Rising property prices and difficult loans have forced many home buyers to consider alternatives to buying a conventional home
. The prospect of building a house can be daunting because of the spiralling construction costs and is not always a viable option for many first time buyers. But there is a simple way in which building your own home can be cheaper than buying an existing one, prefabricated housing.
The buildings are prefabricated off site in advance of a build and can be built as a whole but typically in sections or modules that can easily be shipped and assembled. The process of design and construction of prefab housing is suitable for traditional designs but architects have found it lends itself to more contemporary designs that would usually be expensive with conventional construction.
Prefab buildings still have guidelines to adhere to but the rules and regulations are not as severe or lengthy as conventional construction. This means that a buyer could acquire a plot of land and construct a home in a matter of weeks, by this time a convention build would not even have the initial paperwork approved.
Timber is traditionally used in the construction of these types of buildings, although some modern designs now include steel and concrete. Prefabrication factories will often take in whole trees as ram material and manufacture modular building sections ready to assemble. These homes are the cheapest and their use has been recorded as far back as the 17th century. Buildings were shipped to America to accommodate the rapidly increasing population and later in the 19th century to accommodate the gold rush, they were also widely used in Britain in the WWII to temporarily replace bombed housing, although some still remain in use today.
Prefabricated homes have proved to be a viable option for residential and commercial construction but there is still a stigma surrounding the industry because of the poor quality of previously constructed examples. Most banks and lenders do not consider most prefabricated homes adequate collateral for a loan or mortgage which has prevented the expansion of the industry.