Why did prefab homes specialist Michelle Kaufmann has suddenly closed her Oakland office?
But news that the prefab specialist Michelle Kaufmann has suddenly closed her Oakland office and laid off all 17 of her employees does seem to have Larger Symbolism written all over it. What has weighed on these firms most heavily, several leading prefab architects told me in recent days, are problems in the factory model exacerbated — or exposed — by the credit crisis. Building single-order prefab houses in one factory — particularly a factory that does only high-design prefab, or, even worse, in your own factory — is essentially impossible now, since virtually no bank will loan the full cost of a prefab house upfront. Sources: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/hotproperty/archives/2009/06/prefab_homes_a.
