By Josh Teti, Princeton Mortgage Wholesale
Over the past decades, there have been some incredible entrepreneurs and innovators that have helped advance technology, create new industries, and help our society adapt to the ever-changing landscape. People like James Cameron breaking the boundaries of directing, or the late Steve Jobs who is responsible for creating the Apple empire and brand, or what about Sheila Lirio Marcelo, (I know, right… who is that?) who founded the world’s largest online destination for finding and managing family health care (Care.com). Well there’s someone else who we need to add to that list, and he goes by the name of Elon Musk.
Now many people find that they have a love/hate relationship with Mr. Musk… on one hand, people can’t stand his extrovert personality that’s on display when he voices his opinions on Twitter (check this out, it's comical) or creates products like flame-throwers. But on the other hand, Elon has been a part of some pretty amazing things like creating Tesla, Inc who continues to advance the technology surrounding electric energy storage. Or what about SpaceX that just launched the world’s most powerful rocket into space bringing us closer to a reality of everyday passenger space travel (I talk about it here).
And guess what’s next on Elon’s plate… developing a technology to help the housing industry, and he’s doing it through – LEGOS! You heard that right, The Boring Company (the one digging all those tunnels for new super-fast transit systems) has plans to recycle the displaced dirt from the tunnels into life size LEGO-like interlocking bricks that are super strong (can withstand a Cali earthquake) but not that heavy (they’re bored in the middle like an airplane wing), that Musk tweeted, “so two people could build the outer walls of a small house in a day or so”. Now the details of practicality and affordability are still lacking, but let’s think about this on a macro-scale… what if this works? What if there is a building material that gives 2 people the ability to build the walls of a house in 2 days? We hear all this talk about how new construction is slowing down and the housing supply of new houses is low. Could this be a solution that not only attracts a new wave of construction jobs but decreases the time to build a house and ultimately increases the housing supply, so more homes are available for people to purchase, hence more originations!? You see where I’m going with this. I know this may be a long shot, and there’s many different factors involved, but at the very least and on the most granular scale, it’s this exact type of creativity and innovation that we need if we want to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of our industry. Just imagine – a housing construction worker commutes to the job-site via an underground tunnel and uses materials that are recycled from the displaced dirt from the building of that tunnel to build a house. It’s a pretty cool thought and it may not be as far off as you think.
Have a great day today.
Cheers!
JT
Photo by Alphacolor 13 on Unsplash
The opinions expressed in this post are the sole view of the writer and do not reflect the opinion of Princeton Mortgage Corporation.