What is a prefab house? An umbrella word for any home whose structure is built in a factory rather than on the lot, covering manufactured, modular, panelized and kit homes, which are financed very differently from each other.
Prefab is a category, not a product. Inside it sit at least four different things. A manufactured home is built to the federal HUD Code on a permanent steel chassis. A modular home is built in finished sections to the same local building code as a site-built house and craned onto a permanent foundation. A panelized home arrives as flat walls and roof trusses assembled on the lot. A kit, log or timber-frame package is a shipped bundle of parts with the framing cut to size. Container conversions and factory-built tiny homes sit at the edge and often do not meet a residential code at all.
What separates them for a buyer is the code and the title, and the word prefab tells you neither. Modular, panelized and kit homes are real property from the day the foundation is poured: a construction loan converts to an ordinary mortgage, the appraiser uses site-built comparables, and the county taxes them like any other house. A manufactured home is titled personal property through the Nevada Manufactured Housing Division until it is converted, which is what puts it on a chattel loan at a higher rate in the meantime. A lender's first question about a prefab listing is always which of these it actually is, and the answer is on a label, not in the description.
Prefab also says nothing about quality. It says the work happened indoors, on jigs, under repeated inspection, which cuts weather delays and waste; public figures commonly put modular construction around ten to twenty percent below a comparable site-built home for the shell and a few months rather than a year to build. The savings are on the part that leaves the factory. The land, the site work, the foundation, the utility connections, the permits and the crane are all still the buyer's, and in the Las Vegas valley those frequently cost more than the modules did.
A worked example
A buyer prices a 1,800 square foot home three ways on the same $85,000 lot. A modular shell delivered and set runs about $200,000, or roughly $111 a square foot, plus about $60,000 of foundation, utilities, permits and site work. A comparable site-built home quotes around $240,000 for the same shell. A HUD Code manufactured home of the same size quotes far less again, and is personal property until it is converted.
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Questions people ask
Is a prefab home cheaper than a site-built home?
The structure usually is, with public figures commonly putting modular construction ten to twenty percent below site-built for the shell, and the build takes months rather than a year. The land, foundation, utilities, permits and crane are unchanged, so the saving applies to only part of the total and shrinks as land costs rise.
Can you get a mortgage on a prefab home?
It depends which kind. Modular, panelized and kit homes are real property on a permanent foundation and take ordinary construction-to-permanent and conventional financing. A manufactured home is titled personal property until it is converted, and until then it is a chattel loan at a shorter term and a higher rate.