Millennial Housing Crisis, and Solution, after Covid-19
As millennials are now seeking independent living accommodation, availability, cost, and response time to build are primary concerns for building material suppliers and builders. According to Builderonline.com’s recent article, America at Home: Almost Half of Renters Want to Buy a Home After COVID-19, 46% of current renters say they would now prefer to own versus rent, potentially representing 7.4 million households in the U.S. The majority of them are younger (millennials and Gen X groups combined), ranging in age from 25 to 44. This is a sizable shift since the NAHB’s first quarter 2020 Housing Trends Report indicated just 16% of millennials were looking to make their first home purchase in the next year.
What is this new marketplace going to look like? Basically, a reboot of the 1950’s housing concepts. Millennials are not looking for large mansions that make a statement. They are looking for affordability and quality in a single-family home.
New homes built in the 1950’s were usually 800 to 1200 square feet. They worked out great for new families starting out, and were affordable and durable. In addition, they were also expandable – room additions were common to expand living space on an as needed basis.
Now fast forward to today. How do you respond to sudden market changes? You respond with flexibility to address affordability, expandability, and quality, utilizing the GCI structural composite panels.
Imagine the ability to produce homes that are durable throughout, within a 1-week period. They are resistant to almost all concerns such as fire, water, termites, mold, and wind, to name a few, and the ability to completely build a 1,000 square foot house in 3 days. Construction can be achieved with a team of 7, which consists of 3 skilled and 4 unskilled labor force.
Imagine that you owned and controlled the panel production line that produces 1 panel per minute with 6 workers to a tolerance of 2mm. This GCI plant produces 60 panels per hour, 480 per shift. A typical 1,000 square foot ranch style home requires about 100 panels. Your panel line will be able to build four 1,000 sf homes worth of panels in one shift.
The easiest approach for your customers, builders, and developers is if they build on a slab, a sizeable attached patio can be a future room addition. Pre-run any utilities in the slab that may or may not come into play for the homeowner. Then when it is time for them to expand their home to accommodate little ones, or just extra space, the owner could (over a weekend or so) build their room addition with friends. Your customer/ builder’s company could build the desired room addition. Typical building of this type of room addition would be no more than a day or two start to finish.
The possibilities are endless, the response time unexpectedly fast, the cost to build remarkably low and profit margins for you and your builders/customers are exceptional!
For more information contact Terry Lammers at 618-530-8922 or terry@innovativeba.com.
Best Regards
Gregory J. Leja
