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Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

nytimes.com

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Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#131

Post by andrewksu »

adrianmonk wrote: post #72
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…

With some exceptions, every site is different. The lot may be shaped one way or another. Maybe it's long and thin or maybe it's roughly square. There might be a tree that you want to save. Maybe the area is hilly and the lot slopes downward from back to front, so you want to build on the flatter front portion because it's easier, and there's adequate drainage so that's OK. Or maybe there isn't adequate drainage so yo…

The vast majority of lots can be addressed with a handful of designs. No need to solve for all outliers.

Complete bespoke design can be wonderful, but comes with high cost and time.

Fixed designs can also be wonderful, and much more accessible.

Check out https://www.acre.co as an example.

Disclaimer - I'm a founder.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#132

Post by andrewksu »

megaman22 wrote: post #11
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…

It's not super expensive or time-consuming to throw up a standard, American stick-built house. Once you have a foundation poured, you can do all the framing, sheathe it, roof it, and have it ready for finish work in a week with a handful of people. What takes forever and a day is the signoffs, and waiting for all the deliveries and third-parties to show up and do their piece. And then all the fiddly stuff inside...

Average US build time is 4-6mos for production builders. In areas like CA, it's closer to 12mos.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#133

Post by awalton »

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…

Houses aren't even that "bespoke" - most homes come from a stock set of designs that builders bought 20-30 years ago and have simply been churning out the same house... There are so many places in America that claim to have different house designs and yet they're identical or mirror images of one another. Maybe one's got a different trim package or a different set of cabinets or countertops... but otherwise indistinguishable from one another.

Stick-and-frame is still the most prevalent way to build homes for numerous other reasons though, like ease of available materials, roads being non-ideal for transporting large, heavy edifices, and the general perception of prefabricated homes being... not so great... due to seeing prefabbed mobile homes and the lack of quality that's incredibly common in that industry, amongst numerous other reasons.

What has seemed to really change things recently are "SIPs" - Structural Insulated Panels - essentially prefabbed wall segments that you can then jinga together to make a home. They've become wildly popular in some parts of the country as they are easy to transport on the back of an 18-wheeler, easy to install with or without a construction crane, and take care of multiple construction steps at once, greatly reducing build times. They can often be more energy efficient too, as they have fewer seams and the insulation is applied more evenly (often an expanding foam is used instead of fiberglass, which also boosts the R value by quite a bit).

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#134

Post by d1zzy »

vkou wrote: post #121
bobthepanda wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that regional concerns (there is not enough housing in the region) do not mesh well with local control. Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. If all the localities in a region, or even mo…

> Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. The localities have a point. Why should existing residents pay for new infrastructure, to accommodate housing for 10,000 new residents (All because large tech f…

Aren't local tech companies offices paying taxes that should take care of that? Unless you mean that tech companies should build private roads and infrastructure which sounds very bad... The way you get money from private parties and use it to build public infrastructure is through taxes :)

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#135

Post by adrianratnapala »

njoro wrote: post #119
bobthepanda wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that regional concerns (there is not enough housing in the region) do not mesh well with local control. Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. If all the localities in a region, or even mo…

Personally I wouldn't mind the Bay Area looking like Shenzhen, but I don't understand why people think that anything is going to change. Housing and education are prime assets in the new information based society and economy. People aren't going to share that anymore than natural resources, stocks, bitcoins or domains. Regardless of the larger consequences.

> People aren't going to share ...

It's more complicated than just sharing.

It's not about whether you have to let people come and live on your own property. It's about whether your neighbour may subdivide her own property for a profit. Collectively, owners have an incentive to stop her; but individual incentives are mixed.

We can see how the politics of that tension is working out right now. But how can anyone tell how it will play out in the future?

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#136

Post by chrisseaton »

oftenwrong wrote: post #130
ohazi wrote: post #8

I find it hilarious that a CA company is leading the charge in new, efficient, high-quality pre-fab design and construction. These units are going to improve construction quality and lower costs in every state except CA, thanks to our asinine zoning laws.

The same problems are pretty much everywhere in the US. This brings to mind a proposed project in Boston that faced a lot of friction, in part because prefab construction was proposed: https://www.universalhub.com/2016/lagrange-street-residents-... >The Zoning Board of Appeals this week rejected a proposed condo building on the site of a former asthma-inhaler factory in West Roxbury, citing neighborhood concerns abou…

What's the relevant of 'who wear sneakers'?

It seems so orthogonal that I think it must be some kind of local joke?

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#137

Post by vkou »

d1zzy wrote: post #134
vkou wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every locality thinks that everyone else should relieve the burden of housing because they are already "crowded" and new residents mean more money needed for services, which is a hard ask in a place like CA where raising local taxes is fiendishly difficult. The localities have a point. Why should existing residents pay for new infrastructure, to accommodate housing for 10,000 new residents (All because large tech f…

Aren't local tech companies offices paying taxes that should take care of that? Unless you mean that tech companies should build private roads and infrastructure which sounds very bad... The way you get money from private parties and use it to build public infrastructure is through taxes :)

Because tax rates are the same for old, and new residents/employers, they aren't paying enough to offset the costs they are adding to the system.

If you and your 4 roommates rent a 5-bedroom house... And then a sixth person moves in, and demands that everyone spends $20,000 each, to construct a sixth bedroom... The old residents are getting a pretty bad deal. The new resident paid $20,000 to get a room... But the rest of the house paid $100,000, for no benefit to themselves.

Cities have zoning/subdivision fees to deal with this exact problem. If you're adding X new units to the city, you have to pay for the infrastructure to support these X units.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#138

Post by reeddavid »

Quality prefabricated homes and apartments are a great idea. There's a negative association with prefabricated homes, but I've seen a lot of newer companies that seem to be focusing on quality and efficiency, often targeting the higher end of the market.

And lots of new homes built on-site are of very poor quality these days:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/where-we-live/wp/2017/05...

This approach doesn't seem like a solution to affordable housing, even though many of these companies use that concept in their marketing.

In the least affordable housing markets with worsening trends, including Seattle and San Francisco, construction cost is a tiny fraction of the problem.

Efficient, prefabricated housing isn't going to make housing meaningfully more affordable in places where the majority of the cost of a dwelling is its land.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#139

Post by jt2190 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #136
oftenwrong wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same problems are pretty much everywhere in the US. This brings to mind a proposed project in Boston that faced a lot of friction, in part because prefab construction was proposed: https://www.universalhub.com/2016/lagrange-street-residents-... >The Zoning Board of Appeals this week rejected a proposed condo building on the site of a former asthma-inhaler factory in West Roxbury, citing neighborhood concerns abou…

What's the relevant of 'who wear sneakers'? It seems so orthogonal that I think it must be some kind of local joke?

It's likely an allegation of lax worker safety, i.e. the workers should wear safety (a.k.a "steel toe") boots.

Re: Developers are manufacturing prefabricated apartment buildings

#140

Post by pxeboot »

reeddavid wrote: post #138

Quality prefabricated homes and apartments are a great idea. There's a negative association with prefabricated homes, but I've seen a lot of newer companies that seem to be focusing on quality and efficiency, often targeting the higher end of the market. And lots of new homes built on-site are of very poor quality these days: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/where-we-live/wp/2017/05... This approach doesn't seem l…

The article claims a per unit cost of almost $800k in SF. Cheaper, prefabricated units could make a significant difference here.
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