\u201cWe wanted to get back to basics, where we can develop a structure where a lot of the components are repurposed or reusable. So the actual physical structure itself, from the foundation up, is the same from project to project to project,\u201d Nicholas Pantuliano, chief development officer and chief operations officer for PTM Partners, told GrowthSpotter.
\u201cThat allows us to do a \u2018rinse and repeat\u2019 and build on the lessons learned from the last one for the next one.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Inception](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/TGS-L-Peacock-Magnolia-Flats-02.jpg\")
Inception Housing will use cold-formed steel framing to improve the resilience and long-term affordability of its 30-unit prototype buildings. (Courtesy of Inception Housing)<\/p>\n
Regarding Inception\u2019s vertically integrated platform and the way it controls construction and the supply chain flow, Pantuliano credits that to his and his PTM co-founder\u2019s lengthy employment with the LeFrak Organization<\/a>, a New York-based developer that serves as its own general contractor.<\/p>\n Inception is planning to build three-story garden-style apartment buildings with 24 to 30 units per building. \u201cIt\u2019ll be eight to 10 units per floor, with two-bedroom units on the end,\u201d Pantuliano said. \u201cAnd everything in the middle \u2013 almost like accordion-style \u2013 would be one-bedrooms.\u201d<\/p>\n Inception is launching with two projects underway. The first is Magnolia Flats<\/a>, situated between the Hourglass District and SoDo District in South Orlando, comprising 60 apartments in two new buildings, plus 14 apartments in renovated buildings. The second project is Spring Lake Apartments along U.S. 17 in Winter Haven, which will feature 168 apartments across six buildings.<\/p>\n Last March, the pre-construction activity at Spring Lake \u2013 the leveling of the lot \u2013 sparked frustration among neighbors<\/a> who questioned why there was no public notice about the project, but the city of Winter Haven explained that notification wasn\u2019t required because the property had been zoned for multifamily housing for 25 years.<\/p>\n The 13-acre site next to Spring Lake Plaza shopping Center was zoned to allow for multifamily residential back in 1985 but was undeveloped until now. (Polk County Property Appraiser)<\/p>\n Orlando-based Peacock Capital has started building a 168-unit apartment complex on the property at 940 Havendale Blvd., on Lake Mirror. (Site plan by exo Limited)<\/p>\n Show Caption<\/p>\n 1 of 2<\/p>\n The 13-acre site next to Spring Lake Plaza shopping Center was zoned to allow for multifamily residential back in 1985 but was undeveloped until now. (Polk County Property Appraiser)<\/p>\n Expand<\/a><\/p>\n Inception Housing intends to construct cold-formed steel buildings instead of wood-frame buildings. The steel framing of the buildings is being fabricated at a factory located along the I-4 corridor.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s almost like a cutter-type machine, but it\u2019s a lot more sophisticated \u2026 It has the ability to make the floor joists, it has the ability to make all the floor framing, and it provides the knockouts,\u201d Pantuliano said. \u201cIt knows if there\u2019s a plumbing knockout necessary, it knows where there\u2019s electrical knockouts, it knows where the HVAC knockout is.\u201d<\/p>\n The prefabricated steel components are then trucked to the construction sites to be assembled.<\/p>\n \u201cThey snap it together so it\u2019s rigid, and then it gets screwed together, and you wind up with a flat panel or a flat floor joist that can be put on a flatbed truck, and then stood up at the actual project site itself,\u201d Pantuliano said. \u201cWhen it\u2019s assembled, it\u2019s orders of magnitude more rigid than a wood frame building.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWood frame buildings are going to go away in the overall Florida market because of the strength-to-weight ratio, the water infiltration issues, the mold issues, termites and whatnot,\u201d he added. \u201cAll of the associated things that you can imagine for wood frame buildings, this sidesteps in a lot of ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Inception Housing says it\u2019s targeting affordable workforce housing for middle-income renters earning between 80% and 120% AMI (area median income), without the need for government concessions and subsidies.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do you attack the affordability issue? And make a product that is truly affordable for first responders, teachers, the people that are vital for a city to function,\u201d Pantuliano said. \u201cA lot of it just comes from construction costs.\u201d<\/p>\n The Orlando area\u2019s lack of affordable housing is well documented. In March, an annual report<\/a> from the National Low Income Housing Coalition said the region\u2019s shortage of affordable housing for low-income earners was the worst in America \u2013 and the rankings weren\u2019t much better for average earners. For middle earners, the Orlando area had 82 housing units for every 100 families, which represented the fourth decline in a row. The coalition considers the Orlando region to include Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Lake counties.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re excited to bring something to the market that will actually help solve the problem,\u201d Pantuliano said. \u201cIf we can get it to scale, the hope is that we can do something successful, but also something that\u2019s a benefit to the current issue that the state\u2019s facing.\u201d<\/p>\n Have a tip about Central Florida development? Contact me at\u00a0Newsroom@GrowthSpotter.com<\/a>\u00a0or (407) 420-6261. Follow GrowthSpotter on\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a lack of affordable housing in the Orlando-to-Tampa corridor, a new company is angling to build more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[558,28,114,12114,1335,11477,139,141,140,1911,149013,480,21956],"class_list":["post-367717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-business","tag-florida","tag-latest-headlines","tag-multifamily-residential","tag-orange-county","tag-orange-county-developments","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-polk-county","tag-polk-county-developments","tag-real-estate","tag-winter-haven"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.growthspotter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/TGS-L-spring-lake-apts-map.jpg?w=620\")
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