Tackling Britain’s housing crisis with modular houses

Looking through this year’s ilke homes brochure is satisfying, you can view the layout, size, exact specifications and key features of your future home—all for as low £65,000.

“Desirable, affordable, energy efficient homes that people enjoy living in” is written on the first page of the online booklet. 

Prefab housing

ilke homes offers modular housing. They focus on medium-density, low-rise houses and apartments up to four stores. Only a few days ago, the business opened their first UK factory in Knaresborough, Yorkshire to produce the ‘brochure homes’ in.

Eight houses fitted with kitchens and bathrooms will now be made each day in Yorkshire, to then be transported for delivery across the UK.

The factory cost of a two or three-bedroom home currently ranges from £65,000 to £79,000, however that does not include the cost of land, onsite assembly and connecting the home to services, which could multiply the final price several times.

But with housing association and local authority partnerships, ilke could surely strike up some good deals for customers.

Scaling up production

The overarching objective for the factory? To build high quality homes for all. The company aims to build 2,000 new homes a year at the factory, and then has plans to scale up production to 5,000 homes per year in the next five years.

The range of house types on offer is impressive. Homes have flexible layouts with over 100 possible variations, from two-storey terraced houses to three-storey semi-detached properties, and blocks of flats of up to four storeys. Next year, ilke Homes is launching a new apartment portfolio, offering partners a choice of two and half and three storey apartments over the coming year.

The opening of the factory has also created over 250 local jobs across ilke Homes’ manufacturing and supply chain, design and engineering teams. The housebuilder plans to expand its Yorkshire workforce with a further 500 jobs set to be available over the next five years.

Another key benefit of modular homes is the ability to use areas of land that aren’t easily accessible; the homes aren’t built from scratch, this therefore greatly reduces the size of building sites and the number of lorries, skips and people needed onsite.

The business wants “to help tackle the UK’s chronic shortfall in affordable housing”. They believe their cost-effective and quick to construct modular homes, alongside working with housing associations and developers across the country, will be key to achieving this. Modular homes are built offsite, enabling an in theory hassle-free build. Could they be the solution to Britain’s housing needs? 

All images courtesy of ilke homes