Jennifer Castenson’s Post

I’m curious what pricing will be on these. The design and approach look great! If they really are able to bring pricing down significantly, while having such a nice design, this would be a much needed advancement for new home building.

I find this super interesting having followed this Kosovo based modular manufacturer for the last couple of years. I still struggle with the sustainability and cost structure of building modular home components in Kosovo and shipping them to the port of Houston, TX and then trucking them to an assembly warehouse in Austin, TX and then to site. Looks like massive amounts of CO2 used in transport and excess costs in transportation that would make these homes more expensive than traditional site built of the same size and quality.

I’ve been following the Whisper Valley evolution since taking lead at the Housing Innovation Alliance, LLC back in 2019. It’s great to see a team put themselves out there and take the lead in technology development and deployment. The America at Home Study demonstrated there is a huge opportunity to meet consumers where they are in how we create community and deliver housing solutions so I think there is a lot of room to get creative in how design spaces to thrive. We need more development teams to create a safe place for innovation.

Feels like the manufacturing facilities need to also be modular and transportable as the demand blooms. It’s a big bet to plant all the manufacturing in one place and try to transport large prefab elements. Just a feeling. I’ll leave it to the MBA’s. We also forget that building reuse and high performance upgrades, if doing the most for the environment is your goal as a buyer, is vastly superior, existing infrastructure and materials etc. Love the new tech. But love small Main Street towns more.