subject: Prefab Homes Are Once Again a Viable Option [print this page] If you are in the market for a new home, you're probably looking into existing houses for sale. Maybe you're even thinking of custom building a home. Most people think of these as the only choices they have when it comes to buying a home. Before you look into these options further, stop to think about buying a prefab house.
The prefab housing industry is not what it was in the past. You're probably thinking about trailers and modular homes right now, but these aren't the only options available when it comes to prefabrication. If modular housing is the way you want to go, there are extremely modern, energy-efficient, yet highly affordable choices. If the idea of building your own home and having free reign over its design is appealing to you, consider using prefabricated materials.
Prefab components are factory-built and transported to the construction site where they are added to the building quickly and efficiently. By using these materials, you can save yourself a lot of labor, which means your house will be finished more quickly than a traditional stick-built house. Not only will the building time be less, but buying prefab components means you cut down on waste as well.
Since prefabricated materials are built in factories, you can rest easy knowing that they won't be warped due to rain or humidity. They are assembled in controlled indoor environments, minimizing the number of days you lose due to bad weather while building your home. If you were to build each truss, floor joist, and wall panel bit by bit and the season is particularly rainy or cold, your construction time will be considerably slower.
Here's one of the best parts about prefab housing: you can build your house almost anywhere you want. Some neighborhoods may have regulations against modular or manufactured homes, but well-known builders that develop subdivisions have actually been known to buy prefab components to speed up and save money on the construction process.
These well-known builders, however, have been known to make subdivisions into rows of cookie cutter houses. When you choose to build your own prefab house on your own land, you can build to any specifications you want. This is the beauty of how this industry has gone from mass-production to mass-customization. In other words you get exactly what you want without having to compromise anything in your well-built prefab home.
