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Factory-made homes do exist, but they acquired a bad reputation somewhere along the line, and tend to get used only in limited applications, such as summer cottages.

What is gaining ground, apparently, is prefabricating components of houses, which are then assembled on site rather than doing everything on site from plain lumber. Stairs, for example, are often made from kits.

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A house I owned was built in two halves, transported, and joined together down the middle (a “marriage wall” results). The primary issues I hit weren’t the house - it was insuring the thing and properly classifying it. Some insurance companies called it manufactured and raised the rates significantly outright refused to insure, others call it stick built because of the set of standards were sufficient to note that this is not a mobile home. The other issues were around the fireplace being classified as an insert (non-masonry) which evidently also makes the house uninsurable to some companies in North Carolina.

Basically on paper, a lot of these off-site manufactured and local assembled homes sound like double wides and lower income housing options and the gains get erased in insurance premiums because you get lumped in with high risk owners despite buying a $500k+ custom home basically.

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