A letter from Daniel Edwards · Eastside Lumber / Together.Homes
Here's a common problem everyone I talk to keeps running into: the bank will fund one to three houses at a time. You may even have city funds or federal grants helping offset your costs — and it's still nearly impossible to get ahead. Materials get priced like we're small, because alone, each of us is. And by the time one house closes and the credit line frees up, the crew has scattered and the math starts over.
"My line caps at a million — that's two or three houses at a time. We're sitting ducks."
"We've got a little housing trust fund, a little HUD, a little county, a little city — and no primary bank financing."
"How many people have the capital and the know-how to do all that? There's only so many developers in the region with capacity — and they're usually chasing margin."
And I've run the numbers, over and over. Even as a material supplier — I own Eastside Lumber — it takes a minimum scale of around 100 homes before any supplier or manufacturer offers true rebates and real cost savings. None of us works at that scale alone. But the homes we're all planning add up to well over 100. Together, we're already past the line.
Some straight talk about Eastside, since you may have driven by and wondered. In 2024 we made an internal decision to transition operations to prefab — prefab was the number-one reason we bought Tamm Lumber in 2021, but we'd been stuck running a traditional yard, mostly helping other communities rebuild. So from the street we may look closed. We've been heads-down on the transition instead, and we're starting to see the fruit of that labor.
Here's the model I'm working from: before Lockheed Martin builds a factory, they book the orders. Committed purchase orders come first — then the infrastructure gets financed against that backlog. That's what I'm building now: an order book of homes we can produce, one we can leverage for both the prefab facility and the investors.
The first 71 homes are already confirmed — you're not being asked to go first. The state moved first: Missouri has already awarded $2.8M in NPA tax credits against them, and its clock runs to 12/31/2028. This tally updates as homes confirm.
Send me your addresses — where they are, how many, roughly when. Costs nothing, commits you to nothing. Keep chasing your own financing and doing everything you're doing.
Every plan set you send gets a material takeoff: true quantities you can shop to any supplier, including against me. The honest reason it's free — I need those numbers to build the order book for investors anyway, so you get them too. Your projects also get a profile on kc.together.homes, where we track your lots through the pipeline as it builds.
If it comes to nothing, you've lost nothing.
Financing for 15, 30, 50 homes at a time instead of 2 or 3 — with resources and teams coordinated to match.
If this comes together, we're on a 90-day target: see if we can close on the prefab facility and its operations, build the team around it, and potentially close funding for our collective portfolio.
And what I get, since you should ask: the volume that justifies the prefab facility — and a real answer to how we fund housing production in the neighborhoods banks and traditional developers don't go.
The money is not raised yet — straight up. The list is what makes it raisable. Missouri has already awarded $2.8M in NPA tax credits against the first 71 homes — the state moved first, and its clock runs to 12/31/2028.
Want the full picture before you put addresses in — what we're building, every seat at the table, and where it ends up? Read about the Builders Network →
This is a list, not a contract. No dues, no exclusivity, no commitment to buy or build with anyone. Come off the list any time by saying so. Plan sets welcome — every one you send gets a free takeoff. Nothing here is an offer of financing or securities; if a raise happens, its terms come separately and in writing.