Introduction
How exciting it is when buying a new home. The rush of happiness for a new beginning, a new chapter in life. The residential market provides a plethora of options for buying homes.
Narrowing down your options to what type of home you are looking for, helps to expedite your search.
If you are in the market for a modular home, you have come to the right place. In this article, you will be provided with the best modular home builders buying guide. You will be provided with information in regards to what a modular home is, what makes it so unique, and what sets it apart from other types of homes.
Over the years, modular homes have become highly popular due to their low price and quick installation. The popularity of these prefabricated homes has become so high in demand over the past few years. Modular homes have become popular and are available in many styles for a variety of reasons.
Related: Home Nation Story
Some of the Best Modular Home Builder Companies
Whether you're searching for a modular home with plenty of square footage or a smaller home to accommodate your lifestyle, there are many floor plans to choose from and some great modular home builders you can work with.
Here are a few of the most fabulous modular home designers on the market today to help you with your search for modern-day modular homes.
Home Nation
Beginning price: $73,000
Most common picked style: The Breeze
This company has locations from Indiana to Florida, and they are located nationwide. Tours of their model homes are by appointment only. What is their unique quality is that they sell homes for a clearance price while some are repossessed homes. They offer various models with their unique style, designed to suit your needs. Home nation is a company who is there for every step of the way. Home Nation offers everyday low factory-direct pricing on all of their new and used mobile and modular homes, which means that you get prices ordinarily reserved for sales every single day!
Home Nation offers more than 170 factory-built floor plans, with thousands of available custom options and upgrades. You can get the manufactured home of your dreams with Home Nation’s wide range of financing packages and affordable construction and set-up options. They also offer the gold standard manufacturer’s warranty for factory-built houses on most models (12-month with no hidden caveats) and discounts for cash buyers.
Home Nation also offers loans and easy financing options to help you get qualified through lenders that specialize in modular home loans. The company's dedicated finance department is a great asset to anyone looking to purchase a modular home in 2022.
They also work to find a modular home that fits into your budget and lifestyle. And once you find your dream home, they'll be with you through every step of the process to ensure everything goes perfectly.
Looking for the modular home of your dreams? View our selection of modular homes!
Champion Homes
Beginning price: $47,880
Most common picked style: Next Generation
Champion Homes is an experienced modular home builder that offers a wide range of floor plans through its network of builders and retailers. The company has been in the factory-built housing industry since the 1950s and offers features that can make your modular home feel custom.
For example, Champion Homes offers gourmet kitchens, vaulted ceilings, expanded primary suites, and other architectural details. Despite being built in a factory with common workflows, you can customize your modular home's features and finishes to match your budget and personal preferences.
Because local building codes will affect which floor plans are available to you, Champion Homes offers a wide spectrum of modular home options, like ranch, two-story, multi-family homes, and more. They offer the widest variety of floor plans on the East Coast and Southeast, where modular homes are more common than in other areas. The company's modular homes range from compact starter homes and low-maintenance retirement homes to large, multi-family floor plans.
House Port
Beginning price: $65,000
Most common picked style: Estate House Port
Each of their modular homes is a customizable single-story plan constructed with the use of a series of either one, two, or three panel-walled "cubes." These cubes create the desired layout of bedrooms, living areas, kitchens, and utility spaces. Then a protective element is used to cover the entire structure.
House Port homes are built on four fundamental principles:
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Affordable: The House Port is an alternative to traditional stick-built housing. While the House Port can have a permanent build on a solid foundation, it’s quick, easy, and less costly to build thanks to the prefabricated wall and roof systems.
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Essential: The House Port aims to offer a core construction with an extended living environment that is easily and swiftly constructed and finished according to how the owner wants.
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Environmental: The House Port is constructed from recyclable, non-toxic, eco-friendly materials. The streamlined design impacts the landscape minimally, and green materials and options like solar panels are easily incorporated.
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Spacious: The design doesn’t need to adhere to factory dimensions, allowing for maximum freedom in a prefabricated format.
Impresa Modular
Beginning price: $132,800
Most common picked style: Pool House
Impresa Modular builds modular homes nationwide and offers over 1,000 floor plans that you can customize to create your dream design. They also offer innovative online shopping tools to make buying easy, like an instant project cost estimator.
The company partners with two dozen factories across the US, and Impresa Modular is the only custom modular home manufacturer that operates nationwide. With their diverse service area and custom home options, they offer almost every style imaginable.
With transparent pricing and user-friendly tools, Impresa Modular makes building and buying a modular home easy. The project estimator tool helps customers understand the costs of different floor plans and estimates other costs, like foundation, utility connections, permits, etc.
