Why Build, And Why Buy, Manufactured Or Modular Homes?

Posted by admin on Jun 24, 2009 in Blog | 0 comments

Modular homes are residential constructions that are better built than traditional site built housing. Like traditionally built houses, they can get quite large. They can be complex constructions, with intricate floor plans divided into many levels of rooms, galleries, and hallways.

Learn more about our Modular Homes

No matter where they are, modular and manufactured, modular homes can come in a range of sizes and have a wide range of uses. Modular dwellings can be many-gabled single-family mansions. Alternatively, they can serve as apartment buildings housing tens or even hundreds of families–for example Lexington Station and The Skylofts in Asheville, NC. both are a pioneering modular housing complex.

What are modular homes, and what distinguishes them from site built homes? The difference is that modular homes are built in a controlled factory environment. Then, they are transported to the actual location of the home and efficiently put together on-site, for a fraction of the cost of “traditional” (or “stick-built”) home construction. Today’s technology allows modular home manufacturers to create modular homes out of the same material as site-built homes. The only difference is that the modular home is put together in a specialized facility with numerous quality control checks, and that most of the construction process is already over by the time the home is brought to the site where it will finally stand.

So far, simple enough. Some confusion enters this discourse, however, when one begins to speak of the phenomenon of “manufactured housing.” Are modular homes the same as manufactured homes? Is a manufactured home always a modular home and a home that is modular, manufactured? Homes that are called “manufactured housing” or “manufactured homes” are–like modular homes–built in a specialized facility rather than on-site. This much is true.

However, the term “manufactured home” has a very precise additional meaning in the construction world. In the United States, all manufactured homes are put together according to government-mandated Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards. Developed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1976, this precise set of specifications also known as the federal HUD Code. The federal Code mandates that all manufactured homes are built on a frame foundation for ease-of-transportation to the home’s final location.

This sounds a lot like the philosophy behind so-called “mobile homes”–and there’s a reason for that. The HUD Code was enacted in 1976 to raise the quality of construction, appearance, and safety of mobile homes. Since the introduction of the Code, manufactured homes have begun to look so much like site-built homes that the term “mobile home” stopped being used to describe manufactured homes put together after 1976.

Builders and consumers alike win with modular homes, as well as manufactured homes. Manufactured homes typically are more affordable and take less time to build than modular homes. However–because of the benefit afforded by a controlled factory environment for construction to take place in–this difference in cost is minor compared to the difference in cost between both modular and manufactured homes and traditional site-built houses.

Areas where we build:

• Western North Carolina
• Asheville, North Carolina
• Black Mountain, North Carolina
• Buncombe County, North Carolina
• Blue Ridge Mountains