Rise | We've Done the Research
Prefab Report: A Trend That’s Here to Stay
The internet is talking about "prefab homes" 52% more this year compared to last year. What does this mean for the homebuilding industry? We created a report, "Off-Site Built Homes: An Online Media Analysis," to get to the bottom of things.
Table of Contents
Why Prefab?
Prefab homes (also called "off-site built homes," "volumetric built homes," "factory-built homes," or "industrialized construction") are actually a simple concept. Instead of building all aspects of a home on-site, parts of it are constructed in an off-site facility then shipped and assembled on-site.
The touted benefits of this way of building are many:
- Predictable and consistent construction
- A dramatic reduction in construction waste
- A dramatic decrease in emissions associated with transportation
- A higher-quality product that has protection from the elements during construction
- Faster build time (think weeks vs. months)
Prefab has a bit of a reputation problem tracing back to the 1970s when the focus was building homes fast and cheap. Nowadays, prefab is one of the fastest-growing trends in residential construction.
In the age of digital, web traffic is something that the majority of companies pay attention to. For Rise, it's how we understand what is important to our audience. So you can imagine our surprise as we observed the ever-growing popularity of any article that mentions "prefab." We began to predict high web traffic days if we were planning to publish another prefab article. It's like clockwork!
As the voice of the homeowner, we set out to understand the consumer's perspective on this growing trend and produce a report with our findings. Namely, we wanted to know:
- What aspects of prefab homes appeal most to consumers?
- What are their main questions about prefab?
- How are they researching prefab homes?
Creating the Report
Gathering the Data
Our team used a media monitoring and social listening platform to analyze aggregated online media conversations. The sample size is 500K+, with English-language media mentions worldwide and all major online media sources.
The data was gathered by entering search queries containing keywords and instructions for relationships and exclusions with related keywords. For example, you might want to include mentions of "prefab" alongside "house" "home" or "housing" and exclude references to "gaming" or "PC." The platform provided many pre-made analyses, while others were done manually.
Organizing the Data
One of our burning questions was to uncover which aspects of prefab homes appeal most to consumers. We chose four features and created lengthy queries of related terms. In short, some of these associated keywords were:
- Durability: high-performance, long-lasting, resiliency
- Affordability: low budget, tight budget, cheaper, affordable
- Build time: faster build, shorter time, reduced time
- Sustainability: climate change, emissions, embodied energy
With the data in hand, we were then able to compare, contrast, and extract the stories and trends that were the most interesting to Rise and our friends in the home building industry.
The Results of the Rise Prefab Home Report
We highly recommend you read the full report for all of the results, but we can't help but share our favorite insights here.