Method Homes
Beginning price: $95,000
Most common picked style: M Series
This company offers up to eight different types of model designs to choose from. Their home designs vary from the traditional cottage style to an ultra-modern style. They will work with you, and their team of architects will tailor your choice of model to the area of land where you will be placing your home onto.
Little House On The Trailer
Beginning price: $34,000
Most Common picked style: Tiny Home
This company offers four different styles that are all charming base models. They specialize in creating homes that quickly assembled spreads that ensemble entirely to the tinner space of land. All are featured from the backyard to the art studio or home office to guest homes or holiday bungalows. This company will tailor to your every need and will meet it exceptionally. The best part is they have great pricing for their homes.
Wheelhaus
Beginning price: $82,000
Most common picked style: The Wedge
These homes are energy-efficient, and luxurious rolling homes are offered in eight customizable base models. Each base model is inspired by the quality craftsmanship and durability that is found in old-school log cabins. However, all are equipped and featured with complete modern layouts and a state of the art amenities package. The greatest part of all is the setup. They will deliver the home, and it takes anywhere from 2 to 5 days to step up and hook up all of the utilities to complete the house's setup.
Ma Modular
Beginning price: $150 per square foot
Most common picked style: T-plan
This company is known as "the brainchild" of Austin based design company. Ma, has six unique modern floor plans to offer, each between 525 and 1,660 square feet. Any model you choose is delivered to you all inclusively. It takes this company less than 180 days to complete your modular home, including the drop-off time of the finished house to your land plot. Also, they will hook up with plumbing, electrical fixtures, and appliances.
Alchemy
Beginning price: $80,000
Most common picked style: Custom 3x
Originated from the brilliant architectural firm Alchemy, this company weeHouse is a prefabricated home. Their modular homes are based on a series of stacked "blocks." They can be layered and arranged all in a manner of custom positions, which can create anywhere between 300 to 2,400 square feet of living area, all of which depend on your budget and zoning restrictions.
Plant Prefab
Beginning price: $139,000
Most common picked style: RK2
This company is popularly advertised for its incredible eco-conscious approach to construction. Plant Prefab currently offers three different models of single and multi-family homes. All of which are designed under the supervision of an outstanding team that includes three different world-class architects.
Blu Homes
Beginning price: $145,000
Most common picked style: Breezehouse
Blu Homes takes the idea of prefab homes to the next level with their selection from stunning seven architecturally base designs. One of which being, The Breezehouse. This model is their crown jewel and can be customized to feature up to five bedrooms and five bathrooms. Additionally, if you're looking to add extra space to your current abode, they also offer unique self-contained 633-square-foot "pods" that can be tacked like traditional home addition.
Rocio Romero LV Series
Beginning price: $6,000
Most common picked style: LVL home
This company focuses on bridging indoors with nature. Each of their models has a gorgeously minimalist design. These modular homes are best suited to sit in an area with great views, because no matter how small or big your model configuration is, all of these models feature entire walls that are full of floor to ceiling windows.
Deltec Homes
Beginning price: $38,000 shell price, $200 per square foot
Most commonly picked style: 360 Collection
Since the late 60’s, Deltec has built homes across the United States. Known for their energy-efficient homes, Deltec is certified by the B Corporation and offers a unique lineup of modular homes. Deltec Homes offers two main collections: 360 and Renew. If you’re looking for something like a traditional house, the Renew collection offers the Balsam modular home, a two-story rustic construction clocking in with three bedrooms and 2,029 square feet.
The 360 Collection from Deltec comprise circular homes featuring a wide variety of options and no load-bearing walls. There’s a diverse array of styles and designs ranging from 328 to 5,000 square feet, and that’s not accounting for wing and connecting room choices. No matter if you want a three-story circular tower with five bedrooms or an economical guest house, there’s a home for you! All Deltec homes come with energy modeling adjusted to the climate in your area.
Turkel Design
Beginning price: $850,000 for the Axiom series
Most commonly style: Axiom series
While Turkel Design doesn’t offer as many collections as other manufacturers, the Axiom lineup is known for luxury and engineering. The highly configurable homes are panelized rather than modular, but offer contemporary designs that blend in with a range of landscapes. Turkel collaborated with Dwell Prefab to produce the Axium series. The 11 designs range from box-like structures a few stories high to single-story rectangular retro homes. Floor plans are customizable, but the design packages are standard and don’t come with additional customizable options for lighting fixtures, plumbing, or interior doors.
Turkel Design homes have standard rooms but boast certain amenities such as screened-in porches and fireplaces. Along with their luxurious Axiom line, Turkel also offers a lineup of custom-built cabinetry to use in your new modular home. Turkel is meant for luxury, and prices start at $850,000 (which can easily go up to a million after delivery charges, taxes, etc.). If budget isn’t a problem, however, the company ships their panelized palaces globally.
