Meeting with SWT

[iteles]

Issue dwyl/tiny-house#21 was getting super messy with everything from providers to rentals to legislation, so I decided to split this out: https://github.com/dwyl/tiny-house/issues/21

Tomorrow we're going to be in Souselo dwyl/phase-three#116 for 10h00 and SWT is about an hour away.

How long do you plan on being in Souselo @nelsonic ?

I asked if we could meet them tomorrow (Friday 9th) at 12h30/13h00 and he said he had no other meetings booked and therefore we could meet any time.

We should count on buying food sometime too because 🤰

[nelsonic]

@iteles I don't expect to be in Souselo for more than an hour. ⏳ We'll do a more in-depth tour and take lots more photos and measurements. 📏 I'll do a quick (10 min) drone fly around for even better perspective, 📷 🚀 then discuss all the available paperwork. 📝

I think we can safely aim to leave the land by 11:00. 🕚 Also, happy to take my own food from home. 🥗 Or try and sample the highest rated restaurant in the area. 😋 or just head straight to SWT and see if they can meet us earlier (given that they don't have any other scheduled meetings tomorrow ...)

[iteles]

Confirmed for 12h30.

[nelsonic]

Yesterday we visited SWT for the best part of T2h, spoke to their architect at length and had a factory tour:

Observations:

1. They have high quality construction based on zink-coated mild steel and traditional internal finishing including sheet rock, plaster and paint. They also offer "alternative" finishing but this is their standard.
2. The dimensions of their prefab houses are similar to a Tiny Home (2.5m wide, 8m long and 3 - 5m tall) but they are not "tiny"; they are small but not tiny. -> Perhaps we need better definitions? 💭
3. They have ZERO experience with Tiny Homes on Wheels; all of their units are "installed" on the land, typically on a concrete platform. This means they count as "construction" for legal/zoning purposes and require council planning permission.

Note: we are not against getting planning permission for tiny homes. In fact we would prefer it. Because planning permission is a rubber stamp we can literally take to the bank to get low-cost financing! 💰 However we know from experience that the gate-keepers in most councils are "Computer says No..." 🙅

4. Their cost per square metre constructed is competitive with traditional construction €900/m2. So a 40m2 Small home would be ~€40k including delivery but excluding site prep and licensing.
5. Everything is extra! We asked about larger windows, AirCon, Underfloor Heating, Wood Burners, Fire supression systems, accessibility-focused units and the answer was always "Well, that will cost you..." 🙄 We get it that things cost money, but we weren't given a straight answer once e.g: "A 2.5 x 2.5m glass panel will cost €2k". or "Fitting an AC unit will be €1.2k".
6. The owner/CEO of SWT doesn't feel the need to have a model home in his factory to show prospective buyers the finished product. We feel this is a huge mistake in terms of understanding the look+feel/finish of the final product.
7. No existing customers are available to show their finished homes. Apparently it's a "privacy" issue. Again, we understand and respect privacy, but why don't they have a video of one of their finished homes that we can watch?

Their website https://swtbuilding.pt/produtos/tiny-house lead us to believe that they had built a variety of tiny houses:

But I'm going to have to call "BS" on these images being "nossos modelos" (their models) unless they are using the term very loosely to mean their computer models. Because there was zero evidence of wooden tiny houses being built in their factory

Take this good-looking tiny house on their website as an example:

If you do a Google Lens Image Search for that picture:

lens.google.com/search?p=AV3Y9tBDGd68go64sNchggGj5Js2reMlsaFsjYJh4p1ODCQ...

You rapidly see that this image has been used in many websites ... and was even featured on the cover of the book "Tiny House Living" published by Penguin Books in 2014: https://www.penguin.com.au/books/tiny-house-living-9781440333163

This tiny house was definitely not built by SWT. 👎

Not saying that SWT did not exist prior to 2021 ... but the first registration of their domain was 2021-02-18: https://www.pt.pt/en/tools/whois/details/?site=swtbuilding&tld=.pt

They may have been called something else prior to 2021 ... who knows? 🤷‍♂️ But one thing is for sure, they are NOT Tiny House experts. They seem competent at building steel frame prefabricated houses. And their web person is good at taking pictures from Google Images to build a fake "portfolio".

Once again, not something they have built. But rather a "concept" image they have taken from Google Images:

I share pictures of good looking tiny homes in my research all the time! They are inspiration! But I'm not going to build a website to sell the houses that I have zero competency/experience of building! To me that is misrepresentation.

Overall the people we met with seemed nice. But the fact that they aren't honest about the products/services they provide on their Website, means I wouldn't work with them. And if I'd know this up-front I wouldn't have spent the T4h (T2h Meeting) + (T2h journey time) to visit them.

@iteles how do you feel about it?

[nelsonic]

Related to this image on the SWT website: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/tiny-modular-prefab-guest-house-travel_1600112018391.html

I don't know if this is "real" or if, once again, this is a "concept" image designed to take people's money ... 🙄 I'm beginning to doubt reality ... is anything real? Am I real...? Are we living in a simulation...? 🤷‍♂️

[nelsonic]

The SWT Architect promised to send us an email last Friday. 📧 @iteles have you received anything? ⏳

[iteles]

We've crammed a lot into a few days so I totally get that's what it feels like 😉

Last Friday (9th September) was the day we had the meeting 😊 He said he'd send something through this Friday (tomorrow) or Monday next. Let's see!

[nelsonic]

Oohhhh ... ⏳ 🙄 Fair enough. Gotta be patient then. 👌