Building homes.
Advancing affordability.

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 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 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 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 — 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.