Modular housing's third hype cycle

Brian Potter examines the elusive cost savings of the prefabricated home, and as someone now living through the third modular construction hype cycle of my career, the piece is a useful corrective. There’s a reason we keep coming back to off-site construction: HUD-code manufactured housing does deliver real savings in the US; the Sears “kit home” panelized model was a legacy success in the US; and contemporary international examples (especially Germany and Sweden) show factory-built housing can work at scale. But again and again, modular construction in the US has failed to sustainably deliver on its cost promises, with high-profile bankruptcies in the UK telling a similar story. The benefits tend to be schedule, predictability, and quality control rather than price. As we politely take part in the latest wave of enthusiasm, it’s worth being clear-eyed that this has been tried before, and is not a substitute for growth control reform.