In 2016, in the shadow of Colorado’s Collegiate Peaks, a small company set out to solve a big problem. Housing in mountain towns like Buena Vista, Breckenridge, and Vail had become unaffordable for the very workers who kept those communities running. Shortages of general contractors, long snowy winters, and sky-high real estate prices made traditional building nearly impossible. So Fading West decided to build differently.
Today, inside a 110,000-square-foot factory in Buena Vista, the company manufactures modular homes with the precision of a production line and the heart of a hometown builder. By applying lean manufacturing principles, Fading West claims it can reduce construction costs by up to 20% and deliver a finished home in half the time of a stick-built house.
“Our innovation is that we are manufacturers, not construction workers,”
said Eric Schaefer, Chief Business Development Officer at Fading West.
“Modular has been around a long time—but we’re redefining what it can be.”
Manufacturing Homes, Not Just Building Them
Walk through Fading West’s factory and you’ll see something closer to an automotive line than a construction site. Eighteen workstations line a U-shaped layout, each responsible for a specific task—floors, walls, roofing, electrical, plumbing, insulation, drywall, cabinetry, and finish work. Units move from station to station on air casters, gliding inches above the floor every four hours. In just seven days, a 10-ton home is complete—precision-built, code-compliant, and ready for transport.
The company’s 110 non-union factory workers, earning between the low and high $20s per hour, are supported by 50 administrative and field staff who handle on-site installation and utility hookups. Together, they’ve built a business with roughly $50 million in annual revenue—still modest compared to national homebuilders, but a growing force in an industry desperate for innovation.
“Our competition isn’t other modular companies,” Schaefer said.
“It’s the traditional homebuilders. We’re offering a faster, smarter path.”
From Mountain Towns to Maui: A Disaster Response Milestone
While Fading West was founded to address workforce housing in Colorado’s mountain towns, one of its most remarkable achievements came far from the Rockies.
In Lahaina, Maui, where wildfires in August 2023 claimed 102 lives and destroyed nearly 2,000 homes, Fading West answered the call for rapid relief. Partnering with FEMA, state and local officials, and New York architecture firm DXA Studio, the company built 82 modular homes in just two months—running two 12-hour shifts a day.
These one-, two-, and three-bedroom units, designed by DXA’s Liv-Connected spinoff, ranged in cost from $165,000 to $227,000, all paid for by FEMA. The brightly colored homes were trucked to Seattle and shipped to Lahaina, arriving just five months after construction began. Known as the Kilohana Project, it became FEMA’s first-ever modular housing solution for displaced residents—a milestone for both the agency and the modular industry.
“We came into business with small aspirations,” Schaefer reflected.
“But projects like Lahaina show how modular can make a real difference, fast.”
Rethinking the Model
Fading West began as a developer, marketing small community clusters of modular homes built by others. But by 2021, founder and CEO Charlie Chupp realized that solving the housing crisis meant controlling the entire process—from design to manufacturing to installation.
Charlie Chupp, CEO Fading West
With funding from four private investors and state loans, the company built its own state-of-the-art factory. The goal was ambitious: scale production without sacrificing design, quality, or affordability.
“Where we see ourselves as disruptors,” Schaefer said,
“is in our value engineering, speed, high-quality, and architecturally interesting designs.”
The result is a line of homes that blend modern design with factory precision—from single-family residences and townhomes to multifamily complexes and community developments. Fading West isn’t chasing trends; it’s responding to a national emergency. The U.S. housing market is short roughly five million homes, and builders who can deliver faster, cheaper, and better are no longer optional—they’re essential.
The Bigger Picture
The modular industry has been around for over a century, but its recent resurgence is powered by necessity. Affordability, labor shortages, supply chain issues, and climate resilience are forcing developers, governments, and nonprofits to think differently. Fading West sits at the intersection of innovation and compassion—where manufacturing meets mission.
Their success in Colorado and Hawaii signals what’s possible when vision, technology, and urgency align. As FEMA and other agencies rethink how to house displaced Americans, and as cities from Denver to Detroit search for scalable, affordable housing, companies like Fading West are proving that modular construction isn’t a niche—it’s a national solution.
In an era when homeownership is slipping further out of reach for millions, Fading West stands as a reminder that the future of housing may not be built stick by stick, but module by module.
Source: Adapted from CNBC, “Real estate prices, home ownership, housing affordability,” September 27, 2025.
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With over 9,000 published articles on modular and offsite construction, Gary Fleisher remains one of the most trusted voices in the industry.
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