Housing is human right, not just a commodity.
An Article About Factory Built Housing
Toward a Sustainable Future
Posted 8-22-2026
Bullet Point Summary
- The cost of housing in the US has greatly outpaced the ability of most Americans to pay for it. There is presently a great need to build a large number of affordable homes in the US and other countries. \
- “Stick-built” housing is now obsolete.
- Modern technology is beginning to respond to this need. This appears to be an example of the kind of technology needed for a Sustainable Future.
- CUBY Technologies has arisen to fill this need for more housing.
- CUBY allows local entrepreneurs to build and sell new homes manufactured in a factory and then assembled on-site.
- More than that, CUBY operates a factory in China that builds and sells the factories that build the new homes. These factories are for sale to local entrepreneurs all over the planet.
- This new technology could represent a break-through solution for providing affordable housing on the Olympic Peninsula.
Details for Nerds
Cost of Housing
Over the years, the increase in the cost of housing in the US has greatly outpaced the growth of median income. Americans have found it more and more difficult to afford either a new home or to even pay the rent in rental housing. People in many situations are being priced out of housing. And this has resulted in unprecedented levels of homelessness in such a wealthy country as ours. Other countries, such as Canada, Australia and the UK, are experiencing the same stress.
This is what Gemini AI has to say about the average cost of housing in the US.
The average national cost to build a single-family house in the U.S. is about $323,000 for construction alone. Most homeowners spend between $139,000 and $531,000. This price changes based on your home's size, your location, and the materials you choose. [1, 2]
Cost Per Square Foot
- Standard build: $150 to $250 per square foot.
- Custom or luxury build: $300 to $400+ per square foot.
- Base construction: Around $162 per square foot, which often excludes the general contractor's 15% to 25% profit markup and permits. [1, 2, 3]
Additional Costs to Budget For
- Land purchase: $3,000 to $150,000+ depending on the area.
- Site prep and utilities: $5,000 to $30,000 for clearing, grading, and hooking up water or septic.
- Permits and fees: $1,200 to $15,000 depending on your local government.
- Contingency fund: Save an extra 10% to 15% of your total budget for unexpected price jumps. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Here is a pie chart showing all the cost items in building a new home.
The cost of building housing near Sequim is even worse.
AI Overview
Building a house near Sequim, WA typically costs between $235 and $420 per square foot for construction. For a standard 2,400-square-foot home, total building costs range from roughly $565,000 to over $1 million, excluding the price of raw land and major site prep. [1, 2]
Breakdown of Building Costs
- Standard/Mid-Range Construction: 235–380 per square foot.
- Luxury or Complex Custom Builds: 420–720+ per square foot.
- ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units): 275–504 per square foot. [1, 2]
Additional Expenses to Anticipate
- Land Acquisition: $80,000 to $600,000+, depending on acreage, views, and location. [1]
- Site Development: $50,000 to $150,000+ for clearing, grading, driveways, and bringing utilities to the site. Rural lots requiring a new well and septic system often face higher entry costs. [1, 2]
- Permits and Fees: Local building permits and plan reviews through Clallam County or the City of Sequim generally add $3,000 to $15,000 depending on the total project scale. Opinions on Reddit's r/portangeles discussion reflect a consensus that unincorporated county permit fees are manageable, though utility hookups and septic installations ($30,000+) can scale up fast. [, 2, 3]
The conclusion is that the Sequim and Olympic Peninsula area is a very expensive place to live. The relatively wealthy retirees and well-off immigrants can afford to move here and build or buy their housing. The working class population needed to provide retail and hospitality services, or to provide healthcare services needed by the elderly retired population, as well as many retired elderly people themselves are finding it very challenging, if not impossible, to find affordable housing in this area. This same housing challenge exists in many areas all across the United States.
Another conclusion seems obvious: Almost all housing today is still being built almost exactly as it was over 100 years ago, and is labeled “Stick-built” housing. The cost of raw materials and housing components has risen sharply. The cost of land and building the necessary infrastructure has also risen. Finding skilled crafts people and adequate and affordable labor is becoming more difficult also. All of this is putting the price of housing out of reach for most Americans. This method of “stick-built” housing is becoming obsolete. It can be reserved for building houses for the upper 30% income percentile home owners.
