In a move not seen before, a major modular home manufacturer has decided to take a huge plunge into offering developers a complete ‘turn key’ development solution.
Ilke Homes, the British modular home factory, is reorganizing its sales efforts by giving developers something no other factory has done before. Ilke will acquire the land, get planning and zoning approvals, design and manufacture the modules, transport, set and finish the entire development.
Could something like this work in the US? Probably.
Will It? I doubt it without a lot of planning and commitment by everyone involved.
The US is so large and with each state and local code official wanting to put their “special” stamp on every single modular home and project, one of the first hurdles to overcome is arriving at a national code everyone can agree with.
That first hurdle is so tall that if the modular industry is able to actually jump over it, all the others should be easy to overcome.
A few US modular construction factories are currently doing parts of this total vertical integration but as far as I know, none are even attempting to take a project from cradle to grave as a single source supplier.
All it would take is the consent of every single state and local code office and an organization with pockets deep enough to self fund it and we’re off to the races. I almost forgot, we would need a bunch of new factories if we were to produce 100,000 more modules a year.
I don’t see any problems with this. Do you?
Gary Fleisher is a housing veteran, editor/writer of the ModcoachNews blog and Modular Construction Industry Observer and Information Gatherer
Contact [email protected]
