With many contributing factors—such as high home prices, a lack of construction workers, and restrictive zoning regulations—the U.S. housing crisis can be a tough puzzle to crack. While there's no single solution that can solve all of these issues, there are some innovative building approaches being used to help mitigate these challenges. According to Multi-Housing News, one of these comes in the form of factory-built homes, which could provide affordable, sustainable housing while reducing construction costs and opening up new financing opportunities.
Factory-based construction reduces labor costs by making work more efficient and tapping into labor pools that traditional construction can’t access. Traditional construction requires workers to move from house to house and project to project—and less time actually building. And the itinerant nature of the work makes it unattractive to a large part of the workforce.
On the other hand, good factory builders operate like car production lines, where the structure moves to the workers who are specialized and stationary. Those workers produce more per labor hour, which means less labor cost per square foot of structures built. And, because the work is done in one place and in more pleasant and controlled factory conditions, it is easier to attract talent, particularly people who might not usually consider construction as a profession, such as women and younger workers.
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