 |
| Simon Goetz/Unsplash |
The demand for affordable housing around the world today is insatiable, and with over 3 million people migrating to cities every week, urban centres must sustainably and swiftly ramp-up new home construction.
Modular Homes Offer A Promising Solution
Q. But what are they, really?A. Modular homes start life in parts, which are built in a factory-like setting. The finished portions are then transported to the homes' actual locations, where a builder assembles them.
🔧 Also, like any other factory, efficiencies come from scale, aka repeat orders, and a lot of prefab manufacturers simply don’t have the order volumes.
🔧 And, how can we forget that real estate developers are reluctant to deliver hundreds of houses at a time, mostly because of market pressures.
💡 These homes are also called factory-built, system-built, or prefab homes (short for prefabricated).
Is It Umm, Complicated?
Not at all. Per this FT report, modern modular building techniques can;
🏗 Allow real estate developers to make flexible units in factories before transporting them for rapid on-site assembly.
🏗 Enable home parts to be built like giant Lego bricks, often within days, with less waste and at lower costs than traditional buildings.
🏗 Also ensure high-quality design and finishes.
Then What's Stopping Us From Going Modular?
🔧 Experts feel that despite immense progress in construction techniques, we continue to build houses using a 100-year old method because of vested interests, lack of vision and a stigma associated with modular homes throwing the spanner in the works.
😅 If a project of 250 homes is delivered at one go within a few months from launch, developers would be axing their own feet affecting their own margins.