The quest for the factory-built house

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2023

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Imagine if we built cars the same way we build houses. First, a typical buyer would meet with the car designer, and tell them what kind of car they want. Then the designer would draw up plans for the car.

The buyer would call different car builders in their town and show them the blueprints. And the builders might say, "Yeah, I can build you that car based on this blueprint. It will cost $1 million and it will be ready in a year and a half."

There are lots of reasons why homes are so expensive in the U.S., zoning and land prices among them. But also, the way we build houses is very slow and very inefficient. So, why don't we build homes the way we build so many other things, by mass producing them in a factory?

In this episode, the century-old dream of the factory-built house, and the possibility of a prefab future.

This episode was produced by Emma Peaslee. Molly Messick edited the show, and it was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Brian Jarboe mastered the episode. Jess Jiang is our acting Executive Producer.

Help support Planet Money and get bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:05.6	Let's talk about houses in America.
0:08.9	I'm gonna go out on a limb and I'm gonna say houses
0:12.8	in America are too expensive.
0:14.6	Bold words from Jacob Goldstein coming in hot.
0:18.2	And there are a lot of reasons for this, right?
0:20.8	There's the zoning, there's land prices,
0:24.2	but one reason we do not hear much about
0:26.8	one of the things driving the cost of housing,
0:29.5	the process of building houses is just really slow
0:33.5	and inefficient and expensive.
0:35.6	There's this thing I heard a while back years ago
0:38.7	that really made me realize just how inefficient
0:42.1	it is to build a house.
0:43.6	And it goes like this.
0:45.2	Imagine we built cars the same way we build houses.
0:49.1	You'd have a meeting with the car designer
0:51.0	where you tell them what kind of car you want,
0:53.0	they'd drop plans for your special car,
0:55.4	then you'd go to the city council, you'd get a permit,
0:58.2	then you'd go around town,
0:59.2	you'd call different car builders,
	...

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