Pieter Wolfe, Wolfe Builders, likes to say he was born with a hammer in his
hand. He started building houses when he was 18 and spent 20 years growing a
business with his wife, Amanda. Framing is the best part of the job for Wolfe,
he takes pride in knowing the network of 2-by-6 lumber he puts together by hand
will be a durable skeleton when the house is complete.
As a traditional builder, Wolfe dismissed modular
construction with the attitude nothing made in a factory could be the same
quality as a house built from the ground up. In his opinion, a modular house
was a cubic zirconium next to a stick-built gem.
But in 2009, the Wolfes began to
realize they were missing out on a growing portion of the construction market.
During a visit to the Coxsackie, NY village clerk in 2009 to file a building
permit, Wolfe saw nine of the 11 permits on file were for modular homes. He
discovered time, even more than money, was the motivation for his customers.
While the cost of modular is comparable to traditional construction — Wolfe
said a customized modular ranch-style house runs about $185,000 in
— the time frame is much shorter.
“People want quick builds, and going modular cuts the
time for a new house in half, from six months to three months,” Wolfe
said.
When the Wolfes looked closer at factory made construction,
they were impressed by the craftsmanship Pieter Wolfe, who describes himself as
a stickler for detail, found lacking in the past. The Wolfe’s most recent house
is a stick-built home Pieter Wolfe built in 2008, but Amanda Wolfe said after
her experience with modular construction, she would live in a pre-fab house.
 |
| Amanda Wolfe in their model home |
The Wolfes do business with Excel Homes, a company based in
They have three full-time employees and six part-time employees. The team
continues to build traditional houses as well as modular homes.
Excel operates a climate-controlled, 200,000-square-foot
factory. The homes are customized down
to the doors, the paint color on the drywall and the drawer pulls. The Wolfes
ordered a modular home to use as a model home on Route 9W in Coxsackie, where
clients meet to make choices on what they will order for their modular home, picking kitchen
appliances and floor finishes the same way you would select a top and bottom
for a two-piece swimsuit.
The 2,800-square-foot, two-story Colonial the Wolfes use as
a model home allows home buyers to see modular construction firsthand and
provides an office for the company.
For more information about Excel Homes, contact Dustin Walter
