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Prefab Review

Hi, my name is Michael Frank, and this is the Prefab Pod presented by Prefab Review where we interview leading people and companies in the prefab housing industry. Today, we're speaking with Steve Glenn, the founder of Plant Prefab and Living Homes and the current CEO of Plant Prefab. Welcome, Steve. 

Plant Prefab

Thank you. Great to be here. 

Prefab Review

So I'm really excited to learn more about your company. But first, I was hoping to learn a little bit more about you. How'd you get into this business?

Plant Prefab

 Well, that could be a long answer. The short version is, growing up as a kid, I wanted to be an architect. I had Legos and blocks and books on Frank Lloyd Wright and the case study architects. Then I thought I was going to be an architect. I got to college. I learned there in a summer program in design that I have neither the talent or temperament to be an architect. Unfortunately, it concluded, but I learned about developers and realized that if you actually cared about the quality of the built environment, developers were more important than architects because they set the agenda. They hire architects or not and let them do great things or not. So I concluded that some day I should do that and hire great architects and let them do great things. But I was also into technology and that's why I spent my career before I started Living Homes many years ago as a way to really empower architects and architecture and make great sustainable design much more accessible. 

Prefab Review

Cool. I feel very much the same way. Also, you know, among the most fun things that we do is, you know, getting to be make-believe architects, where we help our clients move a door or change a wall. But yeah, it seems like there's a lot of infrastructure that you can really help with in kind of enabling others. So anyway, so at its core, what is Plant Prefab?

Plant Prefab

We design and manufacture high quality architectural, single and multi-family homes. Clients can work with any architect, and as long as those architects design to design guidelines which architects can download on our site, we can build for them or you can work with us. And we have standard designs and we've worked with some great World-Class architects like Ray Cappe and Kieran Timberlake and Brooks + ScarpaBrooks  and Yves Behar. You can select one of those designs or we'll work with you on a custom design. So those are the various options you have to work with us. And ultimately we give people a much more time and cost efficient way to build a very sustainable, healthy home. 

Plant Prefab

So do you have architects in house as well? Or is it primarily the third party people on your website? 

Plant Prefab

We do. We do have architects in house as well, although most of the vast majority of the projects we're building were designed by other architects, not by us.

Prefab Review

But like you can stamp stuff that are like your standard plans and all that stuff? 

Plant Prefab

You don't have to stamp in California.

Prefab Review

I know that's true on a state level, some of our projects with like HOAs and design reviews we still end up seeing that a little bit, but totally. So what part of the process do you take on? Is it primarily the modular construction? 

Plant Prefab

Well, as I said, we design and manufacture. So, again, we can be your design firm and we can manufacture or, we can just manufacture.

Prefab Review

So you're creating the modular shell of the home. Are you basically doing most of the inside the home as well?

Plant Prefab

Actually, we have a hybrid building system that we designed and patented and announced last month. So we have a new kind of panel we developed called a plant panel. So some of our projects are just all panels. Some of them are panels and modules. And some of them are all modules. The module projects tend to come very complete. All finished plumbing and electrical, cladding, drywall, paint, mill work, appliances installed, tiles grouted. We're mostly focused on urban projects. And really the prime imperative is to avoid the costs and delays that often hit urban projects. So we try to do as much work off-site as possible. 

Prefab Review

But tell me more about this plant panel thing. So that's sort of like a panelized flat pack system? 

Plant Prefab

It is, but again, it's available as a hybrid. We're in the custom business. That's one of things that really makes us unique. So we look at each project and we figure out what's the best way to build that project. Now, there may be some constraints. For example, you may not be able to bring in modules because of transport issues or training. In which case it has to be all panels. But it may be that because of the design and it's particularly true in multi-family where they're trying to maximize height and units that really are a hybrid approach, where you do modules for kitchens, baths, utility cores and panels for the other parts of the space, that may be the better approach. Or it may just be that it's more time and cost efficient to just do all modules. So we just have flexibility. We get these things on a project by project basis. 

Prefab Review

That's great. So I'm just looking at your site right now. Are any of the standard plans typically panelized?

