For Residential Elevators, the growing home elevator trend means big business

For Residential Elevators, the Tallahassee-based manufacturing company's name succinctly describes what it does.

And its CEO says the business now is rolling out new products that will revolutionize the growing home-elevator industry.

In fact, demand is driving the need to hire more employees. For 28 years, it has stood out amongst its peers by building custom elevators for every job and being the only full-service, family-owned company in the country that provides sales, design, manufacturing, installation and maintenance.

"Although we manufacture here, one-third of our sales are in Florida. Two thirds are outside of Florida," CEO Tom Hance said. "We do sell to almost every state along the coastline as well, including Texas ... We are in 30 locations throughout the market, and now we are in one of our faster growth periods."

That growth, in part, is directly tied to a general trend where more people are choosing to age in place and stay in their "forever homes," particularly multi-level ones. That includes new coastal homes built on tall pilings which require stairs just to get to the first floor from the ground.

In August, Residential Elevators will begin offering its new "Strikelock," which creates a smoother installation.

Here's how it works: Each level of a home has a landing door (a door to enter into the elevator from the hallway). That landing door has an automatic lock controlled by the elevator. The door can't be unlocked unless the elevator is present, meaning you can't walk in to open the door if there's no elevator there (or you'll fall down the shaft.).

Residential Elevators, along with its competitors, most commonly used a lock that mounts on the door and installers have to cut out a notch at the top of a door to put this lock in. Then it locks the door against the door jam. Now, with the strike lock, there's no need to cut the door at all. Instead, installers are putting the lock into the door jam; eliminating the need for modifications to the door.

Residential Elevators: How it started

The company doesn't do much marketing in the capital city. While Residential Elevators is based here, it works with dealers across the country. It installs more than 2,000 elevators every year. In the southeast, Residential Elevators provides a factory-direct pipeline of products and installation.

The company was originally based in Crawfordville and, at one time, was Wakulla County's largest employer before Walmart and Publix came to town. It still maintains the Crawfordville site as one of two assembly plants; the other one's a steel factory in Cairo, Georgia.

Residential Elevators has more than 100 employees in the region and more than 300 employees nationwide — a sharp increase compared to the early days when the company launched with seven employees in 1996.

That was the same year Rhyse Boeneke was born. He was five months old when his father, Bobby Boeneke, decided to purchase a small elevator company called Residential Lifts in Crawfordville with his business partner.

By 2001, Boeneke said his mother and brother were working at the company and the family was fully on board with leadership roles.

"We continue to kind of lead the industry with innovation, safety, quality, and we really enjoy doing the right thing," said Boeneke, repeating the mantra "doing the right thing" that was often said by his dad, who passed away in January 2015. "For us, it's been a pretty remarkable journey."

Boeneke grew up hearing stories from his parents about the joys and pains of running a business; the need to sell 10 elevators a month to break even and the family living in a trailer behind the manufacturing plant in Crawfordville "because every dollar that the company made was obviously reinvested in the company," Boeneke said.

"My dad handpicked some of the best talent available here in the state of Florida," Boeneke said. "As a team with a lot of hard work, determination and really good pulse on the market and what this industry could be, they grew quite rapidly."

At Residential Elevators, its most popular product would be the traction elevator, which company officials call a "two stop or a three stop" elevator. If a customer has a two-story home, the elevator stops on the first floor and second floors.

Residential Elevators can serve homes up to six story homes and "up to 50 feet of vertical travel, which is a pretty tall personal home," a company official said.

What's driving demand for home elevators?

Company officials say Residential Elevators is growing at a double digit rate.

At the time of his interview with the Tallahassee Democrat, Hance said the company has 25 to 30 positions available that range from territory sales and managers, to manufacturing, customer service, installers and service technicians.

The bulk of the company's products are going into newly constructed single family homes. Although, given just the right conditions, an elevator can be retrofitted in a home or townhouse; especially if it's being gutted down to the frames and studs.

The rise in home elevators is being seen throughout Florida. According to the Business Observer of Florida website, several factors are helping to drive the growth in residential elevators here in the Sunshine State.

"For starters, people keep moving to Florida, a state known for both its aging population and its attractiveness to wealthy retirees with lots of disposable income," a September 2022 article explains. "The current real estate market is also having an impact."

Several Florida-based developers say they're seeing an increase interest among clients for home elevators.

Will Lawler, a contractor with Pepperfish Construction in Tallahassee, said he mainly builds homes in the coastal areas such as Port St. Joe and Cape San Blas.

He said about 95% of the homes he builds are about 12 feet off the ground due to flood zones.

"Elevators are certainly gaining popularity because, obviously, you've got 30 steps or 20 some steps just to get to the first floor," Lawler said. "Most of these homes are being built are second homes or retirement homes, but most of them are also being rented to the management companies that manage these homes."

Home elevators, he said, are one of the top requests from renters who may be having a multi-generational getaway and some family members may have a hard time walking up stairs.

"Homes down there that have elevators rent for more," Lawler said, adding he's worked with Residential Elevators. "The average elevator right now is about $30,000 to $31,000. If I looked at the six houses I'm building right now, I think five of the six I'm building right now have elevators."

For beach homes in particular, Lawler said an elevator is more like an necessity and not an amenity. He offered an example of how many of these homes are two or three stories high.

"It's going to have 41 steps to get to the upstairs," he said. "Most of the kitchens are on the top floor, because you want a view. So they put the kitchens on the top floor, and if you're carrying groceries up 41 steps, that's a lot of steps."

In the years to come, Hance said the advent of new technology, more products and increased demand could help Residential Elevators get closer to one of its lofty goals: an elevator in every multi-story home.

"If you look at that trajectory, the size of the company would mirror that, which would be very large, we truly believe that's doable," Hance said. "We truly believe it's doable with new technology, which we have, a great customer service, a great sales force and manufacturing base. We are very, very excited about the future."

Contact Economic Development Reporter TaMaryn Waters at tlwaters@tallahassee.com and follow @TaMarynWaters on X.

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: For Residential Elevators, the growing home elevator trend means big business