Mortgage rates are up, though backing off from recent highs, and construction materials costs and labor are escalating, all resulting in higher home prices. Some builders and developers are combating the costs that their buyers will need to cover with new technologies or organizational changes.
What about a completely new way to think about the design? What if you were able to get your house one piece at a time? A home has forever been a long term investment that is probably the biggest purchase most people make in their lifetime, so why not break it down into more manageable bites?
Module Design is doing just that. Module has created a new home design that can flex and change depending on budget, starting small for an affordable starter home with the ability to easily add rooms at a later date.
It’s first project is underway now in Pittsburgh, Pa., a companion house that will be the new home to a couple’s parents alongside their residence. Not only is the home right-sized to the physical needs of the aging parents, but it also is right-sized to their budget, finally putting them in very close proximity of caretakers.
The home also went up in two days with offsite construction, which helps Module Housing lower labor costs and deliver at a budget that fits the buyer.
In this short video, Brian Gaudio, of Module Design, shares the background of Module along with the challenges and obstacles the company had to overcome to make itself viable.
Module, one of the HIVE Top 5 Innovators for 2018, is finding other opportunities to deliver new home designs to buyers. The company recently received zoning approval to build a duplex and two single family homes on lots from a local neighborhood nonprofit development corporation and from the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Pittsburgh.
The pilot project, located on the East End of Pittsburgh in Garfield, will be a way to experiment on ways to provide high-quality, mixed income housing.
“We will leverage several URA programs and city initiatives to bring down the sale price of one of the homes so that it is affordable to a homebuyer making 80% of the area media income of less,” Gaudio says.
The public-private partnership brought extra scrutiny to the zoning process along with the design review, so getting it kicked off wasn’t easy, though it can work as a case study for other parts of Pittsburgh and beyond to offer more attainable housing to a broader population.
Projects like this bring visibility with the right stakeholders that can make mean progress for regulations in the future, and also pave a path for more diverse housing options.
This story appears as it was originally published on our sister site, www.hiveforhousing.com.