Modular housing rebuilds American Dream of affordable home ownership

Owning a home is one of the pillars of the American Dream. But with a nationwide housing affordability crisis headlined by a lofty median price of a single-family home at more than $422,000, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate coming down but still relatively high, and a persistent, nationwide housing shortage of nearly four million units, that dream is out of reach for many individuals and families. 

Modular homebuilder Fading West is planning to be part of the solution to this wide-ranging dilemma. Founded in 2016 in Buena Vista, Colorado, the company assembles modular homes inside a 110,000-square-foot factory. Compared to traditional on-site stick-built construction, Fading West claims its lean manufacturing principles reduce costs by up to 20% and delivers a finished house in half the time.  

“Our innovation is that we are manufacturers, not construction workers,” said Eric Schaefer, chief business development officer at Fading West, which, besides single- and multi-family homes, also fabricates townhouses and apartment complexes. “Modular has been around a long time,” he said.

The industry has a history dating back a full century and has been growing again in recent years, though off a low base relative to national residential real estate statistics.

“Where we see ourselves as disruptors is our value engineering, speed, high-quality and architecturally interesting designs,” Schaefer said. 

A case in point, if an atypical one, is Lahaina, Maui, the historic Hawaiian city that was devastated by wildfires in August 2023. Along with taking 102 lives, the conflagration destroyed nearly 2,000 homes. In coordination with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, state and local officials and New York City architecture firm DXA Studio, Fading West produced 82 brightly colored modular homes in two months, running two 12-hour shifts a day. The homes were trucked to Seattle, then shipped to Lahaina. Production took less than five months from the start of construction to completion.  

The one-, two- and three-bedroom houses, designed by DXA’s Liv-Connected spinoff, ranged in cost from $165,000 to $227,000 each, according to FEMA, which paid for them. The Kilohana project — ultimately planned to comprise 167 modular units — marked the first instance of FEMA offering displaced residents modular homes instead of trailers as temporary housing, according to an agency spokeswoman.  

From disaster relief response to national affordable housing crisis

Utilizing its modular housing for disaster relief victims was a first for Fading West, too. “We came into business with very small aspirations,” Schaefer said. The company started out as developers, creating housing attainable for workers in the small mountain and rural towns near Buena Vista, including Colorado ski resorts such as Breckenridge, Copper Mountain and Vail, where real estate prices are as sky-high as the peaks….