West Coast Reporter Says that Pre-Fab is Making a Comeback!

You heard me correctly. Pre-fab housing was in a decline and lost in the wilderness but a West Coast reporter for LAWeekly says that – get ready for this!…Walt Disney’s great nephew, Dewey (his name is really Tim Disney) along with Blu Homes are single-handedly bringing the pre-fab and modular industry back from the dead. Update 9/22/12: I just learned that Abby Disney, a grand niece of Walt Disney was one of the original investors in Blu Homes and Tim is her brother. Can this really be counted as a retail home?

Here is an excerpt from the story:

Could prefab be making a comeback? Prefab, or prefabricated buildings, are typically
manufactured in component parts, typically in a factory, then shipped and
installed on-site. Pre-housing bust several developers specializing in prefab
lauched in SoCal, including Marmol and LivingHomes, delivering
mass-produced modern homes. These homes, while having a high design quotient,
were often not much cheaper than a custom-designed home on a per square footage
basis. Enter Blu Homes: the latest entrant into the prefab space focused on sustainable
solutions aiming to provide affordable housing. 

One of the earliest prefab innovators marrying architecture
and manufacturing was Michelle Kaufman, who launched her eponymous architecture
firm in 2002 in the Bay Area specializing in green homes that used modular,
prefab technology. While her firm closed in 2009 due to the tanking housing
economy (she later opened a new design firm), she sold several of her designs
to Blu Homes. This past weekend, the first Blu Home in SoCal, set against the
alien-esque desert backdrop of Joshua Tree, was open to the public for a tour.

This must be the first of that $60M in marketing money that Blu Homes got at work. It would seem that  they are reviving an industry that doesn’t need reviving. What needs reviving are the people that are actually buying all those Lego-style, Architect designed, flat roofed single wide homes. Paying $300+ for a single wide that unfolds after delivery is something that has to mystify anyone with a brain.

CLICK HERE to read the entire article.