Plant Prefab

We can do them all penalized. 

Prefab Review

So it's totally agnostic? 

Plant Prefab

Right. 

Prefab Review

Well, that's awesome. Are you using some kind of like, SIP (structural Insulated panel) for that? What's your approach on the panels?

Plant Prefab

No, it's our own design. As I mentioned, we designed and patented it. It's a pretty complete panel. It comes with infrastructure. So electrical, plumbing, finish work. It's not like a SIP. It's much more comprehensive.

Prefab Review

What geographic areas are you primarily serving right now? Is it mostly California?

Plant Prefab

Mostly California, yes. But we have done projects in other other places.

Prefab Review

So when thinking about what makes a plant home, it sounds like flexibility to work with all these different architects is a terrific quality of yours. There's like a specific sort of standards you have. And I understand there's some structural things, but are there sort of specifics in terms of like ethos, r values, et cetera, that you feel like kind of make something a plant home? 

Plant Prefab

Yes, but I don't know that I would describe it the way you do. I mean, we we're a custom business. So architects do plans that reflect their design intent. They do the specs that talk about finishes and fixtures, but we're in charge of means and methods. And we're in charge of the bulk of the materials that comprise a home by volume. One of the things that really is kind of core DNA for us is sustainability. Which, by the way, something I didn't see in your description about us. And we should talk about that later.

Prefab Review

We're always trying to get better. 

Prefab Review

Yeah. So the first home we ever designed was the first home ever certified LEED Platinum in the history of the program. We've got twenty seven homes certified platinum and a bunch gold, which is way, way more than than any other pre-fabricated and almost any design firm. So building at the highest levels of sustainability, it's just part of our mission. One of our values is Earth Day, every day and less is more. So we are very careful about the materials we source. For example, all of our paints and stains are no VOC. Our drywall contains among the highest recycled content that we've been able to find commercially available and it's mold resistant. Our insulation is made of recycled glass fibers. So we're very responsible about the materials we source, regardless of whether that's something that's important to clients or their architects, although fortunately more more people do care about that stuff. 

Prefab Review

It takes among the highest priorities, I'd say that and cost are the two things we get the most when we talk to customers. Tell me about your collaboration with architects. You list like an impressively stellar group on your site and I guess we know a lot of the same people. So it seems like architects are really excited about it. We had Geoffrey Warner from Alchemy Architects. I think last week or the week before. And he was telling me about how you had something in the works with their firm. How do these work?

Plant Prefab

Well, I guess they probably can be described two ways. One is, we can work with any architect. You just download our design guidelines and as long as you get us plans that are kind of based on some of the parameters we need to be able to build, e'll do it. So that's one way. And then for a much smaller number, we're working with architects. We're actually commissioning them to do designs that we release as standards. And we make them available in our gallery. People can peruse those designs. We introduced last month a really cool new 3D interactive configurator. So, so far, just for three of the homes, the top three of the gallery, you can configure homes like cars with finishes and fixtures you select and even a package of smart home technologies that we offer. Amazon's one of our investors and we worked with them on this package of smart home technologies and our home ship with those technologies. And then you can call Amazon and they'll come over and set it all up for you. So that, you can do online. And with those architects, we pay them royalties every time we sell one of their homes and we'll be doing that more and more. We've got some exciting announcements with some new folks coming up soon.

Prefab Review

Yeah, it's definitely very cool. Cool model. Tell me about that. So I feel like there's a range of models on this in terms of how much of the standard homes get built. I know there are some companies that are incredibly like what you see on the site is what you get at your house. And then there are some where they're like, honestly, the internal joke is that no one builds the standard home. And that's just kind of like this sort of point of inspiration. How does that end up working with most of your projects? 

Plant Prefab

Both. We've done 13 C6s or sorry, it's now called the Living Home 6. But a number of them have some minor variations, nothing major. And we've done a bunch of custom homes based on that. We're inspired by standards. And that's fine with us. What we're focused on, the urban market, and the urban market is a custom market. So we're happy to do standards and we're happy if that serves as the inspiration for some customized version. It doesn't matter to us.

