that you’re doing. By the way, congrats on your success ⁓ and to your continued success. We are coming up on time here though, Pablo. Where can folks go if maybe they’d like to reach out to efficient developments or if they may be in another area of the country outside of Florida?But they’re interesting.
Pablo Arce (21:02)
Yeah, they basically can contact us ⁓ via my cell phone or our website is www.efficientdevelopments.com. We’re looking for partners and collaborations to continue growing this movement that is oriented basically to provide better quality of life to everyday Americans. You know, this is for the blue collar, the policemen, the nurses, the teachers.that today are suffering so much to try to get a decent home for the right price.
Dylan Silver (21:37)
Pablo, thank you so much for coming on the show here today.Pablo Arce (21:41)
Dylan, thank you very much and I hope everybody like what we talk about it and thank you for inviting us.
