Token reduction in labor costs are not going to solve housing to start with. It doesn't cost a 2 million dollars to build a house in California because we pay framers $1,000 an hour, it is property costs and a shitty political class blocking competition to their and their buddy's current investments.

I completed our modular home/factory built [Honomobo] single family home last year in CA. Over all it was worth it. The whole process took a year. It only took four hours to land and install on-site with a crane. The uphill battle was convincing my local city that it was viable, up to code and possible.

I live in a double-wide 3-bedroom manufactured home in the Sierra Foothills.

It cost me less than half the median CA home price, with 7 acres, most of which I made walkable. I just had a nice morning walk through my "arboretum" of mostly manzanita plants. Real pretty ones, and I took some nice photos.

I could't move the home, nor place a new one in most locations, including the vicinity of my local downtown area. I checked, just for jollies.

Land costs drive CA housing. Look at charts or ask ... you know who.

Were the market functioning, there would be sufficient additional housing near jobs that investors could not sit on and rent-seek reselling property near those jobs as a source of profit.

The market is not free. It is heavily regulated by what can be built where when. There is a distinct lack of planning and regulation to protect consumers in this market.

My hot take as some one who follows the space is that traditionally a big blocker of factory built housing has been unionized trades people who lived in the area of the housing developments. These trades people had purchased their homes prior to housing costs skyrocketing in California.

For them, blocking factory built housing meant they had a monopoly on the local housing development projects and easy commutes from their homes (which are protected from property tax increases by Prop 13) to the local job sites.

As these original local trades people have aged out of the workforce they are replaced by younger trades people who can't actually afford housing in the area face 1-2 hour commutes, I think there will be less resistance..

The thought of living in a huge home in Riverside or Fresno with a 10-20 minute commute and building in houses in a climate controlled, OSHA inspected building will start looking more attractive.

The modern construcion site is a factory. They move the entire factor to the job, but that doesn't mean it isn't a factory.

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If not even Californians want to live in microscopic homes and eat bugs, it's not going to happen anywhere.