Pre-fabricated or modular homes are built in factories and assembled on site, cutting construction timelines and costs. In 2023 McKinsey calculated that off-site housing production could cut project timelines by as much as half and knock a fifth off the cost. Factories that use automation are more able to withstand labour shocks during pandemics or deportation campaigns. Pre-fab homes are common in Japan and the Nordics but make up only about 3% of America's existing housing stock.
The American Enterprise Institute reckons America could be short roughly 6m homes. California's deficit alone is estimated at 1.8m. The median listing price in Altadena, a Los Angeles neighbourhood, was $1.2m in 2025—evidence of the state's self-inflicted housing crisis.
Climate change may be the industry's accelerant. After the Eaton Fire destroyed more than 16,000 buildings across Los Angeles County in January 2025, pre-fab homes enjoyed a surge of interest. The state of Hawaii is building 450 modular homes to temporarily house 1,500 survivors of the fire that razed Lahaina in 2023. Fire-resistant features—metal roofs, no attics, air filters—are a selling point.
Modular housing still carries a stigma. "People imagine a trailer," says Carol Galante of the Terner Centre for Housing Innovation at Berkeley. Yet uniform factory-built housing has American precedent: in the early 20th century, homes ordered from Sears catalogues dotted the country, and the tract houses of Levittown and Lakewood later followed the same logic.
Mystics always hope that science will some day overtake them.