As evidenced by one of my recent articles, a majority of the people outside the modular housing industry have no idea what a modular home or even a modular commercial project is. Even news reporters writing about the need for affordable housing and the homeless get modular and off-site construction mixed up with manufactured housing.
Even with all the promotion, our industry does to educate new home buyers, most are still hard-pressed to tell the difference between a modular home and a “double-wide mobile home”. Even the manufactured housing industry has a new term for some of their product…CrossMod.
So let’s take a look at some of the myths that have surrounded modular housing for decades and try to once and for all…BUST THEM!
BUSTED MYTH #1: Modular and Double Wides look alike
Boxy and uniformly built doesn’t mean a modular home is the same as a manufactured home. Yes, there are quite a few simple ranch and cape cod style modular homes being built but that’s still the most sought-after plan for new home buyers, especially now that prices for LBM have skyrocketed and supplies are scarce forcing many buyers to turn to a more affordable new home.
But don’t let that define modular for you. Modular factories can build just about any design you can imagine including large two-story and contemporary homes. That’s something the manufactured HUD Code factory can’t do.
BUSTED MYTH #2: Modular factories charge you to ship air While it’s true that a six-sided module being shipped to the job site has a lot of open space inside that’s air, you must remember it’s finished air!
When a module arrives from the modular home factory, about 80% of the interior work is complete. Electrical, plumbing, ductwork, carpet, trim, painted drywall, windows, interior doors, and just about anything else that a site builder would have to do at the job site.
Now you have to ask how much is the air really worth? For a new home builder, it’s priceless.
BUSTED MYTH #3: Modular homes are built cheaper
Let’s put this statement out of its misery right now. Modular homes are not cheaper than a site-built house. In fact, there are inherent qualities found in modular construction that more than make up for this for the new home buyer and the modular home builder.
First is the energy savings built into every modular home simply because it is completely finished and inspected before it leaves the factory to make sure there are few leakage areas and are properly insulated. It’s hard to match that on a home built on-site.
While most site-built homes are simply walls and trusses being erected in the elements by workers with little training other than OJT, modular homes are built inside a factory by skilled workers that in many cases have done their job for decades.
BUSTED MYTH #4: Modular is the answer to the World’s housing problem
This is wrong on so many levels. I’m not saying it couldn’t be the answer but reality has to enter the picture at some point.
In many countries including the US, modular construction is at the 3% level of all new housing being built. To have modular become more than 50% of all new home starts would require more than a thousand new factories at a cost of tens of billions of dollars. That will never happen in our lifetime.
But we can begin making progress towards that goal. New processes and procedures in modular construction are finding their way in many existing factories and new factories are embracing some of this new technology in their initial design.
In conclusion, there are still many misconceptions relating to modular homes. However, modular truly does provide a cost-effective alternative to building homes on-site. By having modules delivered on-site ready for construction, so much time is saved.
The modular industry definitely is overcoming hurdles for a brighter future of home building but it still has a long way to go before new home buyers will ask for a modularized home.
Gary Fleisher is the Managing Director and contributor for Modcoach News. Email at [email protected]
