Latest news with #modularhousing
ABC News
3 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Builder says WA government's modular push neglects key ingredient for new housing
A country builder says the Cook government's decision to use so-called modular housing to address Western Australia's shortage of affordable housing fails to account for the lack of developed land. The government announced the low-deposit loans for modular housing, to be offered through state-owned lender Keystart, as part of a suite of housing measures ahead of tomorrow's state budget. But country business and community leaders say the homes will not be much use without land to put them on. The Shire of Waroona — a regional migration hotspot just south of metropolitan Perth — is a case in point. "We have had developers who've looked at developing land and they've been knocked back given there's no more capacity in our system," said shire president Mike Walmsley. Headworks refer to the initial water and power infrastructure required for residential lots and is carried out by the state-owned Water Corporation and Western Power. Housing and Works Minister John Carey said the government had launched "unprecedented" measures to unlock land for regional housing. "Claims to the contrary are simply false," he said. He said $40 million from the government's infrastructure development fund had been put towards reducing obstacles to land development, including costs associated with utility connections. "Recently, we announced the new $400 million Housing Enabling Infrastructure Fund to unlock land in both regional and metropolitan areas," Mr Carey said. "This fund will help deliver critical water and power infrastructure to support a pipeline of residential land supply across the state." Mr Carey pointed to the sale of more than 1,000 lots across 90 towns since 2020 under the Regional Land Booster program as evidence of the government's success. Mr Walmsley said Water Corporation had blocked potential housing developments due to pressure on the local wastewater facility, which had operated at capacity since 2016. The state government pushed back upgrades until 2028, according to the shire. Mr Walmsley said the government's responsibility to provide power and water to meet growing housing demand had seemingly been neglected. Local governments in the broader Peel region have been pushing for expansion of local sewage capacity to support new subdivisions and population growth. Regional builder Sam Karamfiles is based in Manjimup, 300 kilometres south of Perth, where land availability has also put the handbrake on housing supply. "There's definitely an undersupply of affordable land in regional areas," Mr Karamfiles said. "Even with major developments in Perth, they're all hinged on government decisions and red tape." In the farming community of Pingrup, 360km south-east of Perth, Carol Walsh began assembling a modular home to house staff on her farm in 2024. She claimed she applied to Western Power to connect power to the modular home more than two years ago. "If it had been a family home, it would've been an absolute nightmare," she said. Off-site construction has a lot of natural advantages in regional and remote areas with the tyranny of distance and acute shortage of skills making on-site builds more challenging. The government's pivot to off-site construction has been lauded by Master Builders WA chief executive Matthew Pollock. "This is very welcome as something that will particularly help in the regions and remote areas where traditional supply chains are stretched, which makes it difficult to build traditional housing on site," Mr Pollock said. Mr Karamfiles was not too concerned about losing business to off-site builders. He said existing regional builders were already stretched to the limit. Western Power and Water Corporation have been contacted for comment.
National Post
4 days ago
- Business
- National Post
Jamie Sarkonak: Mark Carney is demanding power to suspend all federal laws. What will he use it for?
Article content Making matters more concerning are Carney's own potential private-sector interests: he is the former chair and environmental, social, governance (ESG) lead of Brookfield Asset Management. Carney's publicly traded assets have been put into a blind trust, but we're still waiting on financial disclosures through the ethics commissioner. All considered, he could stand to benefit from the suspension of law in the area of modular housing and green energy, for example, given Brookfield's holdings. Article content Aside from the corruption risk, the Building Canada Act could ultimately create the expectation that the feds should selectively suspend clunky laws to get anything of worth built, incentivizing lobbying campaigns and distracting from the actual job of government. If some Canadian laws are so hostile to development that they warrant total suspension, as the Liberals seem to admit by tabling Bill C-5, they should spend their time fixing them. Fast-tracking exceptions aren't out of the question, either: if Parliament wants to give cabinet the ability to suspend certain pre-determined clauses in certain cases, it can go right ahead. Article content Indeed, the left decried Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's plan to repeal the burdensome Impact Assessment Act, which hasn't approved a single project in its six years of existence, and requires proponents to file everything from sociology dissertations to greenhouse gas projections in their applications. But Poilievre's intent was to replace it with something else — and he certainly didn't set out to suspend the whole roster of environmental laws, as seems to be Carney's approach. Article content Proponents of the scheme will likely defend it by pointing to the fact that Bill C-5, as it's currently written, proposes a list of only 13 suspendable laws. These include the Impact Assessment Act (and its predecessor, which still applies to a number of projects underway in Canada), the Fisheries Act, the Indian Act, the