According to completion data from the Census Bureau Survey of Construction and NAHB research, non-site built single-family homes (modular and panelized) accounted for only 3% of the single-family housing market in 2024.
This is equivalent to the 3% share in 2023. This percentage has steadily declined since the early 2000s, despite the high level of interest in non-site built construction.
This low market share contradicts certain media commentary on off-site construction, which indicates recent gains.
Nonetheless, there is potential for market share gains in the next years due to the need to boost productivity in the residential building industry.
In 2024, 28,000 single-family apartments were finished using modular (13,000) and panelized/pre-cut (15,000) construction methods, out of a total of 1,019,000 single-family dwellings. It’s worth noting that the Census definitions of off-site construction are rather limited.
A related poll, the Home Innovation Research Labs poll of U.S. Home Builders, has a larger share of panelized construction (5-12%) due to a broader definition of “panelized” construction.
While the Census-measured market share is tiny, there remains room for expansion. This 3% market share in 2024 marks a drop from the years preceding the Great Recession.
In 1998, 7% of single-family home completions were modular (4%) or panelized (3%). This was the largest proportion over the 1992-2024 timeframe.
The Midwest and Northeast have a particularly strong regional concentration.
These two regions have the largest market share of homes built using off-site technologies. In the Midwest, 7% (8,000 dwellings) of the region’s 136,000 housing units were built with these methods.
In the Northeast, 5% (3,000 dwellings) of the region’s 66,000 housing units were built utilizing off-site methods.
However, quantitatively, the South remains the largest market for this sort of development, with 13,000 homes completed utilizing non-site build methods.
In terms of multifamily construction, modular and panelized methods were used in about 3% of multifamily structures (properties rather than units).
This is much lower than the 7% share in 2023, but comparable to the average over the prior five years.
It is worth noting that the modular building method accounts for 2% of this proportion. In past years, panelized building methods constituted the majority of non-site build methods in multifamily development.
Prior to last year, the highest levels of modular and panelized methods in multifamily construction were in 2000 and 2011, when 5% of multifamily structures were built using modular (1%) or panelized construction methods (4%).
[Read more about this topic on Eyeonhousing.org]