DALLAS -- Jimmy Tanghongs doesn't want his homebuyers to ever have to paint their houses, fix the roofs or pay an electric bill.
The independent builder is putting the finishing touches on a Frisco, Texas, prototype home that promises to be virtually maintenance-free.
Plus, it will make its own electricity.
Tanghongs hopes the house will be a hit with consumers.
"This is a worry-free home," said Tanghongs, an engineer who migrated into the real estate business. "It has a nearly 100 percent masonry exterior -- there's very little wood.
"The metal roof is 60 percent lighter than asphalt shingles and lasts 75 years."
Built out of limestone blocks in a "Texas modern" style, the four-bedroom, 3.5-bath house has about 3,600 square feet.
It's in a neighborhood of traditional brick houses just south of U.S. 380.
"No one is building modern homes like this," said Tanghongs, who plans to build a line of similar houses. "There is no other homebuilder out there that builds a maintenance-free, energy-free house in this style."
The window frames and exterior doors are metal. And hidden behind a parapet on the roof, solar panels generate electricity.
"You can produce as much power as you consume," Tanghongs said. "You can be completely off the grid."
Inside the three-car garage, he's installing Tesla-made powerwall batteries to store the electricity made on the roof.
"We can produce three times the amount of power you typically use," he said. "We can get you away from that $200 and $300 electric bill."
The cutting-edge technology doesn't come cheap.
Tanghongs said his prototype house costs over $700,000 -- twice the cost of a median-price new home in the Dallas area.
He's designed a smaller, 2,500-square-foot version priced at just under $600,000.
"It's a luxury product for now," Tanghongs said. "We have a piece of land under contract to build a community with more than a dozen homes."
Tanghongs grew up in Irving after his family immigrated to America from Thailand.
Tanghongs started out working for telecom and high-tech firms in Collin County after earning an electrical engineering degree from the University of Texas.
About 10 years ago, he started investing in rental houses -- buying properties, fixing them up and flipping. After spending thousands of dollars to redo rundown properties, he decided to go into building.
"I built a couple of traditional homes in Oak Lawn and North Dallas," Tanghongs said. "I decided I was going to build a home that's indestructible, that needs no upkeep and is beautiful and modern."
Tanghongs' company is called The New Modern Home.
Inside, his Frisco prototype has modern kitchen fixtures and appliances, LED lighting and engineered bamboo floors. A patio cover outside the great room doors will be covered in more solar panels.
"We have something very unique," Tanghongs said. "It's different from what everyone else is doing."
Business on 05/26/2017