National Capital Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, a part of the Canada Transportation Act, the Species at Risk Act, and a handful of federal laws that govern Canadian bodies of water. Article content Article content It's a fraction of the hundreds of federal laws that are on the books — but that's just for now. The moment the Building Canada Act becomes law, that list can be expanded at cabinet's pleasure. In that way, Bill C-5 is a Trojan horse. Article content The Liberals are now moving the bill along at a pace so fast that it escapes the rule of law. The House of Commons transport committee is scheduled to handle the bill this week, with only one day of witness hearings planned before MPs hit their deadline to propose amendments. It will simply be impossible to give this wide-ranging bill the full consideration it deserves, as a proposal to allow cabinet to pause any law at any time should take months, not hours. Article content Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet got it right last week when he denounced the bill and promised to fight the Liberals' attempt to speed it through the House of Commons without any meaningful debate. Article content The Conservatives are still on the fence, but they shouldn't be. Supporting Bill C-5 in its current form means unleashing the Liberals from the oversight of Parliament, which would be a catastrophic dereliction of duty for the Opposition. Article content
Forbes
10-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Probing Alternative Solutions To Affordable Housing Crisis
Modular affordable housing project at 833 Bryant St. seen being built on Tuesday, June 30, 2020, in ... More San Francisco, Calif. (Photo By Liz Hafalia/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images) The crisis impacting housing affordability stands among the most pervasive and complicated challenges facing the nation. In virtually every part of the country, housing costs have outstripped incomes. That's left huge swaths of the population either rent burdened or entirely removed from homeownership. The crisis is most acute in the nation's largest cities, but smaller cities, towns and rural areas are not immune. 'This isn't just a question of economics,' says Jonathan Curtis, founder and CEO of Chicago, Ill.-based real estate development firm Cedar Street Partners. 'When people can't afford stable housing, everything else becomes more difficult: Finding and keeping a job, accessing healthcare, caring for children and building generational wealth. Housing underpins opportunity, and right now, the foundation is cracking.' Without coordinated action, more thoughtful policy and fresh ways of thinking about planning, financing and developing housing options, the yawning gulf between Americans with access to housing affordability and those without will widen, he says. The frameworks created years ago for developing housing were designed to preserve neighborhood character or keep growth in check and no longer work, Curtis says. They didn't account for the economic realities of climate change and population pressure. To really address the challenges, Curtis believes state governments will need to take the lead in enacting laws with teeth to tackle urban policies that throw up obstacles in the form of 'inconsistent standards, exclusionary zoning, inflated impact fees and a planning process that drags through layer after layer of political review,' he says. What he calls 'clear fixes' exist: Mandating certitude of fees and timetables, forcing cities to shoulder the burden of proof when turning thumbs down on compliant projects and dictating cities losing in court cases post large appeal bonds. Modular construction can also play a role, trimming the time required to deliver affordable housing, making the process more predictable and reining in supply chain volatility. Curtis knows the challenges and possible solutions first hand. 'We spent years trying to advance a modest mixed-use housing project in La Canada Flintridge, one that meets local needs, respects the community and complies with state law,' he says. 'Even so, we faced resistance rooted in outdated land-use patterns and reluctance to accept change. Ultimately, we, the California Attorney General and two housing organizations took legal action to move the project forward. The ruling was watched closely through California. It underscored the need to modernize how cities think about growth, especially in high-opportunity areas where exclusionary practices still hold sway.' The solutions to the affordability challenge must evolve, because the crisis itself continues to evolve. So says Matt Forssman, managing partner with GMF Group, a Palm Beach, Fla. firm with a strategic emphasis on manufactured housing communities. 'Strategies like public housing and rent control have played important roles, but come with limitations,' he says. 'Rent control may provide short-term relief, but it can also discourage new development and worsen supply shortages. Public housing developments are expensive to build and maintain and require significant government funding.' Manufactured housing communities (MHCs), which Forssman calls 'naturally occurring affordable housing' has offered housing for millions for much of the last century. MHCs represent the most significant source of non-subsidized affordable housing in the U.S. 'Unlike subsidized housing, MHCs are privately financed and operated . . . a market-driven solution that doesn't depend on public programs,' he says. Without innovative solutions, the affordability gap Curtis referred to will claim some of many municipalities' most important contributors. 'We're watching the backbone of our communities get pushed out,' he says. 'People who hold our cities together – teachers, nurses, sanitation workers, first responders – can no longer afford to live near their work . . . We continue to lose trust in the systems that are supposed to protect us. And the longer we wait to act, the harder it will be to repair what's already breaking.'
