Modular Homes in North Carolina

[Bryan Beam]

Anyone have experience with building modular homes in North Carolina? I'm interested to find a builder and to hear about your experience in selling modular versus stick built. 

Thank you in advance!

[Chris Martin]

riginally posted by @Henri Meli:

@Bryan Beam . I'm very interested in your experience with modular. I'm looking to build this here. or something very similar. The triangle area (Raleigh, Durham) or some adjacent counties is where I'm focusing on.  

Henri, not a bad idea if you can pull it off.

When I went through this exercise a few years ago with a proposed multi-family build, our challenges were not finding a model and a builder/vendor, but meeting all the requirements needed for site selection. I initially only looked in Wake and Harnett counties, and for both the UDOs were sufficiently restrictive to cause us to change course. In Wake county, apartments can fit into two zoning groups, R-5 and what they call the HD Highway District (HD.) Our target market was southern Wake county, specifically where HD zoning surrounds 42 east of Fuquay Varina and 50 south of 1010 (ten-ten rd.) This zoning is easiest to see as the purple clinging on to route 42 and 50 on this county zoning map. I also attached below... 

I stand by what I posted over a year ago in my second post in First Multi Family walkthrough today, where I gave my opinion on where the growth corridors for new construction will be. In 5 years, I am confident you won't recognize where you are when driving down Old Stage Rd south of the new I-540 southern loop. The area will be transformed just like Holly Springs south of 55. Graphically, it's the light yellow areas with the red diagonal lines, the Planned Growth Area, on this planning map. For convenience, I also attached an image from it below: 

Stancil Builders, which now redirects to Bradley Built, Inc., has their signs all along 42, so the train might have already left the station. @Henri they are the first people I would talk to, certainly in southern Wake county, about multifamily site location.

In Harnett county, multifamily is restricted to RA-20M and RA-20R and Compact Mixed Use areas. The land acquisition opportunities are pretty small, with Buies Creek area being possibly the best potential. About 18 months ago, I talked to a local banker who we planned to use and essentially gave us a 'green light' for Northern Harnett multifamily development, and he has contacts for a builder who has successfully build townhomes there, between Lillington and Coats. (Sidebar: We got a 'red light' on development outside Kenly, so I read that as southern Wake, northern Harnett, and west central Johnston are 'good' from a lender's perspective.) 

I did not look at Johnston county much because land prices went through the roof and zoning limits multifamily (>2 units/acre) to Interstate Highway Interchange (IHI). Below is the zoning matrix from municode: 

There may be some SF development opportunities in JoCo with farm land, but many parcels have active permits and the subdivisions just keep popping up. From the JoCo GIS, bring up 'layers' and click the 'Permits' option on and off to see how the west central county area is transforming. Theoretically, you could get a Special Use permit for developing land for multifamily that is zoned Agricultural-Residential, but this requires a Planned Development... and this was well beyond my charter.

I hope that helps some. I didn't look into anything in Raleigh but did talk to Columbus County Economic Development (CCED.) CCED is much more lax with building regulation, but for a variety of reasons didn't pursue anything there at the moment. We keep half an eye on the Leland area and areas north of Myrtle Beach (up to Loris/Tabor City) for future potential.