Modular housing fails to scale. Will policy reforms alter that?

Offsite construction accounts for just three out of 100 newly built U.S. homes annually, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), but multiple provisions in the recently passed 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act aim to supercharge that. With housing affordability strained and the nation facing a worsening shortage of affordable homes, lawmakers point to off-site construction as a potential solution, claiming that factory-based fabrication can deliver homes faster and more affordably than traditional construction methods. Frank Cassidy is among the lawmakers who are bullish on modular housing. Cassidy, now a Senior Managing Director at Walker & Dunlop, previously served as commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration and Assistant Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development until June. He believes that the most effective way to improve housing affordability is to deliver more supply, and that modular construction should play an important role. “We spend so much time debating how to subsidize demand and not enough time figuring out how to build homes faster and at a lower cost. We can’t subsidize our way out of a housing shortage. ...