An unusual house made out of five shipping containers from China was built by toy designer Debbie Glassberg in Kansas City, Mo.

An unusual house made out of five shipping containers from China was built by toy designer Debbie Glassberg in Kansas City, Mo.

As labor shortages and tariffs continue to drive up the cost of single-family home production and the lack of affordable housing makes headlines, some folks are turning to factory-built homes.

Cheaper, faster to build and more environmentally progressive, modular and manufactured homes can make housing affordable for folks across the country.

Here, we look at three types of popular factory-built homes: modular, container and manufactured homes.

These non-traditional homes fall under the category of prefabricated homes, simply known as “prefab.”

There are important differences within this category, but the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. Modular homes are made in a factory, assembled on-site in large sections and then affixed permanently to a concrete foundation. A container home is a type of modular home that is made from a steel shipping container and is permanently affixed to a foundation.

Manufactured homes are also factory-built, steel-framed homes but, unlike modular homes, they include a permanent chassis and axles so that wheels can be attached. Manufactured homes are also known as mobile homes and trailer homes.

These homes are also built to different codes. Manufactured homes must follow the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, code while modular homes follow the same building codes as stick-built homes, which are designated by their city, county or state.

Manufactured homes have gotten a bad rap because of their association with run-down trailer parks and media portrayals, said David Battany, EVP of capital markets at Guild Mortgage. But — like container homes and modular homes — their role in solving the affordable housing problem (while minimizing waste) shouldn’t be overlooked.

“A huge part of this is awareness,” Battany said. “If you took the average homebuyer, they don’t realize the high quality of manufactured homes. Even people in the mortgage industry are thinking of poor-quality construction on leased land. It’s totally different today. It’s very well constructed, the homes are made out of drywall. And people own the land in many cases. I used to work in construction. I could not tell the difference between a manufactured home and a stick-built home.”

Along with being cost- and time-efficient and less wasteful, modular homes are also a big deal among design aficionados.

Despite the words “container” and “factory” (which sound more like descriptors for processed soup than living spaces) these homes often appear on the covers of magazines like Architectural Digest and are admired for their use of clean mid-century modern lines and utilitarian sensibility.

It’s this kind of coverage (and following) that drives business for modular home manufacturer Gordon Stott, founder of Connect Homes based in Los Angeles.

“We haven’t spent time marketing our homes. Ultimately, it’s people responding to what they saw in magazines or in person. Our first house made the cover of Dwell, so that helped,” Stott said. “It’s a design-centric community that knows about modular homes. They like the look of them and understand the benefits.”

Among those benefits is the ability to slash housing costs in high-priced areas like Silicon Valley.

In August, the median price of a single-family home, per square foot, was $710 in Santa Clara County (home to San Jose), according to data from the California Association of Realtors. A Connect Homes modular home costs $280 per square foot, delivered and installed. The price includes all the foundation work, too.

In 2017, the average price for land in Santa Clara County was $120 per square foot, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. This data is based on land under current existing structures; vacant land might be even cheaper because it hasn’t been developed.

In other words, a modular home and the land costs about $400 per square foot, significantly less than the median per-square-foot price of a stick-built, single-family home in that area.

The homes are built to code and inspected by a third-party in the factory, then they’re inspected by a local building inspector once they’re on site. According to the National Association of Home Builders, prefab homes “often exceed all requirements of locally adopted building and fire codes.”

The build speed has made these homes popular among California wildfire victims, who face high construction costs and slow build times. Many of the homeowners want to rebuild, but there’s just not enough construction manpower, which means building costs can be exorbitant. On top of that, they’re facing a three- to five-year build time, which means they have to pay rent while they wait, Stott said.

“This summer, we delivered 16 houses in Sonoma. We have one Malibu house in the permitting stage, but we expect more to come. We can offer a very predictable price and timeline. Our houses are move-in ready in as few as nine months,” Stott said.

Less dire circumstances drew Stephen Murray to non-traditional housing, in the form of a shipping container. Looking for a respite from city life, Murray began a house hunt in the Catskills, a bucolic area in southeastern New York .

What he found was weathered farmhouses, some over 100 years old, with low ceilings that required him to hunch his 6-foot-2-inch frame. On the other end of the spectrum were suburban homes he found unappealing.

When he saw his first Catskills container home, by designer Tim Steele in collaboration with architecture firm Big Prototype, he was struck by their silhouette against the landscape. But what sold him was how little waste they produced. The 9-foot ceilings didn’t hurt either.

“You’re upcycling so you’re using existing material,” Murray says. “It spoke to me in terms of eco-friendliness.”

Steele, a longtime designer of container homes and founder of Steele House, believes that the age of McMansions is over. He’s passionate about showing would-be homebuyers that there are affordable ways to achieve the American dream, while minimizing their impact on the environment.

“Along with the green aspect, they check a lot of other boxes, too,” Steele saids. “They’re very strong — as strong as a brick home. We can also raise them off the ground, which is great if you live in a flood zone. Plus, when you see them there’s just something about them. They have a provenance that other homes just don’t have.”

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