Manufactured-home communities will become a better investment than luxury houses and condominiums in 2021, according to a new report.

Manufactured (also called modular) construction is the process of creating buildings or building parts in a factory and assembling them on-site like Legos. Because modular construction can cost 20-30% less and speed up construction timelines by 50%, the industry has grown over 34% since 2015, according to Census data.

“I’m watching new technologies emerge — panel construction, modular housing… There are some interesting things that are happening in the construction industry that are driving down costs,” said Byron Carlock, U.S. real estate practice leader of London-based professional services network PwC, which released its Emerging Trends in Real Estate 2021 survey report last week.

The average manufactured single-family home cost $55,200 in May 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, less than a fifth of the typical $330,000 price tag on a U.S. home, according to May 2020 Realtor.com data.

Price advantages prompted U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to make modular homes a major agenda item during his term. Carson prescribed deregulation of manufactured housing as a solution to America’s affordable housing crisis during his “Driving affordable housing across America” bus tour early this year.

“Today we’re proposing changes that remove more of the red tape that stands between the production of safe, quality homes, and the nation’s families and individuals that need these homes to make homeownership a reality,” said Carson on a tour of a Clayton Homes modular housing factory in Russellville, Ala. in February.

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