Cutting Costs with Modular Construction Waterville ME

Imagine being able to build a home on a piece of land and reduce your timelines by six to 12 months, save 50 to 80 percent in debt service and lower your construction costs by roughly 15 percent. This is exactly what Richard Palumbo, vice president and co-owner of Custom Modular Designs, LLC, in Rhode Island, says you can expect by using modular home construction.

This underused and often misperceived housing strategy can not only lower costs and reduce timelines, but it may also lower risk with a controlled environment, raise home quality and increase energy efficiency.

Modular homes can lower costs and shorten timelines Misconceptions

Because modular homes are partially produced in factories, they are sometimes confused with mobile homes or manufactured homes, which are also produced in factories.

"A modular home, contrary to some common belief, is not a mobile home, not a trailer home and it's not a HUD home. It's not a panelized home or a kit home," Palumbo said. "A modular home is a system built product that is...designed in accordance with state and local building codes, and then built in sections, boxes or modules."

"The modular home is a home that is...the same that would be built on site, but it's built off site and then moved to the site in sections," Paul Lewakowski, president and owner of Lionheart Development, a custom modular contractor based in New Orleans, said.

Roughly 70 to 85 percent of a modular home is produced in a controlled factory environment. The boxes are then shipped on trucks and assembled at the home site using a crane. Once assembled, the home is permanent; it is not moveable in the way that mobile homes are.

Unlike mobile homes, modular homes are regulated by the same authorities as traditional site or stick built homes, Lewakowski said.

Modular homes are built to Uniform Building Code (UBC), a higher standard than the HUD code that regulates mobile homes, Rory Manning of Western Finance/Land Home Financial Services, a modular and mobile home lender based in Colorado, said.

Modular home codes call for better plumbing, electrical, floor joisting, wall framing and roof trusses, and they allow for higher roof pitch elevations, Manning said. Modular foundations are also much more sound than mobile home foundations, he said.

Construction speed

Modular homes can be constructed much faster than site or stick built homes. Typically, from the time the home is ordered, "our factories will be able to produce and deliver the home within four to 12 weeks," Palumbo said.

"We average roughly a 48-day turnaround on a ranch or a Cape Cod style home where the upstairs is available, but it is not finished from the factory," while a traditional site or stick built home would take six to 12 months, Tim White of Carolina Country Homes, Inc. in South Carolina, said. A two-story modular home would take 60 to 75 days, he said.

The big advantage of fast con...

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