Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Modular Cohousing?

[Fred-List manager (fholson]

Mary Huang <maryhuanggd [at] gmail.com>
is the author of the message below.  It was posted by
Fred, the Cohousing-L list manager <fholson [at] cohousing.org>

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I am with Concorde Cohousing in Ottawa, ON, Canada.  We have not used
modular yet but we visited a manufacturer and a reseller a couple of years
ago.

Some of our observation are:
* the build is done in a climate controlled environment and more
standarized processes.
* we looked at pricing and while the listed prices are low, if you add a
few upgrades and pay for things like foundation, etc, I don't think there
are that much cost savings but it would have some protection from cost
overruns.
* the real saving is time.  If you do more than a few houses , more time
may cost more money in terms of the carrying charges of the
construction loan.  If we will be a $10M project say going down from a 18
months construction (the length of building the 16 unit building I  am
renting a unit in) to say 6 months may save the cost of a year of carrying
charges and at current mortgage rate just for easy assessment that can save
us 3+%

Some questions we have are:
* are there any difference in useful lifetime of regular builds vs
modular?  We had been told there are some modular build stuff here that are
still doing well after 30 years but have not found any studies or stronger
empirical data,
* any restriction on multi unit modular and how large can it be in terms of
number of floors, units, etc.  I suspect here due to zoning regulations we
are likely talking max of 3 or 4 floors but might be higher in locations
with approval for wood building up to 6 floors.

Mary