Prefab Review

Let's talk about costs. And I know this is sort of a hard question for very understandable reasons because of all the variables. But you know, we do the best we can to try to be educational for people. So if we assume that, you know, pick any mid-size home you want. And let's just say we're building for example in like Los Angeles or an expensive market. Let's assume that also there's a pretty flat, easy site, right? And it's accessible. You get cranes there, etc. Can you sort of, and you guys are pretty good about being transparent about the cost of modules on your site directly. Can you kind of help me break down the different components of costs? Right. Like what might the design or design tweaks cost? What will module costs run and then like what sort of range in terms of site costs or anything I'm missing. I'm probably missing stuff. Just to help understand what the cost breakdown of a typical project might look like?

Plant Prefab

I can't. We're in the custom business, so we don't have a typical project. The most I can tell you is that our module costs have ranged from $153 to $450+ per square foot. The $153 was a larger multi-family project. The $450+ was a very high end steel framed accessory dwelling unit. So yeah, you know that's when you're in the custom business, you get different types of projects with different budgets. I would say as a general rule, your site, transport, installs, so all of the other costs, can be 50 to 100 percent more from that. So if you're trying to figure out, you know, what are total hard costs, you know, take that range I just gave you and add in 50, 100 percent more. And that's the range we see for total hard costs and then soft costs. I'm not going to say anything about permits that also varies widely. Design fees, I mean, if you're doing a standard with us, it's 8% design fee. And if it's fully custom, it's 15% percent. But different architects have different design fees. 

Prefab Review

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. We help people across the country. But in terms of like I'd say high end of California, we typically see local costs around $200 a square foot for pretty normal sites in like pretty high end areas and obviously a lot less than that. Sorry. and by pretty high end areas I mean, like San Francisco, Bay Area, Los Angeles, etc..

Plant Prefab

You're saying you see $200 a square foot in L.A. and the Bay Area?

Prefab Review

 For the local builder costs.

Plant Prefab

No way.

Prefab Review

 Are you guys seeing much, much higher than that?

Plant Prefab

Much, much higher. Like that's just easy. I'm sorry to challenge you on that, but you are not seeing any credible bids in the L.A. area at two hundred dollars a square foot and in the Bay Area, double that.

Prefab Review

You're saying $400 a square foot for local builders.

Plant Prefab

3, you know, if you're working with a real cut rate. Yeah, absolutely.

Prefab Review

That's great. That's great feedback to understand what you guys are seeing .

Plant Prefab

That's old data. 

Prefab Review

Yeah. And please, continue to push back because we work with a lot of people honestly, but it's always really helpful to understand you probably work with at least as many. So I appreciate that. All right. So just in terms of sort of finishing up stuff on plant prefab, can you tell me a little bit more about maybe one or two of the projects, let's use coolest as sort of a subjective term. What are among the sort of coolest projects you've done? Like things that you think are really interesting that you've done recently?

Plant Prefab

Well, I'm really excited and proud about the fire rebuild projects we're doing. We hit three. We ship another one next week. So the three we shipped were for victims of the Tubbs Fires in Northern California. The the fourth, the one we ship next week is the first for the Woolsey Fire. And we have 20 more in various stages, some really, you know, I'm psyched that we're part of that solution. I'm also really excited about the fact that we're just building for literally many, many architects who have never done prefab before. And that's part of our mission is to show them and frankly their clients, there is a more efficient, more reliable, more predictable way to build. So we've got a number of projects with the Brown Studio in San Diego. One of them is in the Tahoe area - super exciting project. We have already shipped a couple homes for that. How do you know about that?

Prefab Review

So we're connected to those people a little bit as well. And then we're also doing one of, we're doing a project down the street as well. And I'm a big skier. Well, not right now in the shelter in place times. But yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the project.

Plant Prefab

So we got a bunch of work with them. So those are a couple of projects. And we've got an affordable housing project that we're doing with Brooke Scarpa in Santa Monica for the Community Corporation. We won a million dollar grant from L.A. County last year for that project. We're super excited about that one. 

