support modular home construction.
This comprises $49.3m to develop prefab and modular construction systems, and $4.7m for a national certification program for off-site construction.
There is no doubt more prefabricated housing could be one of the tools used to deliver more homes, faster, across Australia. Conceptually, it gained a lot of traction at AMPLIFY via Sophie Black – and honestly, why wouldnt it?
There are already commitments to streamline construction codes across Australia which will bring this goal closer.
But now for the bad news: prefab housing can indeed be faster, but it is also substantially more expensive than traditional construction methods (for now).
Certainly when adjusted for equivalent quality, in permanent buildings (as opposted to "relocatables" which have different codes).
The capital costs necessary to do pre-fab efficiently are very high, the labor costs are equivalent, and there is a much bigger overhead and transport costs that are not borne in the traditional domestic building sector.
For now, most modular efforts have been on partial components, such as bathrooms or facade components, not on full house builds.
I recall a recent post from Brad Duggan at Metricon saying they were building new homes in about 17+/- weeks in QLD. You might shave a handful of weeks if these homes were pre-fabricated, but nowhere near enough to shoulder the extra cost of pre-fab which can be double or more.
It gets more complicated: The prefab and modular industry in Australia is almost entirely based around the single-family housing space. I'm not aware of anyone doing it at scale in the mid-high rise space given the complexity.
Yet State Governments – particularly in VIC and NSW – are pushing high density units in activiy centres as the solution to #housingaffordability. In fact, in the case of VIC, Plan for Victoria is now actively trying to reduce the reliance on greenfield land in Metro Melbourne and purports to do the same in the regions!
So, unless this well-intended investment in modular and pre-fab housing massively reduces costs AND is coupled with unlocking suitably serviced land for lower-rise, lower-density #development, it will not achieve the stated goal of delivering more housing sooner.
Time for Clare O'Neil and Ed Husic MP to talk to their State Planning counterparts in the Department of Transport and Planning and NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure to get moving.