Kim Aitken is doing things differently and the housing market seems to love it.
Aitken won the Founders Choice award a year ago for her home building business Aitken Frame Homes.
A year later and she is churning out new builds every month and getting families into new homes they might not otherwise be able to afford.
Based in Bracebridge, Aitken goes against the market in a number of ways. She builds during the winter when there is plenty of labour sitting idle in Muskoka. She builds on ground previously considered unusable for housing, because her designs have no basement foundations.
And at the speed that she builds her costs are trending to about 20 per cent below other builders.
“They are at a price point that doesn’t exist in the market right now,” says Aitken. “Older homes are available but they are so costly to heat that is causing a lot of issues.”
The idea of building homes was all pretty new when she applied for the Impact Awards last year. In a very short time, she was on stage pitching the concept of Aitken Homes.
“I got a call to come and do a Dragon’s Den style interview with a panel on a stage with the bright lights and the cameras recording,” she recalls. “And I talked about my business idea. From there I went to the awards night and won $10,000.”
Aitken says the cash was an important aspect of the contest, but getting tapped into the Muskoka business network was the real value.
“The money was one aspect of it,” she admits. (But) all of a sudden everybody in that network knew who I was and knew what I was doing.”
She is building homes in a lot of different communities and has a list of her current projects on the Aitken Frame Homes website.
A year on now some of her clients have come back to add some space. Thanks to her design extra rooms can be easily added.
And she is giving back, donating cash to the very awards that got her started last year.
