A lot of things have changed, but much hasn't.
Back in the 90s I was working for a real estate developer. A serious recession had killed real estate in Toronto and he had lost a lot of properties. But he was ever the optimist, and said, "When this is over I'll be back and this time, please G-d, don't let me screw up."
Nine years ago, in the depths of the Great Recession, I wrote about the death of modern prefab housing. I had been working in prefab in Ontario, and others had opened factories that were now closing. I noted at the time what I thought went wrong:
1. We really were not changing the industry as much as we thought.
It is not like the Toll Brothers went out with axes and chopped down trees together, they used 2x4s and 4x8s and modularized components. The industry was pretty efficient, and they didn't have to pay for things like factories and pensions and union dues, since most of the people who built the houses were subcontractors who were happy to work outside and the customers were happy to take what they got. This is an immensely flexible system. Putting it under a roof caused as many problems as it solved.
2. We really were not addressing the problem.
We thought we were building a housing type that would be affordable and accessible to all, while ignoring the fact that they all had to go on one-off sites purchased by individuals.
3. We really never had a chance.
Development, historically, was about improving the yield of land, planting houses instead of corn. But the developers were making money doing what they were doing and saw no reason to change. There are only two operating modes in real estate: Greed and Fear. In neither mode do people take a chance on a different way of doing things.
Today, I am reading John McManus of Builder Magazine, who says it may be different this time.
Outsiders, experts from overseas markets, insurgents, Silicon Valley-style tech upstarts, and a few tiny niched endemic players--and a strategically poised, precisely positioned giant, Clayton Homes--are raising a ruckus right now about off-site, modular, automation, robotics, 3D-printing, all amounting to a profound, convulsive, shocking change to the way residential property goes vertical.
Things organized neatly: The parts of a Lustron/via
