About Us
Building homes.
Advancing affordability.
Compact Cottages was founded on a straightforward conviction: that quality, well-built homes should be within reach for working families across North Carolina, not just those who can afford a custom build.
Our north star:
housing affordability
for North Carolina
and beyond.
North Carolina is in the middle of a housing affordability crisis. Teachers, nurses, first responders, construction workers, the people who make communities run, are being priced out of the places they serve. The gap between what a working family can afford and what it costs to build a home has grown wider every year.
Compact Cottages exists to close that gap. We design and build small-footprint homes, cottages, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs), every one of them a proper, permanent, high-quality home. Our structures are crafted in our own factory, not assembled stick-by-stick on-site, which gives us better precision, tighter construction, and more predictable pricing, all while meeting or exceeding stick-built building codes.
But building homes isn't enough on its own. We've spent years working alongside local officials, housing advocates, and community organizations to reform the zoning rules that have made it nearly impossible to build attainable housing in the places people want to live. Barry Bialik, our founder, chairs Asheville's Affordable Housing Advisory Committee. We push for the policy changes that make our work possible at scale.
More than 300 homes later, we're more convinced than ever: well-built homes and attainable housing are not mutually exclusive. That's what we're here to prove, one cottage at a time.
Quality homes.
Attainable prices.
One cottage at a time.
Watch
See our story.
What We Believe
The principles behind every home we build.
Quality and affordability belong together.
We don't cut corners to hit a price point. We rethink the process through standardized designs, in-house panel fabrication, and a team that's done this hundreds of times, so you get a genuinely well-built home at a price that makes sense.
Small homes deserve serious design.
Every square foot matters in a compact home. Our plans have been refined through hundreds of real builds, not drawn by a committee. Efficient, livable, and done right from the start.
Transparency is non-negotiable.
We tell you what things cost, what's included, and what's not. No bait-and-switch pricing, no vague estimates that balloon at contract. You deserve to know exactly what you're getting into before you sign anything.
Building isn't just our business, it's our community.
We live and work in the communities where we build. The housing crisis here is personal. We advocate for the policy changes, the zoning reforms, and the programs that make attainable housing possible, because building individual homes isn't enough on its own.
The Team
The people behind the homes.
Compact Cottages is a small, dedicated team committed to making attainable housing a reality in North Carolina.
Barry Bialik
Barry Bialik founded Compact Cottages with a simple conviction: Asheville deserved the kind of beautifully designed, efficient small homes he had fallen in love with while living on a houseboat and among the pocket cottage communities of the Pacific Northwest. A licensed general contractor with more than two decades of building experience, he has led the construction of over 300 homes in the Asheville area. Barry has been a tireless advocate for housing access, serving as chair of the City of Asheville's Affordable Housing Advisory Committee and working with local officials to reform zoning policies that have unlocked new infill housing opportunities across the region.
Steve Linton
Steve brings deep expertise in sustainable, high-performance home building to his role as COO at Compact Cottages. A Cornell-trained civil engineer with a master's in business from Western Carolina University, he spent more than 13 years leading one of the Southeast's most respected certified B-corporation home builders. A LEED Accredited Professional, he has spoken at national conferences on resilient construction and served as a green building consultant for ABC's Extreme Makeover program. Driven by the belief that well-built homes and attainable housing aren't mutually exclusive, he channels that conviction into every aspect of Compact Cottages' operations and growth.
Sarah Cosgrove
Sarah is a construction, development, and community infrastructure professional whose career has been shaped by a deep commitment to housing. After leading her family's flooring business, she stepped into advocacy, serving as Advocacy and Community Engagement Director for the Home Builders Association of the Blue Ridge Mountains, working to advance missing middle and workforce housing solutions across the region and leading recovery efforts following Western North Carolina's recent natural disasters. Now leading sales and marketing at Compact Cottages, she's energized by the chance to move from championing solutions to actively building them.
Scott Adams
Scott is a certified urban planner (AICP) with two decades of experience in urban design, transportation, and land use planning across both the public and private sectors. A graduate of Clemson University, he has spent his career helping communities turn dense, often conflicting zoning and development regulations into workable plans as an outspoken advocate for missing-middle housing, ADUs, and cottage-scale infill as practical answers to the region's affordability challenges. At Compact Cottages he leads land and development planning, guiding each site from feasibility through approvals so that projects pencil out for the homeowners and the neighborhoods they join. He's driven by a simple conviction: that thoughtful planning creates lasting value for the communities he serves.
Ready to explore what's
possible for you?
Whether you have land already or you're just starting to think about it, we're happy to have a straightforward conversation about what building with us looks like.