The city of Rochester’s second and largest modular home development will be built on sites across the northeast.
Fifteen houses will be built on vacant lots in the Upper Falls neighborhood just west of North Clinton Avenue. Rochester Land Bank Corp. is behind the project, funded in part by $4.5 million in state funds.
The factory-built, single-family units are made to look like a standard wood-frame house. New York State Homes and Community Renewal's MOVE-IN New York initiative is funding similar developments across upstate, committing a total of $20 million in grants.
In addition to Rochester, the state program is helping fund 24 houses in Essex County, 11 in Wayne County, and 11 in Suffolk County.
Rochester's first modular housing project was started last year, with nine proposed houses on seven lots in the city's Marketview Heights neighborhood. Those properties were set to be developed by Cook Properties. That project is still in development.
For the Land Bank project, development costs will be just over $300,000 per house. The houses will be sold to people making between 60% and 80% of area median income and are expected to be priced between $100,000 and $120,000.
While state subsidies will fill a gap in cost to build versus sale, it's a smaller chasm than similar city-led developments of single-family housing, said Erik Frisch, the commissioner of the city's Department of Neighborhoods and Business Development. For the city’s Buy the Block program, each house costs upwards of $350,000 to build. A total of 56 houses have been built through Buy the Block, 32 in the southwest area of the city and 24 in the northeast.
"One of the things that we're trying to do, whether it's by through MOVE-IN New York or through the Cook Properties pilot is identify ways to bring the cost of new build single family home construction down," Frisch said. "Single family to start, then you can look at other types of housing as well."
The Land Bank will contract with Champion Homes to build , nine houses on Almira Street, three on Galusha Street, two on Oakman Street and one on Lowell Street.
Frisch sees the program as something akin to an experiment on what could increase home ownership in Rochester.
"We want to see, again, how the product overall comes to market, understand what we need to do, as well as what the developers need to do working in our context," he said. "There aren't too many examples of factory-built homes in urban centers in New York state, so there's a learning curve here."
The MOVE-IN New York initiative is a plan to fund prefabricated housing projects across New York. The factory-built houses can be erected quicker than a traditional build and offer substantial savings on construction.
For example, a 2023 Harvard study found that build costs for manufactured homes can come in at less than half the cost of traditional houses of the same size.
“My administration is using every tool in the toolbox to bring homeownership within reach for individuals and families across New York,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement announcing the grant funding. “By harnessing the benefits of factory-built technology, the MOVE-IN NY program is bringing modern, affordable single-family homes to the market more quickly and in more regions than ever before.”
