Are off-site constructed homes the future of the housing industry?
Not only is the answer yes, but the future is already here. Ninety percent of Finland’s housing is now prefabricated and this trend is spreading across Europe, where IKEA, for example has built more than 2,000 homes. In Japan, Toyota has entered the market, having constructed 4,600 homes in 2005 and expecting to build 7,000 homes by 2010. Prefabricated home construction has been taking off in the United States as well. Though it is still relatively new in the west, in many Eastern states from Maine to the Carolinas, builders have been using this method for over 20 years, and in some of those states up to 25% of the new homes are off-site constructed or modular. The method’s clear advantages have been the engine behind its recent growth down the eastern seaboard, into southern states like Florida, and out west into Colorado, Idaho, Utah, Nevada and Arizona. Like the automobile industry, where companies at one time built their own components but now contract out whole packages such as th
