A new White Paper introduces several new ways for Colorado to get ahead of the need for more than 50,000 new housing units yearly for the next 5 years including switching a lot of the construction to off-site methods.
Colorado is on the verge of an affordable housing crisis so severe that it could derail the state economy and contribute to a significant deterioration in the quality of life for those priced out of the market and the White Paper addresses those issues.
Colorado needs to build 54,190 new housing units a year over the next five years just to cover its deficit and keep pace with population gains, the pair argue. But for a variety of reasons, the state is only building a little over half of what it needs and that is squeezing the existing home market hard.
Statewide, the median price of a single-family home sold in May was $520,000, up a stratospheric 25.3% over the past year alone, according to the Colorado Association of Realtors. In metro Denver, the median price of a single-family home sold was at $573,500, also up 25.3%.
But the study doesn’t leave builders off the hook. As the last major industry to modernize, the construction industry will need to get greater control over its costs and deploy modern technologies to become more efficient. That will require leaving behind the labor-intensive model of stick-building homes and using more efficient modular construction at off-site plants.
As an added bonus, if Colorado takes a leading role in this transition, it could become a major hub for the modular building industry. One change needed to smooth the way for more factory construction will be creating a statewide uniform building code to replace the hodgepodge of local rules that deter competition and complicate the construction process.
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Gary Fleisher is the Managing Director and contributor for Modcoach News.
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