Related: Step by step process
What is a modular home?
A modular home is any home that is built in a factory, and it comes at the least in two or more sections. They are designed to be placed on a permanent foundation, and once they are transported to the building site, these sections of the modules are stitched together before the electrical and plumbing are hooked up in the home.
Modern modular homes can look like traditional residences; however, there is more variation and freedom than manufactured units. Both carry building codes and similar price points; however, the rules are stricter for modular homes because of the different classification.
There are various amenities you can find in the best modular homes, which is another reason that their price is high. They are simply staggering compared to their manufacturing counterparts. Because of their stackable and modular nature of some modular homes, the square footage and floor plans are limited by your budget or imagination.
The term "prefab" is used loosely in the homebuilding industry, and a modular home certainly falls into that category. It's also important to know and to not get manufactured homes confused with modular homes. There is a big difference between these styles.
For knowledge purposes, manufactured homes are built in a climate-controlled facility. These types of homes are built on a steel chassis. This allows them to be moved around easily, whereas even small modular homes are constructed on a permanent foundation.
While affordable and popular, manufactured homes and their mobile cousins do not hold value for profitable resale. You have probably seen an entire manufactured home, or at the least, a section of it hauled down the freeway by a tractor-trailer with an "oversized load" banner on the back.
Benefits of Modular Homes
With all of the benefits modular homes can bring compared to manufactured and site-built options, it's no wonder they're rising in popularity in 2022. The most significant benefits include:
Pricing – The price of a modular home compared to a traditionally built home is such a massive difference in price. It is truly an advantage price-wise to purchase a modular home. Except if you are thinking about buying a high-tech modular house or need a dozen modules, those will increase the price. Modular homes that are small with basic designs are affordable.
Eco-friendly – Are you searching for an energy-efficient house, which can decrease the carbon footprint or qualify for LEED credits? Then you are in the perfect housing market. These are two other vital conveniences of many modular homes. However, you should still confirm with your home's construction company and find out what materials are used to construct your home. Most modular homes are eco friendly.
Faster building speed – A great advantage of Modular homes is that regardless of size, they are constructed very fast. Mainly because they are built inside a factory, this is a massive advantage because then the weather will not be a problem with delaying any form of construction. You won't have to deal with any construction workers showing up late for work can delay projects as well. If you would like more information about how they are built, then take a look at this article about Modular Construction.
Design – Are you looking for a unique design, something out of a home design magazine, perhaps? There is so much flexibility in design from single to multi-module homes. It's quite surprising the various types of styles available for modular homes.
Easier financing – Modular homes are easier to finance because they have a permanent foundation, just like a traditional home. Here is some information on Construction loans for Modular Home.
Modular homes, for some reason, have a terrible reputation for being boring and bland. People, for some reason, have a negative perception of these factory-made homes for quite some time.
Fortunately, there are a growing number of builders who are committed to offering the modular home a modern facelift without drifting from the simplicity or competitive pricing that made them so famous in the first place. There is an article Forbes Magazine published regarding modular homes and how purchasing one saves time, money, and lowers prices, take a look Modular Housing can save time, money, and lower prices.
Prices for Modular Homes
There are hundreds of modular home builders who offer their services around the country with dozens of styles to select from, which means that modular home costs vary from one manufacturer company to another.
The cost depends on per square foot that is required to build the home. The traditional way of building homes depends on where you reside because factors such as land, permits, and contractors' prices depend from state to state. For example, a lot of about 2-acres in Virginia cost is much cheaper than the same size lot in California. Therefore, just as a word of caution, areas with a high cost of living, you can expect to pay more. This also applies to the pricing of modular homes.
Most modular home builders will estimate the cost of the modular home you decide for yourself. On average, a modular home can cost anywhere from $150,00-400,00. However, some modular homes can cost less than $100,000.
The cost of your modular home depends on the design of your home and the location. In addition to the type of floor plan, you decide on the inside and outside of the modular home.
Another critical point to remember is that the contractor's cost could be separate from the cost of the build. Also, consider the delivery charges and taxes. At times, some building companies may not have the option of installing your home on site. Therefore you will have to pay for another contractor from the area to install the home.
Related: Reasons to Choose a Modular Home
Conclusion
If modular homes are what you are in the market for then, we have provided you with a vast amount of information. From what they are to the best builders on the market.
While modular homes can cost more than other manufactured homes, they are still a more affordable alternative to site-built homes. And with all of the customizable options available from builders and dealers like Home Nation, you're sure to find the modular home of your dreams that perfectly fits your lifestyle and budget.
Ready to find the perfect modular home for you? Learn more about our process and start shopping our selection of modular homes today!
