Eleven states have no modular prefab approval program. Nine builders say they deliver to all eleven.
In 39 states the factory-built part of a modular house gets approved by the state, usually through a third party engineering firm working on the state’s behalf, and inspected inside the factory before it ships. It arrives approved. Your local building department only handles the foundation and the site work.
Eleven states have no program: Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming. There the modules go to whatever the local jurisdiction decides to do with them.
The architect I interviewed about this said approval in the easy 39 is “rather painless,” with the caveat that the local jurisdiction has to know the state program exists, and that many smaller jurisdictions aren’t familiar with modular projects and can be resistant. That is the easy version.
Then I checked the 71 builders in the directory I run against that list. Thirty four advertise delivery to at least one of the eleven. Nine advertise all eleven. Unfold House lists ten delivery states total and nine of them are on the no program list: https://modernist.live/companies/unfold-house
Hmm.
Nobody is lying. A truck goes where you pay it to go. But delivering a box to Wyoming and getting that box approved in Wyoming are not the same work, and only the delivery part appears on anybody’s website.
Interview, including what he says a manufacturer’s engineering package should contain and three things that went wrong installing his own house: https://modernist.live/experts/pedro-tavares
Has anyone here permitted a factory-built house in one of those eleven? How long did the local review take, and had the building department seen one before? Any thoughts? Please reply in the comments below.