It’s starting to be a new modular home factory is being opened, planning to open soon or in the planning stages every week to help solve the US’s need for affordable housing. The latest to enter the fray will be located in Lancaster, PA, a state with an abundance of modular home factories, both well-established and new.
Liv-Connected, a modular construction company, is hard at work trying to solve the country’s housing crisis. Their solution? A customizable, prefabricated home that can be assembled on-site in four hours. The company was founded in 2019 by physician Herbert Rogove—an early proponent of telemedicine—and his son Jordan Rogove, co-founder of the New York City-based architecture firm DXA studio. They are joined by fellow DXA cofounder Wayne Norbeck and Virginia Tech professor of architecture Joe Wheeler. Liv-Connected began taking orders for its homes in June.
Liv-Connected has partnered with Atomic, a company with experience in rapid-assembly structures for live events, to manufacture modular homes in a 110,000-square-foot factory in Pennsylvania’s Lancaster County. Liv-Connected currently offers two models to clients, which include both developers and individual prospective homeowners: Conexus, whose base is a 500-square-foot, one-bedroom home, can be manufactured with additional bedrooms and bathrooms; and Via, which is on wheels and can be towed as a trailer, is a tiny home that contains a living, sleeping, and kitchen space in models as small as 200 square feet. The Conexus model starts at $150,000, while the Via model begins at $90,000. The company hopes to offer multifamily units in the future, as the Conexus model can be stacked.
This modular home is not “just a shed on wheels.” The components of the home are produced through CNC milling, providing not only “hyper-precise manufacturing” but the potential to scale up production in other factories. Rather than shipping volumes filled with empty space, as other modular construction companies have tried, most of the materials for a Liv-Connected house can be stacked flat for shipping, saving funds that can be spent on better construction and materials. The company now produces six units per month, but it has contracts for 200 of each home type scheduled for 2023.
Liv-Connected also differs from competitors in its healthcare plug-ins. Customers can add a fall-monitoring feature to their home (which uses lidar), and homeowners have the ability to specify whom to call in an emergency.
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Gary Fleisher
Gary Fleisher is the Editor in Chief of Modular Home Source and Offsite Builder. Email at [email protected]
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