Homeowners build in rural areas to gain more land and live a more laid-back lifestyle. However, this approach isn’t without its challenges. You may be miles away from the nearest supply store, and there may be a lack of skilled tradespeople due to the sparse population.
With modular building using prebuilt pieces, you can save time, money, and headaches. Some buildings come all in one piece, while others arrive in smaller pieces assembled on-site. These are a few reasons why you might want to take advantage of it if you live deep in the countryside.
1. More Selection and Design Options
It’s not easy to build in a rural area if suppliers don’t have what you want. By building everything yourself, you may be forced to use the materials, design styles, and products available at stores and yards.
Modular building is quickly changing the narrative. Prefabricators use computer-aided design (CAD) and manufacturing tools and work with high-quality materials that may be challenging to source locally. You can choose from a wider variety of floor plans, exterior finishes, and interior design elements to make the home you want. Special features, like energy-efficient windows and durable siding, can improve your home’s performance and exceed industry standards.
In some cases, your modular home design can stay relevant for years. All you need to do is make your selections, rather than hunting everything down piece by piece.
2. Quality Control
Even if you can easily access materials, the right tradespeople may be hard to come in in rural areas. That may not bode well if they don’t have extensive experience in the industry.
Prefab homes and modular building pieces must withstand the journey from the factory to your site, so manufacturers may use more materials to make a sturdier structure. Because everything’s built indoors to the exact specifications you plan, quality control is a given.
3. Faster Timeline, Less Delays
With traditional construction, the often fierce rural weather can cause a plethora of issues and delays. Storms can set your project back days to weeks, and you’ll have to redirect your time to removing things like house wrap if they weren’t covered up at the time.
Modular homes are built entirely indoors, so there’s far less risk of wood warping, mold growth, or water damage that harms structural integrity before you’re even done with the project.
Even if you have a larger home made from multiple pieces, it takes far less work to assemble them than it does to build them on-site. If you schedule properly, you can have the home you want in much less time.
4. Potentially Lower Costs
Modular homes are generally less expensive to build than stick-built homes, though the costs are often comparable depending on where you live. In rural areas, where shipping costs for materials can sometimes be astronomical, a prefab home can often get built and shipped for much less.
According to Angi, a conventional, stick-built home costs about $150 per square foot to build on average. Depending on what you have planned, the rate can span from $100 to $500.
On the other hand, a modular building costs between $130 and $310 per square foot. Reports have found these types of homes often come in on budget, with less waste and fewer delays. If you live in the countryside, you can save quite a bit of money by going the prefab route.
5. Easier Coordination
Some rural areas are hard to access. Small-time highways, dirt roads, and out-of-the-way areas can make some drivers leery of trucking in all the necessary supplies.
With modular building, there’s usually single-source accountability. That means the manufacturer is responsible for the whole project, from building to delivery, assembly, and finishing. The workers, home, and finishing materials all arrive together, so there’s no need to coordinate multiple deliveries or contractors like you’d need to do for a stick-built project.
