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Community Guide to Factory-Built Housing

PDF file - Adobe Acrobat required Chapters 1-3 801 KB /PDF
PDF file - Adobe Acrobat required Chapters 4-7 751 KB /PDF

September 2001     

There is a tremendous need for new homes in America's cities and towns. To meet this demand, the home building industry has developed and adopted many technological innovations to provide new homes more quickly and more efficiently while still keeping homes affordable and of a high quality. New techniques, materials, tools, and organizational methods are particularly common in the "factory-built" housing world. Manufactured and modular housing--the most common forms of factory-built housing--are now common alternatives to traditionally constructed homes due in large part to these improvements. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has created this publication, A Community Guide to Factory-Built Housing, to share these alternatives with a wider audience.

Both private and non-profit housing provider groups as well as community developers of all kinds benefit directly by these changes. Factory-built homes are increasingly built in urban and suburban areas--places where it was often difficult to build in the past. So, in addition to detailing the technical and design options that are now available, this publication also discusses the social, financial, and local considerations that a developer will need to address.

As a guide to this expanding housing market, this publication also helps you consider factory-built housing as a cost-effective solution to a city's housing needs, and describes resources and networks that can support you. Easy-to-read and comprehensive publications like this directly support the needs of home building developers, particularly those serving low-income communities. We invite you to read this and all of our community-directed reports and look out for further work from HUD in this field.

Chapters

  1. Why Factory-Built? Differences Between Factory- and Site-Built Homes
  2. Modular and Manufactured Homes: Which is Best for Nonprofit Developers?
  3. Learning a New Building Process
  4. Before and After the Home Arrives
  5. Being a Good Neighbor
  6. Trends in Factory-Built Homes
  7. What are Some of the Possibilities?

Prepared for:
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and Research

Prepared by:
Steven Winter Associates, Inc.

79 pages