CTV News
01-06-2025
- Business
- CTV News
‘What we can offer is speed': Modular housing business owner on tackling supply
Inside Ironwood Manufactured Homes' factory in Woodstock, N.B., workers pump out a house a week. Owner Mark Gaddas points to a home that's three days into construction. The drywall is being installed, which he says typically wouldn't happen in on-site construction until the house is weather-tight. It's one advantage to building indoors. 'That's one of the reasons why we can speed things up over time,' he said. Founded in 2018, Ironwood is a few months away from moving into a new factory that's ten times its current size. There, they will be able to build more houses and add efficiencies, such as automation. Provincial and federal governments invested a combined $2.5 million in repayable loans to help. Modular Housing (Sarah Plowman, CTV News) 'We strictly build custom modular houses right now. The new facility will give us the capacity to get into multi-residential,' said Gaddas, noting workers could build hotels, universities and dormitories. 'We'll have anywhere from ten to fifteen houses under construction at all times.' Factory-built housing makes up a small percentage of Canada's housing market, but Prime Minister Mark Carney has said prefabricated and modular housing are the future. He has pledged $25 billion in financing to prefabricated home builders as his government aims to double the pace of Canada's home construction. Carney has also pledged to order housing units from manufacturers in bulk to create sustained demand. 'It's not the silver bullet to the housing crisis,' said Gaddas. 'It's part of the solution. It isn't the ultimate solution. What we can offer is speed.' At the University of New Brunswick's Off-site Construction Research Centre, Director of Innovation and Operations Brandon Searle notes how off-site construction has been around for more than a century and often increases in popularity following or during a crisis. He believes prefabricated and modular housing are a piece of the housing crisis puzzle. 'I'd say they're a large piece,' Searle said. Searle explained this kind of construction isn't necessarily cheaper than traditional homes, but builds happen faster, with fewer workers and less waste. Costs are also more certain, since a lot of decisions happen before construction starts. The industry faces barriers to scale up, Searle notes, such as high capital investment costs, disjointed policies across jurisdictions and the need for demand that businesses can count on. Modular Housing (Sarah Plowman / CTV News) 'Creating that sustainable demand is a role that the government can play, but also incentivizing them to invest in innovation and automation,' he said. Securing financing or insurance can also be a challenge, and it's something the research centre is looking into to figure out what needs to change and what role Ottawa can play in underwriting projects. Kevin Lee, CEO of the Canadian Home Builders' Association, notes the main reason not many of its members build prefabricated and modular homes is because the traditional house construction industry is already efficient as is and is made of mostly small crews. 'That really has to do a lot with the boom-and-bust nature of the housing industry,' Lee said. 'The system kind of operates like a factory but instead of the house moving down the assembly line, the workers move through the house, but do the same repetitive activities, house to house.' Lee says it's more labour intensive but requires less overhead costs. Policy changes are needed for factory-built housing to become more widespread, including consistent rules around the planning and approval process, he adds. 'At the municipal level, you cannot build the same house city, to city, to city, because every city has different bylaws, zoning requirements, interpretations of the exact same provincial building code, which vary city to city, and sometimes within the city, which makes doing anything at scale incredibly difficult,' Lee said. Borrowing best practices Ironwood's new factory will add automation, including a saw to cut lumber and possibly a machine that, with the push of a button, installs nails or screws. To borrow best practices, Ironwood is looking to European countries, such as Sweden, where modular housing reshaped the homebuilding industry. 'The automation that they have is much further ahead than where we are,' said Gaddas, adding there's one manufacturer in Sweden with 'a zero-labour line.' 'You have robots essentially building all the compartments of the houses that we're talking about.' Mathieu Laberge, Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President at the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, said while this kind of housing is marginal in Canada, 90 per cent of homes in Sweden are made with some off-site component. It didn't happen overnight. Laberge explained that in the 1960s, Sweden decided it was the technology of the future and the government began funding projects to create a baseline demand. 'Now, they don't need any more government support, because it's a self standing industry. And that's the point we're at in Canada,' Laberge said. Laberge and Gaddas point out there's a lot of misconceptions around modular housing, like assuming it's one-size-fits-all and that these houses can't be customized. 'That's not true,' said Laberge. 'They're good-looking, they're high-quality, well-insulated, weather-appropriate for Canada. And so, these are all misconceptions that we need to overturn.'
