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Your Money
Even Some Contractors Are Choosing Modular Homes
LEE SPENCER makes a living fixing other
people’s mistakes. A general contractor,
he replaces doors that don’t lock,
windows that won’t open and pipes that
leak, so two years ago when his home in
Florence, N.J., was destroyed by fire — a result, he
says, of faulty wiring — he knew exactly what he
would put in its place: his first modular home.
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Diane and Louis Del Pizzo plan to move into this 3,450-square-foot $1 million modular house in Thornwood, N.Y., soon.
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“It’s better built than a stick home,” he said of his
new 1,300-square-foot house, using the industry term
for homes built on site. “Nails don’t pop, and the
wood never got wet from lying on site. It’s more
efficient, too. Costs less to heat and cool.”
Accolades like this are hardly common. Modular
homes make up a mere 3 percent of the single-family
houses in the nation and have long been regarded as
being in the same class as mobile homes.
Chances of shaking the stigma don’t seem to
be improved by the fact that some modular manufacturers
produce mobile homes, too, and belong
to trade associations representing them, as well as
those representing traditionally built homes. Still,
modular homes are gaining mainstream respect
and popularity, and not just with buyers who
know building inside out.
Home shoppers are finding out how fast the
homes can be put up, as well as how strong they
are. They are also seeing that they cost 5 percent
to 15 percent less than homes built on site, that
buyers can get what they want and, perhaps most
significant, that the designs can be as expansive
and attractive as those of any home built on site.
For example, a modular mansion in New
Rochelle, N.Y., measures in at 20,000 square feet
and a Florida modular home was chosen as the
house of 2006 by Country Living magazine.
All this is making more sense in the Northeast.
Last year, according to the Census Bureau, 15,000
modular homes were built in the region, tops in the
nation, and nearly double the 8,000 total of 1999.
Of all single-family homes built in the Northeast,
modular homes represented a record 11 percent last
year, up from 7 percent six years earlier.
Certainly, they will never be for everybody, if
only because modules cannot be shipped down every
road. And many buyers and builders still seem to like
the way site homes are built.
The rest of the country is not quite following
along with the Northeast. Modular building has
chalked up decent gains in the South, while slowing
in the Midwest. It is rare in the West.
The Northeast is the historic heart of the industry.
Its modular homes are made in factories that operate
year-round—a decided advantage where cold
weather limits on-site building time. Also, transporting
the typical modular home, with its four to
six 60-foot long modules, is easier because the
leading manufacturing center - Pennsylvania -
is relatively close to a huge number of potential
Northeastern customers.
Finally buyers stand the best chance of saving
the most in the Northeast because of the top dollar
that new single-family homes command in the region
(a median $343,000 last year). While prices aroundthe country have softened lately, Northeast housing
costs have been increasing at a rate faster than that
in other regions in recent years.
The growing acceptance of modular homes,
however spotty, means buyers don’t have to worry
about being the next Buckminster Fuller to get the
job done. As with any home shopper, they can
readily find builders—plenty of whom got their
start with sticks—to show them catalog designs
and model homes or to work with the buyer’s plans.
The plans must meet the same structural standards
and go through the same approval processes with
local governments.
While the actual building process that follows the
paperwork is different for modular construction, it
suits many buyers, like Diane Del Pizzo, just fine.
She, a registered nurse and her husband, Louis, an
art director, have just about breezed through the
whole process, twice in two years.
They were sold on modular homes from their
research on the Internet and a visit to the factory.
“The visit reinforced our views,” she said. “We liked
seeing what we were going to get.”
It took a month for the manufacturer, Westchester
Modular Homes in Wingdale, N.Y., to turn the
plans into completed modules. As they were being
assembled the site was being prepared by the builder,
including installing the foundation, also done with
modules.
When both jobs were done, four modules were
trucked to a lot the Del Pizzos owned in Thornwood,
a fairly simple 40-mile haul south, and put in place
in two days. Four months later, after the builder
“mated,” or connected, the modules, the couple
moved from their 100-year-old, 1,450-square-foothome in neighboring Hawthorne, which they sold for
$495,000, into their new 2,450-square-foot home,
which cost them $675,000, including the land.
This year they started again. In June, at a catered
party for a dozen friends and family members, they
watched flatbed trucks deliver six modules totaling
3,450 square feet to a spot next to their starter
modular home. The modules were laid out to create
a two-story center-hall colonial. A factory-built turret
was also put in place, while wraparound porches and
hardwood floors were added.
The couple expects to move into this house,
which cost about $1 million with the land included,
next month. They have put the first modular home
on the market for $899,000.
Modular homes also require a bit more preparation
than a stick home would. Billie Ann Meier, who with
her husband and two teenagers lives in a new 4,000
square-foot modular home in Point Pleasant, N.J.,
remembered a wall she meant to include in her plans
after the modules were delivered. Her builder could
have worked it in on site, but for more than she
wanted to pay.
There were other, generally more welcome,
adjustments. She found the house so well insulated
and so solidly built that cold air did not enter the
way it did in their old home and she was able to
lower the thermostat—and save on utility bills—in
the winter.
Similarly, the house is much quieter than their
old house because sound does not travel as easily.
“If I’m downstairs and the kids are upstairs, I can’t
hear them,” she said.
Now, is that good or bad?
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