Summit Homes Group hopes to make modular houses up to 20 per cent of its builds, as demand for the construction method increases across the state.
The Myaree-based builder this week opened a new modular display home alongside its recently expanded modular factory in Canning Vale, which has doubled in capacity in the past six months.
The David Simpson-led company expanded its modular factory from 21,000 square metres to 46,000sqm in November, by taking on a lease in the building adjacent to its existing factory.
In response to demand from regional councils for key worker accommodation, Summit purchased sites in Karratha and Onslow from the state government last year.
All up, the builder has spent $12 million on purchasing and developing the sites.
It is in the process of installing modular homes on those sites, across 13 lots, taking less than six months from planning to completion of those homes.
Additionally, Summit Homes has spent up to $5 million on its modular business, including for equipment, research and development, in recent years.
Summit Modular general manager Brad Bairstow said the company noticed an explosion in demand for the product last year.
“About one year or 18 months ago we started to see it take off,” he told Business News.
“We had some lifestyle village customers and then we started talking to others, government etcetera, and it just exploded.”
Summit has a pipeline of 200 homes this year, up from 30 in 2023 and none the year before that.
This financial year, it has recorded 2,000 home starts.
“At the moment, it (modular) represents 10 per cent [of our builds], we expect it to get to 15 or 20 per cent,” Mr Bairstow said.
“We are also doing a lot of work in the way we build our traditional homes, we are taking the practices we build in modular and applying it to in situ homes to speed up build practices.”
Regional push
Modular housing is popular in regional areas, given homes built this way are constructed in a factory and transported to site.
This reduces the need for skilled labour, which is in low supply in regional Western Australia.
In Karratha, it currently takes up to three years to build a house.
Modular construction cuts this to about six months.
Mr Bairstow said a lot of the demand for modular homes is coming from regional councils.
This article originally appeared in Business News.
