Smart House, A Korean Prefab Home Builder Aims for Big
For the past three years, Seoul-based builder Smart House has focused its business energies on developing the prefab residential housing market in South Korea. Constructed with Canadian SPF, the prefab homes they manufactured and built have received positive feedback from homeowners, and the company has found a way to differentiate itself from other home builders.
Prefab construction gained traction in South Korea because of its environmental and economic benefits. While prefab houses can cost less than traditionally built homes, financial savings are not always the most compelling reason. The real saving is in quality and time. This becomes a key selling point for the company to promote their products to prospective buyers.
To make the business work, the company produces home designs that are tailor-made for prefab manufacturing, with clean lines and flat surfaces, thus can be production line made, shrink-wrapped and stacked on a truck for easier transportation. AZIT, a housing complex project Smart Home is currently developing, is a good example of that. A total of 19 households will be built on a site of 6,000m2.
According to Lee Young-joo, CEO of Smart House, the company is confident that their prefab home solution can fuel buyers’ interests because of the controlled built quality and the significant cost saving. Mr. Lee believes prefab homes provide an answer for modern, affordable, mass-produced housing for Korea’s future single family homes.
Smart Home has set up two prefab plants and plans further expansion to build up its leadership position in Korea’s booming prefab sector.