This housing shortage is clearly an urgent problem in need of a solution.
CUBY Technologies
This section, at first glance, appears to be an advertisement for CUBY Technologies. But this should be regarded as a discussion of the response by modern technology to this urgent housing problem.
A while ago, two talented entrepreneurs, Aleh Kandrashou and Aleksandr Gampel, came to the same conclusion that “stick building” was obsolete. They concluded that housing could be built more rapidly and cheaply in a factory environment and then assembled and completed at the new home location. Factory building is not particularly new. Mobile homes, cabins and tiny houses are also factory built and installed onsite. The quality and size of factory built housing used to be lower than “stick-built” housing. However, the technology of factory built housing is now rapidly catching up.
These two entrepreneurs didn’t stop with inventing another method of factory built housing. They decided to mass produce the house factory itself and sell this product to entrepreneurs around the planet. This seems to be the chief innovation here. According to their website, they have built at least three home factory kits and shipped them. And apparently these “kit factories” were set up, assembled and are now producing their brand of factory-built housing.
The illustrations below, taken from the CUBY website https://cubytechnologies.com/home , illustrate a typical home built in their factory.
Another image taken from their website shows their claims concerning building and siting their factory built home.
CUBY has built, kitted and shipped three home factories so far. The plan is that a CUBY home factory can be shipped, assembled on 6 ½ acres in about 90 days. They claim the factory can build 216 homes a year and erect them within a 185 mile radius. They claim this can all be done on a relatively modest capital investment.
The image below is believed to be an actual factory set up and operating somewhere in Nevada or New Mexico.
Go here to visit the CUBY Technologies website. https://cubytechnologies.com/
And here are several YouTube videos about their homes and their “mobile factory” concept.
My Conclusions
- About the technology:
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- Homes are built in a “mobile” factory, shipped to the construction site and, according to the video, assembled in 90 days using “unskilled” labor.
- The “mobile” home factory is built in a “master” factory located in China. They are crated and shipped to the factory assembly site in containers. The “mobile” home factory is assembled and is ready for production in about (90) days.
- Two innovations here: first is the concept of building “home factories” that can be shipped to and assembled close to where the homes will be built and installed.
- The second innovation is the concept of designing and assembling a home in a factory. This is a major innovation. Homes, like other products, should be designed, standardized and quickly built in a factory environment. Quality control is much easier. Standardized design easily facilitates mass production and cost reduction.
- These homes appear to be middle-class or working class status. Do a simple calculation: $100/sqf = $160K for a 1600 sqft home. If we can keep the infrastructure and property costs down to $60K or so, you could have a complete home in the $220K price range. This makes a home that would be affordable to the working population on the Peninsula. This is in the Habitat for Humanity price range. Could duplexes and condos bring additional price reductions?
- Local considerations
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- Locally, I see two education and training opportunities: First, we could be training skilled workers to work in the “mobile factory”. There will be limited opportunities here. And second, we could be training skilled workers to build the infrastructure and assemble and finish the factory built home.
- Finding affordable home sites here on the Peninsula will be a challenge. Currently, there appears to be a lot of land for sale locally. Due to the high price of land around here, I think we’re going to need public and/or non-profit land trusts to acquire property and offer that property to potential home buyers at an affordable price.
- We may have to go around or modify Washington State DNR restrictions to make some of this land “buildable”. For example, I suspect the definition of “wetlands” is overdone. We are going to have to bend the rules in order to accommodate the urgent housing need.
- Suggestions
- I offer a suggestion, if not already adopted: design these homes as modular homes with standard interchangeable sections. This process would enable a home expansion if the family size increases. Or the reverse, home contraction in the empty nest situation. Vertically and horizontally Interchangeable sections could lend itself to building duplexes, triplexes and condominiums. How about a multi-story design for multi-family housing in crowded urban areas?
- What about adapting this housing concept for the poorer developing countries? An innovation in this concept would be to build factories that build even lower cost housing units in the developing countries so that more and more people in these poorer areas are also adequately housed.
Editorial Article in the NYT dealing with the state of housing affordability in the US today. And it offers suggestions about what to do about it: Change zoning laws and reduce cumbersome bureaucratic regulations.
Another Clue in Montana to Achieving Affordable Housing
Published August 9, 2023 in The Atlantic