Experts push standardization, off-site construction and guaranteed factory demand to scale starter homes in Washington state

Adam, a presenter at a Washington state housing session, told attendees that scaling production of starter homes requires "standardization as a practice across the ecosystem," including design, workforce, policy and financing.

He said statewide systems such as master permitting or state-level systems permitting would reduce local fragmentation and speed adoption of off-site construction methods. "If we want to be able to produce starter homes at scale, we really need to lean into standardization as a practice across the ecosystem," Adam said.

The presenter outlined a range of off-site technologies that should be accommodated, including panelization, wet cores and walls, prefabricated components and full volumetric modular units. He noted current regulatory coverage favors full volumetric modular methods and urged expanding statewide practices to include other approaches.

Adam emphasized that builders and developers will adopt off-site methods only if the value proposition is clear. "For many people that often comes down to first cost and costs, but it is also about time, it's about predictability, it's about risk mitigation," he said, listing predictability of schedules, lower risk and time savings as benefits that can justify adoption.

He said financing is a major barrier because many conventional construction loans do not match the cash-flow timing of off-site production, where substantial work and costs occur before a home arrives on site. He recommended aligning financing programs with off-site delivery requirements so factories and buyers are not left shouldering atypical timing risk.

A second financing-related proposal was creating programs that guarantee demand for factory output so manufacturers can run production lines at predictable rates. Adam said producers told him that predictable factory run time and volume are critical to amortize equipment and lower per-unit costs.

On policy and regulation, Adam called the current system "highly fragmented and hyper localized," citing subjective local permitting, differing accessory-structure and design requirements, and a general lack of administrative, repeatable preapproval systems for plan sets and products. He proposed moving some permitting practices to administrative statewide approaches and establishing systems for preapproval of repeatable plan systems.

Adam also relayed a suggestion made earlier in the session by a speaker named Ron about household size and affordability targets, saying some participants felt area median income (AMI) targets for for-sale programs may be set too low and could be in the 120–140 percent AMI range for certain starter-home programs.

He listed workforce development, logistics capacity for on-site assembly, and broader marketplace education (terminology and nomenclature for off-site methods) as additional priority actions. Adam said a final report with recommendations will be published in June and that the session materials and slides will be circulated to participants.

A meeting staff member thanked Adam for the presentation and closed the session. The transcript does not record any formal motions, votes or binding decisions related to the proposals discussed.