More developers and builders are turning to prefabricated design to bring greater supply and affordability to Western markets with soaring demand and a short building season.
In Denver, real estate developer, e-commerce business owner, and now modular builder Adam Berger has home segments built in factories that are later hauled and installed on-site. His second factory-built duplex, Alton Street Homes in Aurora, Colo., was built in Nebraska according to his design. The first duplex project was completed in less than four months, though he hopes to complete the current project in two months. Berger tells The Denver Post that affordable housing, "is such a monumental crisis right now that we need to find ways to disrupt it, to change the way it’s been done to build more of it."
Berger is not alone. At Housing Colorado’s NOW! annual conference in Vail last week, Daniel Gehman, of Humphreys & Partners Architects, discussed how gobs of new apartments are coming together on the West Coast using components built in domestic and overseas factories, driven by high housing costs. “People are protesting in the streets (over housing prices). We still deliver housing the way it was done in the 19th century,” Gehman said at the conference. “Off-site fabrication in general … could disrupt the whole supply chain.”
Related Stories
Off-Site Construction
Toronto Builds 100 Apartments in 8 Months for Vulnerable Population
In April, the city of Toronto stepped up to create 100 apartments to house those struggling with homelessness. By this winter, those apartments…
Meet These Modular Homes That Grow With Families
Boomerang children coming back, retired parents moving in, and the birth of oopsie babies can have homeowners pressed for space. But Module is…
Builders
Insight Into Trumark’s Growth Strategy and Daiwa Partnership
Trumark's co-founders discuss Daiwa House Group's equity interest in their business and the ways in which the two companies align