what is your biggest pain when building a vacation home away from home?

You can base your business in mostly referrals, however, if you want to grow substantially, you should use some paid advertising to boost your revenue. It all really depends on how much you want to grow and how fast. If you are alone as an architect without staff, then referrals are a good place to begin since you can only take on so many projects at any given time. -Richard

1. Quick & Easy Visual. 2. The buyer can visualize the final image of his/ her home faster when 3D interior design is used. 3. Image credits. 4. Cost Optimization. 5. Save energy & time. 6. Technical Clarity. 7. Holistic View.

Chiropractors often sell supplements to drive revenue in their business. They're capped out like dentists and tradespeople on the hours they can crack backs (or 'drill and fill' as the dentists do), so supplements are a great complimentary product that doesn't eat time to fulfill. You'll see a bunch of them and doctors getting into CBD oil now. Their client base already has trust in them so these recommendations are easy to swallow heh heh. Be looking for your version of supplements in the architectural field. Something complimentary, that your clientele already trusts you about, that you can earn a recurring income on while not using up more of your time. One advantage I see them having over you is I presume they see more people in a day. What can you do to increase the number of people you see in a day, to leverage your "architect authority" and drive the income stream of the complimentary product or service? Could be as easy as loans: helping people rent money from your position as a professional. Food for thought.

I actually just came across this article from Real Estate Crowdfunding Platform Patch of Land about how tiny homes are going to be very innovative and popular: https://patchofland.com/blog/growing-communities/2015/01/28/innovation-online-residential-real-estate-investing-patch-of-land/. In terms of the funding, Patch of Land focused on the debt side of the equation and usually focuses on fix / flips. You might be better off trying to raise equity for this type of construction through real estate crowdfunding avenues. Have you looking into those avenues for your funding?

I could provide some feedback about the main questions, however I can not answer the follow up question because I do not know about construction. What I could tell is that construction materials and design affect the 'sustainability" of a business. To manage the energy consumption of a building there are "mainly" two variables: the design of the building (lay out, materials, location, orientation, etc.) and the active energy management that you do once the building is up and running (light control, temperature control, energy generation (by the building, through, for instance, solar panels), etc.). The goal of any building is at least to be energy balance zero (energy consumption = energy generated). However if a building can generate more than what it consumes, even better, because the remaining energy can be sold to the market or to microgrids. Hope this helps.