Veev Homes Deliver Smart Sustainable Living in Prime San Jose Locations

Veev is one of the most unique and innovative homebuilders I have ever come across. For decades I have felt that homebuilding was ripe for disruption, and I'm honestly surprised it has taken this long to see someone try and shake up the market. I have recently enjoyed both an in-depth tour of a Veev home in my neighborhood as well as a visit to the factory where the homes are built (yes, I said factory).

This builder, which was purchased by Lennar in 2023, relies on advanced panelized construction that assembles homes with remarkable efficiency using durable frames and high-performance materials. The walls are the real product as they house plumbing and electrical wiring straight from the factory and then are assembled like Legos at the homesite. These elements reduce waste significantly during building and at high volumes have the potential to greatly reduce both costs and construction timelines.

Looking at the exterior and interior, a Veev home looks completely normal. You would never guess that this was mostly built inside of a 500,000 SQFT Tesla-like factory and assembled in about 60 days. Most new builds require anywhere from 1-2 years of permits and construction at the homesite.

Veev currently has two different models of homes and both are generously-sized around 3,000 SQFT. Their first mass-production solution is called the Model E. It's ultra-modern, especially the interior with LED edge-lighting everywhere and slick finishes which you can see above.

You can find a Veev Model E in San Jose at 5973 Tandera Avenue in the Blossom Hill area by Oakridge. The price is $847/SQFT, which is lower than most new construction homes in the area. Other locations include 2820 Cardinal Lane (Willow Glen), 2652 Orinda Drive (Evergreen), and 304 Curie Drive (Blossom Hill).

I personally love this interior style, but they have decided to go a bit more traditional with the sequel, called the Model X. The exact interiors for the Model X are still being worked on, but I had a chance to see the model in the factory and would honestly move into either the Model E or X tomorrow. The Model X also features a grand entrance with a soaring ceiling height and an attached ADU, perfect multi-generational living or generating rental income on the side.

In addition to Veev selling homes directly, if you already own the land you can also have them build on your site. Including the teardown of the existing home, it's possible to get a brand new ~3,000 SQFT home for under $1 million. The hard part is finding low-cost land in San Jose that is large enough to accommodate the footprint. Long term, Veev also plans to offer smaller homes which will help cut costs further and open up more possibilities for potential homesites. 

The way single-family homes are built today is crazy. It's essentially like building a custom home every single time. By moving most of the construction to a factory, economies of scale and improved efficiency will help open up more affordable and higher quality housing options. Veev is an early mover and obviously at the higher-end of the market, but I truly hope other homebuilders will adopt this model and disrupt housing at all price points. 

As Veev comes out with new products, I will definitely be featuring them here. For more details and to schedule a viewing to check out one of their homes for yourself, visit https://www.veevsanjose.com.

MIRO Towers being topped off

Below is a brief video from the top of MIRO, San Jose's future tallest set of buildings. The towers are currently at maximum height (just under 300 feet) and they should be ready for leasing some time next year. The views look quite stunning from up there.

Source: aphelion2100 from the San Jose Development Forum

Downtown San Jose construction time-lapse (2012 - 2018)

David Cheung has created a cool time-lapse video of Downtown San Jose construction west of Santa Clara Street. The video spans from September 2012 all to August 2018 and features construction of One South Market, Centerra, Silvery Towers, and Modera. It is only 30 seconds long and you can check it out below.

San Jose Crane Watch is up to 97 major projects

The Silicon Valley Business Journal has a great development map which you can access here. There are now over 97 major development projects, most of which are centered around Downtown San Jose. These include office, residential, hotel, health car, education, retail, and mixed-use projects that were either proposed or are actively under construction. The project has to be at least 100,000 SQFT in size to make it to the map (that means the pipelines has well over 10 million SQFT of projects).

Some of the latest additions include a 19-story, 220 room hotel tower on Santa Clara Street and a 500,000 SQFT mixed use project in North San Jose. Learn more and check out the map using the source link below.

Source: SVBJ

New Downtown San Jose office tower proposed for 333 W. San Fernando Street

We're getting spoiled. Whenever a few weeks go by without major Downtown San Jose development news I start to get antsy. It is easy to forget that there was a time not long ago where years would go by without substantial news.

Nathan Donato-Weinstein has broken a story about the latest high-rise proposal by none other than Lew Wolf and Phil DiNapoli, both veterans in the Downtown San Jose development scene. Last week they submitted plans for a massive 725,000 SQFT office tower next to the Adobe campus on 333 W. San Fernando Street. The project would be built on 2.5 acres that are currently being used as a parking lot.

The single 19-story building would nearly have as much square footage as all three of the Adobe towers combined. This means it would feature the sprawling floor plates and tall ceilings that Silicon Valley tech companies love these days. Other amenities include cutout decks and platforms that would create outdoor gathering spaces and a ground floor partially wrapped with retail.

Parking would be split across 10 floors (???), five levels below ground and five levels above ground. I don't think we have a parking structure in San Jose today that utilizes so many floors. Given the location's proximity to every transit option imaginable, hopefully they are able to reduce the number of spaces and instead increase the square footage of the office space.

If this gets built, it would but a another win in what is becoming a large collection of victories for Downtown San Jose. The fact that we are even discussing this in addition to the dozen other major projects already in the pipeline is already some level of success.

Source: SVBJ

One South and Centerra Close-Ups

Yesterday we had a time lapse of both One South and Centerra. Today we have two close up shots of the construction progress from Shawn Mathew. Both buildings are really coming along nicely. As a reminder, each of these has retail on the ground floor. Centerra has the potential of being an extension of the San Pedro Square Market. One South is a couple blocks away, but should do wonders to help activate Santa Clara Street while also contributing to what is happening in the San Pedro Square area.

Coming up on the horizon, the "sibling" Silvery Towers in the San Pedro Square area right behind the Fallon House and the Post Tower right next to the Gold building. By then we'll also have the new courthouse building, the SJSU student housing tower mentioned yesterday, the Pierce in SoFA, a couple projects around St. James, and who knows how many others. Downtown San Jose is going to look very different 3 years from now.

One South and Centerra Time-lapse Photos

Check out the series of photos below taken from City Heights that range from the pre-SPSM days (first photo) to today. If you compare the first and last photos directly, it's amazing what a difference two buildings make.

Huge thanks to David Cheung for sending these in!