Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings • Hacker News Board

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#21

Post by TylerE » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

mikestew wrote: post #12

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. Anything else falls into the dreaded "modular home" category. You know, just one step above a single-wide trailer, at least in the minds of some. Never mind the fact that the only thing separating my ungodly expensive house in Redmond, which sits on a slab, from a modular home is that it was built onsite. "Bespoke"? phhhffft , I can find you a dozen hous…

Because cars fit on all of our common transportation devices.

Houses, or even rooms, don't.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#22

Post by jpao79 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

It's also gaining popularity in the hotel industry. Inspiring video: http://www.guerdonmodularbuildings.com/modular-now-marriotts...

It has many benefits for the construction teams. They can work in a controlled environment, and focus on technical skills versus getting through urban commutes, live in lower cost of living areas (in this case Idaho), all the tools/materials are there, have quality assurance processes, etc.

I think the key is its for condos/apartments which will look virtually indistinguishable from a conventional apartment building, then you escape the stigma of mobile trailer home.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#23

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

jgibson wrote: post #10

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

I'm not so sure. Whats the average lifespan of a house? 50-80 years? To me it makes sense to invest the time to optimize design to make best use of the land area. I guess you could still use somewhat standarized parts though, spend more effort in the design phase.

Here in Ithaca, NY, many of the houses standing today were built before Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn. Ironically, they’re among the best housing stock, because unlike many mid-20th century constructions, the older houses are free of asbestos and lead paint.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#24

Post by siliconunit » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:34 PM UTC

edmundhuber wrote: post #5

The problem is the price of buildable land, not the buildings on it.

Absolutely, land estate prices are totally insane in the more gentrified areas. The building itself is nearly irrelevant, see Vancouver rare land plots for measure... or most of the UK. What is in dire need is a fundamental legislation change, where the entirety of the real estate is no longer a market open to speculation, but a fundamental right of the individual and is well proportioned to any income range within a very reasonable 2:1 ratio and this even if it means depricing the already bought properties and cutting corporations out of the building business and of course limiting the amount of houses in possession to a single individual to maybe 2 and eliminate speculators/investors completely.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#25

Post by isaiahg » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:36 PM UTC

tomatotomato37 wrote: post #15

I wonder how hard it would be for mobile home manufactors to support the modular stacking of units. It would look redneck as hell, but could probably go up even faster then wooden prefabs that still needs a building finished around it

Like the stacks in ready player one?

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#26

Post by jpao79 » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

jpao79 wrote: post #22

It's also gaining popularity in the hotel industry. Inspiring video: http://www.guerdonmodularbuildings.com/modular-now-marriotts... It has many benefits for the construction teams. They can work in a controlled environment, and focus on technical skills versus getting through urban commutes, live in lower cost of living areas (in this case Idaho), all the tools/materials are there, have quality assurance processes,…

Here's an advocate in the Bay Area:

Solving the housing part of homelessness through the construction of modular, micro-housing is described in the above video by Patrick Kennedy, founder of Panoramic Interests https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gC0fyFtbaQk

And here's an example in Sunnyvale: http://www.palisadebuilders.com/projects/domain/

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#27

Post by danschumann » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

What I want is an MVP house (room + bathroom + kitchen), which I can expand ( extra rooms, extra bathrooms, etc ). Normally with construction, when you add stuff, you need to break stuff, but if there could be a modular housing system that would let you expand without destruction, while being competitively priced, I'd do that.

In Elon Musk fashion, it would have to be better than a normal house, right? A modular house ( like a mobile home ), which is expandable, which is simultaneously better than a normal house. Maybe for my next startup idea ( since this is a problem I have and I would use ). The end goal would be a transition from a tiny house to a mansion, with each state being as good as a comparable house, and about as cheap. Maybe some panels they could sell back?

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#28

Post by rm_-rf_slash » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:37 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #2

Great idea.. still unlikely to bring down rent prices I assume without zoning changes.

In some cases, your conclusion is correct while the problem is completely different. I live in a college town, where rent and housing prices obey different laws of economics.

Unlike the Bay Area, a brisk 15 minutes drive in any direction will bring you to dirt cheap rural property, but because a huuuuuuge proportion of renters are college students, they tend to live in the city and put the rent on their student loans instead of moving further out and spending time (and money, on a car) commuting. It’s not as if a college student is going to throw in their hands and say “well, I could get an Ivy League degree at the school I was accepted to, or I could get a second-Tier degree somewhere else and pay half the rent.”

Case in point, Ithaca’s Collegetown neighborhood used to be a sleepy community of large rental houses, but over the last 20 years it’s been heavily developed into very large, tall apartment blocks, all while Cornell built massive developments of dorms and grad student housing complexes. And rents just keep climbing higher and higher...

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#29

Post by the_mitsuhiko » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #6

I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke. All that pouring and sawing and drilling and slathering of raw materials to do one-off designs for houses that are then filled with standardized ikea furniture which fits the custom room shape poorly. Manual labor is too costly for such a bespoke approach. Either we make carpenter and bricklayer robots to do the bespoke work cheaply, or we build homes fr…

> I’ve always found it odd that house construction is so bespoke.

I know very little about building construction but we just bought a new-built in Vienna and very little of that seems bespoke. The entire construction is largely made from standardized prefab elements (I think there are around 130 units in here).

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#30

Post by emptybits » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 6:39 PM UTC

Here in Vancouver, we have been building apartments to house homeless using modular construction.

http://vancouver.ca/people-programs/temporary-modular-housin...

Start-to-finish I believe the timeframe is about six months and one of the benefits of modular is that they can reconfigure or move these buildings in several years as needs and neighbourhoods change.