Twelve guides on cost, permitting, foundations, financing, code compliance and site logistics. Written to be useful rather than promotional.
These guides exist because the useful information in this industry is scattered across supplier brochures that avoid numbers, forum threads with outdated figures, and code documents written for plan reviewers rather than buyers. Each one is written to answer the question a buyer actually has, including the parts that are not flattering to factory-built construction.
A few things worth saying plainly. Modular is not always the right answer — for a heavily custom design on a difficult site with no schedule pressure, conventional construction can be the better fit, and the guides say so. The cost advantage is real but it comes from process rather than specification, which means a supplier quoting far below market is probably reducing specification and should be asked directly what changed. And the production window is a supply-and-demand range rather than a promise, because factory capacity and material lead times both move independently of your project.
If you are early, read the modular versus stick-built comparison and the hidden costs guide — those two will tell you whether this path fits your project and what the real total looks like. If you have already decided, go to permitting and foundations, since those two decisions constrain everything downstream. If your site is unusual, start with site access, which is the constraint that surprises the most buyers.
The reason site-built budgets drift is that the price is discovered as the work proceeds. Factory pricing is set when the design is locked, because the production cost of a known module is known. The variable that remains is site work — foundation, utilities, access — which is why we quote that separately and in the open instead of burying it.
Every unit off a line is built to the same specification with the same crews and the same materials. That repeatability is impossible to achieve across independent site-built projects with rotating subs. If you inspect one finished unit, you have meaningfully inspected the one you are buying.
A module built indoors never sits in the rain waiting on a framing crew. Lumber does not swell, drywall does not wick moisture, and the schedule does not slip because a storm parked over the site for nine days. That single difference — controlled environment versus open air — is most of why factory-built assemblies test tighter on a blower door than comparable site-built work.
Site-built construction is sequential: permit, then excavate, then frame, then finish. Factory-built runs the site work and the building in parallel. While your foundation is being poured and utilities are being trenched, the structure is already being framed and finished on a production line hundreds of miles away. That overlap is where the calendar savings actually come from, not from anyone working faster.
Tell us the scope and the ZIP. You get a real delivered-and-installed number, not a "contact us for pricing" runaround.
We run a group of focused sites so you land on the one that matches what you actually need instead of a catch-all catalog.