Thousands of people who ordered tiny homes from hot startup Boxabl have paid cash but are still waiting

• Tiny-home startup Boxabl amassed a 160,000-person wait list since Elon Musk was linked to a Casita.
• Many people made down payments months or years ago, but Boxabl has only built 400 homes in a year.

Customers of Boxabl — the North Las Vegas-based tiny-home startup that its founders said is worth $3 billion — said that they've been waiting years to receive their orders.

They told Insider they've received little communication from the company about when the homes, called Casitas, will be finished.

Insider's Daniel Geiger and Alex Nicoll found that Boxabl's factory has only produced 400 homes during its first year of operations. Some 8,000 customers have made down payments on Casitas, a 375-square foot model that folds like a suitcase and costs about $60,000 apiece.

Of the $5.4 million Boxabl pocketed from those payments, over $1 million has been given back at customers' request, the company's cofounder, Galiano Tiramani, said.

One Arizona-based prospective buyer, Max, told Insider that he put $2,400 down for two Boxabl homes in 2021.

On top of the long wait time, Max said the prefab-housing company's poor communication has made it impossible to prepare the site for the homes' delivery. The company blamed the delay in part on lengthy government licensing and certification requirements in Arizona.

Max said he doesn't plan to wait around forever.

"It's pissing me off, to be honest," Max said. "I think this year is the maximum I will wait before asking for my money back."

Boxabl's founders — the colorful father-and-son team of Paolo and Galiano Tiramani — told Insider the six-year-old startup is now worth $3 billion.

But there is uncertainty when Boxabl will reach a production level sufficient to tackle its long backlog of orders — a snarl that could tarnish the brand's budding reputation with the public.

And until recently, the company's three-member board included a man whom a judge identified in a federal civil lawsuit as a conspirator in a plot to hide the Iranian government's ownership in a New York City office tower.

Did you order a Boxabl home? Do you have a story to share? Contact reporter Alex Nicoll via encrypted messaging app Signal at +1 (646) 768-4772 using a non-work phone, email at anicoll@insider.com, or Twitter DM at @AlexONicoll.