Modular manufactured home value

We provide our clients with Container Houses design, consulting engineering, and then prefabricate high-quality building components which are shipped to job sites throughout the world, Local builders or skilled do-it-yourselfers assemble and complete our houses and home additions. Our services include taking the technical lead for permitting and approvals, builder recruitment, logistical and project coordination – and technical assistance throughout.

A small, custom traditional home builder cannot compete with a modular home builder’s financial leverage because of the economy of scale that production in an efficient factory setting with skilled craftsmen and precise machinery allows. Modular manufactured home value is therefore as great as traditionally built homes.

Homes or modular room additions are transported to the site nearly complete, while the construction of a stick-built home is carried out at the site. For Mobile Toilet additions, modular construction has less invasive time to your daily life.

Forty years ago it cost $500 to buy a factory-made TV and $10,000 to have a nice house built from scratch on a plot of land, a ratio of 20:1. Today the TV costs $200 and assembling the local tradespeople and lumber will probably set you back $200,000, a ratio of 1000:1. Part of this difference may be ascribed to the TV being built with $1/day Chinese labor.

How about this for a brilliant business idea: clearcut a Canadian forest (they love to cut down trees in British Columbia) and ship the lumber to China, build modular houses there and ship the completed houses back to the U.S. in container ships. Sell them at Walmart (they’ll sell anything Chinese-made at Walmart). The quality won’t be quite as good as the best custom homes in the U.S. but it will be good enough and when things start to get creaky in 20 years you can throw the house out and buy a new one at Walmart or Home Depot.

This is not a totally new idea, of course. Nearly all houses in Scandinavia are factory-built. We have it here in the South with http://www.hzxiaoya.com/ and in Quebec with profab but I don’t think anyone has tried it with Chinese labor. It costs less than $2000 to ship a container from China to the U.S. and a Modular Home ought to fit in one or two containers. So shipping shouldn’t be a killer.