, went to the typically English town of Tunbridge Wells last September, it looked like a potentially revolutionary moment in Britain’s housing industry. One that might reverberate in Australia.
Prince William and Kate were even photographed visiting modular houses built in Cambridge to tackle an affordable housing shortage.General, which had positioned itself as the industry’s front-runner by setting up a big factory in the northern English town of Selby in 2016, had to shut up shop. TopHat managing director Andrew Shepherd says his company wants to grow incrementally – a contrast to LAnd he says TopHat’s model is already attracting curiosity Down Under, where the challenge of building enough affordable housing is just as pressing as it is in Britain.“It’s a nascent industry here, and I’d say it’s even more a nascent industry over in Australia,” he said.
The hesitancy is especially strange because modular housing can more easily accommodate the new green building regulations – covering areas like insulation, for example – that are only a couple of years away.“The people that are making the decisions on how to do construction on construction sites, they’ve got 30 years of muscle memory in doing things traditionally,” he said.