Six new "flatpack house" factories to be set up in UK....

[ProDave]

Six new flat pack house factories to be set up in the UK

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-38368185

 

There is more to this story than on that news item. On the 6 O Clock news today, the person they interviewed talked about 20,000 homes per year and a build cost of £500 per square metre.

 

I wonder if this will just be mass production of standard designs for developers or if it will be of interest to self builders wanting a bespoke house?

 

Either way, an interesting development.

 

 

[NSS]

Primarily aimed at housing associations and local authorities as a 'build to let' package from what i've read. If it takes off it could kill the private rental market within 5-10 years. Won't be the first industry that the Chinese have been happy to 'loss lead' in.

[Ferdinand]

Yep. The client is a HA.

 

The 2.5bn cost for 25k dwellings is 100k each, which sounds about right if they get the sites at a reasonable price.

 

The actual build cost looks similar to that for big developers with no Planning Gain or profit on top.

 

I wonder where they will be for Planning Gain?

 

I don't see them killing the PRS; there are too many types of customer, and Council House building did not kill it in the 1970s; the damage was done imo mainly by contract terms and security of tenure.

 

My expectation is that they will be a launch customer and hopefully the factories can supply commercial developers. I hope the offsite fabrication delivers the 30% efficiency gain we have been promised since Egan in the 1990s.

 

I do not think it will help much with the 1 million by 2020 promise by the Govt since it will be perhaps 3-4 years before anything starts to come on stream, but I think they may hit the target anyway. TH critical path for the project is planning not construction.

 

And of course we have the Right to Buy applied to Housing Associations.

 

But good to see new projects.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited December 19, 2016 by Ferdinand

[NSS]

The way I read it is that the £2.5 billion investment is in the factories, and the intention is to build 25,000 homes per year by 2022. That's more than double the number of homes that Taylor Wimpey (for example) build per annum.

[Ferdinand]

It reads both ways. 

 

25k over next 5 years and 25k per year by 2022.

 

Trade report http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2016/12/19/chinese-giant-to-build-six-uk-pre-fab-homes-factories/ .

Edited December 20, 2016 by Ferdinand

[DavidFrancis]

This all looks a bit smoke and mirrors to me.  These homes are going to be "based on designs pioneered by Spanish specialist Barcelona Housing Systems".  There's no hard detail of what this involves on the BHS web site.  They have a news story listed on the main page dated October this year which says something like "BHS presents their first energy-efficient, near-zero environmental impact Spanish building", but when I try to look at the details there's nothing there.