The Aurora City Council passed a resolution Monday evening to designate modular construction, in which homes are built mostly offsite in a factory and then moved, as a separate housing category that could lead to an influx of affordable housing. 

Councilmember Francoise Bergan has been working with staff and a modular housing developer for over six months to figure out how the city can reduce housing costs and increase supply without sacrificing high quality standards, she said. 

Colorado is ranked the fifth-most expensive place to buy a home in the country, according to meeting documents. 

At Monday night’s council meeting, Bergan brought forward the resolution to recognize modular housing as its own unique category of housing different than traditional onsite construction.

Modular housing can bring homes to market in half the time as it normally takes to bring a house to market, according to meeting documents. 

Bergan toured a Precision Manufacturing facility for company Oakwood Homes and said the facility was “massive” and had an assembly line of people working on various parts of the homes. 

At the actual facility, the company creates structural parts of the houses like framing and plumbing, and then hookups are done at the site. 

From the time they start the house at the factory, it takes about six weeks to complete, she said. 

This helps cut costs for inspections, Bergan said. Rather than having inspectors go out multiple times to various job sites, they can go to the manufacturing facility and inspect there. 

Modular homes also cut costs in terms of footprint size, usually being about 900 to 1,200 square feet.

The homes are going for around $300,000, which is significantly less than the average Colorado home, which is over $500,000, according to real estate marketplace company Zillow. 

Bergan met with state officials Tuesday to discuss these cost savings, talking about modular homes as a unique category, which would allow the city to reduce fees on them, she said.

Bergan said she hopes Aurora can be a “model for the entire state” in making modular housing its own category to reduce housing costs in the state.

Mayor Coffman thanked Bergan for her work at Monday’s meeting, saying modular housing is the “way to the future” of affordable housing.

Councilmember Stephanie Hancock toured the factory with Bergan and said the homes are “beautifully” put together.

“If you didn’t know that these were modular homes, you wouldn’t know, that’s how well they’re done,” Hancock said. “It is real innovation and Aurora can be the gold standard for what housing affordability can be in our state.”

Bergan said she also couldn’t tell the difference between the model homes they toured and a home built traditionally on-site. 

“When we say modular housing, people think of mobile homes and it’s really not that at all,” Bergan said. “You can’t really tell the difference of that product versus a house that was built from the ground up on site.”

Councilmember Angela Lawson expressed some concern about the modular homes, saying she hopes they don’t get bought by investors to be used for rental properties and made expensive as has been seen with other housing. 

“I’m glad that this is coming forward. I’m just hoping they’re not going to be gobbled up by investors,” Lawson said.

Oakwood Homes, the facility Bergan and Hancock toured, already has a waiting list of people who want to purchase the homes and it’s largely individuals and families, Bergan said. 

“I don’t think that investors were coming in,” Bergan said. “I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t know what will happen. But we certainly would want to discourage that.”