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Multifamily Modular and Prefabricated Housing Construction Market Report 2025: Key Players like ATCO and Greystar are Leveraging Innovations for Affordable Housing Solutions Amid Rising Global Demand
The multifamily modular and prefabricated housing construction market is set for robust growth, projected to rise from $52.12 billion in 2024 to $73.84 billion by 2029, driven by urbanization, affordability, and sustainability. . Multifamily Modular and Prefabricated Housing Construction Market Dublin, May 29, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Multifamily Modular and Prefabricated Housing Construction Market Report 2025" has been added to offering. The multifamily modular and prefabricated housing construction market is on a significant growth trajectory, with market size expected to expand from $52.12 billion in 2024 to $55.73 billion in 2025, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.9%. Notable factors contributing to this surge include urbanization, cost efficiency, sustainable practices, and population growth. The market size is anticipated to reach $73.84 billion in 2029, driven by ongoing urban density, affordable housing needs, innovation in design, and advances in off-site construction and assembly. Modular construction's proven benefits, such as cost and time savings, waste reduction, and enhanced safety, are central to market growth. The Modular Building Institute reported in 2023 that modular industry projects accounted for 6.64% of new construction starts, with a value of $14.6 billion. These advantages make modular housing increasingly attractive to multinational construction companies, poised to boost revenues and expand the market's reach. Growing demand for affordable housing further propels the multifamily modular and prefabricated housing market. The Office for National Statistics indicated increased housing affordability in 2023, showcasing modular construction as a viable solution. Government initiatives globally aim to promote sustainable building practices, with the Singapore government's endorsement of Prefabricated Prefinished Volumetric Construction (PPVC) being a notable example. Such regulatory frameworks underscore the market's alignment with environmental sustainability goals. Major firms are spearheading innovative strategies within this market. Greystar Real Estate Partners launched its Modular Attainable Housing Brand in June 2023, focusing on providing affordable housing through modular solutions. This strategic initiative exemplifies how companies are meeting market demands while sustaining profitability through innovative construction techniques. In a strategic move to broaden its modular product offerings, ATCO Structures and Logistics Ltd acquired NRB Modular Solutions for $40 million in September 2024. This acquisition emphasizes ATCO's commitment to expanding its market presence across various sectors, including commercial and residential solutions. Key players in this dynamic market include Laing O'Rourke, ATCO Ltd., Algeco UK Limited, Ritz-Craft Corporation, and Connect Homes LLC, among others. Asia-Pacific currently leads the market, with Africa projected as the fastest-growing region. The market encompasses diverse regional and international players, covering regions such as Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Americas, and Africa. Multifamily modular and prefabricated housing construction provides essential market statistics, including industry size, regional shares, and key trends. The market value, derived from sales and services, indicates a robust demand for innovative construction solutions to meet growing housing needs. This sector's expansion is marked by strategic partnerships and adherence to evolving regulatory standards, ensuring continued growth and sustainability. Key Attributes: Report Attribute Details No. of Pages 175 Forecast Period 2025 - 2029 Estimated Market Value (USD) in 2025 $55.73 Billion Forecasted Market Value (USD) by 2029 $73.84 Billion Compound Annual Growth Rate 7.3% Regions Covered Global Scope: Markets Covered: By Type: Permanent; Relocatable By Material: Steel; Precast Concrete; Wood; Plastic; Other Materials Subsegments: By Permanent: Multi-Story Modular Apartments; Permanent Prefabricated Units; Infill Housing Units By Relocatable: Temporary Housing Units; Relocatable Modular Homes; Site Offices and Temporary Accommodation Units Companies Featured Laing O'Rourke ATCO Ltd. Algeco UK Limited Ritz-Craft Corporation Red Sea International Company Pleasant Valley Homes Inc. Connect Homes LLC Kiss House Marlette Homes Inc. Guerdon LLC Northstar Systembuilt Inc. Cube Haus Blu Homes Inc. Plant Prefab Inc. Simplex Homes Inc. Revolution Precrafted Properties Limited Pine Grove Homes Inc. KLEUSBERG GmbH & Co. KG Blokable Inc. New Era Building Systems Inc. nHouse Limited PopUp House Mod-U-Kraf Homes Inc. Stratford Homes LLC For more information about this report visit About is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Attachment Multifamily Modular and Prefabricated Housing Construction Market CONTACT: CONTACT: Laura Wood,Senior Press Manager press@ For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./ CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900
