Grand Prairie factory starts producing modular homes that will ship across Texas

A new manufacturing plant has opened in Grand Prairie that will produce modular homes to ship across Texas.

HiFAB opened its more than 42,500-square-foot manufacturing plant this week along Robinson Road east of the Bush Turnpike in Grand Prairie.

The company broke ground on the plant last September. Like the homes it will construct, a manufacturer produced the steel structure for the factory off-site and it was completed on-site.

HiFAB is currently producing a model home for its factory and is waiting on state certification to build homes for clients.

The company’s home construction process within the plant mirrors what builders do in the field. About 80% of the product is built in the factory, then finished on-site.

The homes “get a traditional mortgage like a home, they have the standard warranty like a home, they are a home, they just happen to be efficiently built,” said HiFAB founder and CEO Brent Jackson, who also leads parent company Oaxaca Interests, a Dallas-based real estate firm.

Homes from the factory, called Haciendas, will start at $299,000 for two bedrooms, while three-bedroom homes will start at $399,000. The homes range from 1,300 to 1,900 square feet. Each home includes delivery, a concrete foundation, a metal roof and three layers of exterior stucco applied on-site. Prices could change depending on the market.

Homes will be available to both private clients and real estate developers in Texas. Its first development client is Tree Tops, a community in Fayette County in Central Texas.

The homes are designed by Lake|Flato Architects, which has offices in Austin and San Antonio.

From start to finish, each home will take about 30 days to be constructed through the factory. To start, the pace will be two homes a week or about 100 a year, and the company eventually hopes to be able to produce 300 homes a year through a potential second facility.

In the long term, the company hopes to build up scale to push costs down to be affordable for first responders such as EMS workers, physicians, firefighters and police officers.

“That’s why I get up every morning, and that’s why I ultimately want to see this company succeed,” Jackson said.

Source: The Dallas Morning News  

Author: Mitchell Parton