Prefab Review

That's awesome. Great. All right. So it's been awesome learning a little bit more about what you do. And oh, one more, to the extent that you can be transparent about this, what scale are you are at right now? It sounds like you're doing a lot of projects. 

Plant Prefab

What does scale mean?

Prefab Review

 Sorry, like how many customers or how many houses are you building? I don't know sort of how you think about this, but yeah. Like what volume are you guys at?

Plant Prefab

Not a question e're comfortable answering, but we've got a sixty-two thousand square foot facility and we're full. 

Prefab Review

OK. All right, time for the fire round - basically a bunch of questions that we get all the time that it's terrific to be able to ask to experts like you. To the extent that you can answer them in a minute or less, that'd be terrific. But I will not be too hard on you about this stuff. So question number one. Tell me a little bit about doing different kinds of roofs for modular homes. Many of the modular homes we work with honestly only do sort of mostly flat or like half-12 roofs or 1-12 roofs. I noticed that you actually have some sloped roofs. What are the challenges in doing that? And are you able to do those kind of a modular way or are those done site?

Plant Prefab

We do pitched roofs all the time. Sometimes they're done, oftentimes they're done with modules and they tilt up. So they they ship flat and they tilt them up on-site. And we've also shipped as a separate component that gets installed on site. It's always a shipping height issue. 

Prefab Review

Yeah, that makes sense. Can you tell me a little bit about garages. I noticed some of your homes have garages and I assume other ones can be added on a site basis. When you do them as sort of a standard part of the house, are they actually part of the module or how does that work? 

Plant Prefab

We have done it as part of modules, but generally it seems best to do that on site. It's just more cost efficient to do it that way. So it really depends on the project. 

Prefab Review

And then, his is not a great quickfire question, but what's your experience been with ADUs? We're seeing like an explosion of interest broadly in this. I notice you have a number of models in your line. Are there any sort of key takeaways or thoughts you have related to building ADUs?

Plant Prefab

It just seems like there's a significant increase in interest. We've seen a lot more in the last year than we did in the previous year. So I think it's, and certainly in California it's been made much easier by a series of state laws that started under Brown and are continuing with Newsom. 

Prefab Review

Cool. And then final fire round question that we ask a lot of people. f I'm considering a piece of land or purchase and I think I want to build a modular home or I guess any home on it. What are the key things that I should look for that you look for when you're looking at doing a site analysis?

Plant Prefab

Well, it's all about transportation and craning accessibility, craning little bit less. So if it's one story because you can do roll on. But definitely transportation accessibility. Hills aren't necessarily a problem, but really narrow roads with really tight turns are. But that's assuming you're doing modules. And again, one of the reasons why we developed this hybrid system is we are working on projects where access for modules are an issue. And so we're doing panels. So when you're dealing with someone who has that flexibility, then transportation is a different issue. But if it's an all mod solution you're looking at, then that analysis really has to be done up front because of course, you don't want to find problems later when you actually are shipping and realize that you may not be able to get that to the site for whatever reason. 

Prefab Review

Terrific. Well, thanks so much for all this information, it's been great to learn a little bit more about your company. A final question that we ask everyone. What are you most excited about for your company or for the industry, for the near future? 

Plant Prefab

Well, it's not a great question right now, given what's happening with... So, you know, I feel grateful that homebuilding was excluded from the stay at home directive in the state of California. So we've been open and we're continuing to build. And as I said, we're building a home for a fire victim who very much wants to move into their home next week. But I don't take any of that for granted. And I, of course, I have no greater ability than anyone to know what will be the state of the economy and home building in the next year or two because of this. So we're taking it day by day. 

Prefab Review

Yeah, I think we all are, and that's good to hear that you guys are taking a thoughtful, responsible approach to all of this. Well, thanks again, Steve. I really appreciate the time. For more information about Plant Prefab, I assume plantprefab.com is the best place to visit. You can always visit us at prefabreview.com for general information about the industry. Steve, we really appreciate your time.

Plant Prefab

Great. Appreciate it. Thank you.