Always wondered about long term durability and value of a pre fab vs built in place.
L7
One I put up just short of 50 years ago - 5BR, 3 bath "split entry" was still looking OK last time I went by that area. Factory was down near Roanoke, VA.
Pluses: Better standardization and consistency of materials, build quality, and engineering. They are built indoors on proper jigs out of material delivered to and QC'ed in a "factory" environment.
The makers who "get it right" produce with less variation and have "worked out the bugs". Stick built CAN be very high quality, but not always. Each one built is a ONE built.
Negatives:
They are engineered at reduced weight and make USE of wall coverings - drywall and/or ply/masonite woodgrain panelboard - as part of the structural support to survive a road trip on a rather flexible steel carrier.
Even when done well, there is a "tacky" or cheapening effect vs stick-built.
Some of the techniques are not that different from mobile homes, so you get thinner interior walls, less noise isolation, and limited flexiility as to room layout as they are usually split down a center line to get within roadway width limits,come in as two "long-axis" halves.
The INSTALLER skill is crucial.
Screw up the foundation, put the halves back together not properly aligned, drop something, hit one side with the other from careless crane work, etc. ...and there is now repair work to do that may be challenging.
Our one got every dam' thing on that list badly wrong, and a lot more! Had to Law the sumbich.
So... if I had it to do over again...
I'd go
back to what Dad did, 1955 instead. 4 BR, 2 bath, integral 1 car garage, full basement under, story-and-a-half "Cape Cod" style.
He built with an "Admiral" pre-fab. He had to do the foundation and deck it for the subfloor to get ready for the "kit".
The outer wall panels - windows already in them - and roof panels then came in on a truck. Once tilted up and framed and roofed, all-else was now "out of the weather" in but one day .shingle the next day or so.
But as basically an empty shell with no brick on the outside.
He had to arrange for bricklayers to brick-veneer the outside, framers to do partitions, plumbers, electricians, carpenters for hardwood flooring, then plasterers to plaster the inside walls.
All that "prefab" had gotten him WAS a full outer shell, but we - parents and three kids ...were able to be moved into it, even if kinda raw, in about 2 or 3 weeks. It became an adventure as it gradually got further finished-out, trimmed, painted, and such.
But finished-out the way WE wanted it.
65 years on, present owner in it over 30 years, it still rates as a very sound and well built home.
It should do. Dad's OCD-Anal usual USACE trick. The entire foundation is on an unfaulted formation of solid rock!
The 65 year old asphalt driveway isn't really magical as to looking unchanged. Dad had simply used the same specs as he had used to construct 130 Octane AVGAS-resistant refueling hardstands for....
B-36 Bombers. Go figure the base under it doesn't REALLY go half-way to Australia. Only a few feet down to bedrock.
The hand-cut dry-laid stone retaining wall that hasn't budged with freeze-than all those years isn't magical, either. The long keys in it just reach four feet into a massive drainage bed with 15 tons of crushed stone back of it.
The point, folks?
The "basic shell only" pre-fab approach gave him a VERY free hand to do as he damned well felt like doing.
'Lotta sweat went into it. Just not all at once.
And the mortgage was lower.
The "comes in on a frame" with all the wiring and such already in the walls. gave me (wife, 3 kids..) a ready-to-live-in home sooner.
But.. I ended up over the next 15 years.. doing MORE total work.. because every bit of it had basically gone to the
lowest damned bidder.. and too damned much of it needed early-repair if not outright replaced!
And the mortgage was tougher to carry.