Image: theprefablist.com
With the Covid-19 pandemic creating hot housing markets around North America, including Atlantic Canada, a New Brunswick growth marketer and designer is making it easy to find prefabricated homes in Canada.
Colin James Belyea recently launched PrefabList, a website that helps you find the perfect prefabricated home, tiny home, bunkie, studio, or guest house to suit your needs.
The idea for the website came from Belyea’s interest and work in the real estate space.
“As part of that, I’ve been thinking a lot about prefabricated buildings; how we will basically overcome the issues that we have in North America with building construction over the next 20 or 30 years,” says Belyea. “What I found in my research is that there’s a lot of really cool innovative companies building these buildings, but the consumer marketplace for them is totally [dipsersed].”
Belyea discovered there was no place for people could go to compare manufacturers and prices or see the different options available.
“As I was going through this myself, I was having to hack together my own solutions for my own research,” he says. “Then I decided I should probably just build something. There’s obviously space here, I have a background in it, I should probably just do it.”
On PrefabList, users can filter options such as the type of building they’re looking for (primary house, guest house, tiny home, office, guest house, etc), how many bedrooms/bathrooms they want and whether or not they want a kitchen.
You can also filter by country. Right now Prefablist includes Canada but Belyea is currently adding the United States too.
“The caveat is this is very much a [version one] product. Right now we have most of the manufacturers in Canada and we’re working on bringing on all the ones in the U.S. as well,” he says. “Eventually, we’ll do Europe, Australia and New Zealand.”
Belyea says the rise in interest in prefabricated homes comes from how the Covid-19 pandemic has changed both the real estate market and how people are adapting to new space demands.
“A lot of people are leaving cities. A lot of people who don’t live in cities are experiencing changes in the space demands in the buildings they already inhabit. Maybe all of a sudden two parents are working from home, whereas neither of them did before? How do you manage that if you have a family?” he says.
“Obviously, one solution is to go to the market and move houses but that’s causing a lot of supply constraints, which is what we’re seeing right now. Another option is to add more space, or change how to use the space in the house.”
Another contributing fact is the skyrocketing costs of building supplies, lumber, and construction labour,
“I think that’s also been a bit of a tailwind in people who are thinking about prefab buildings,” says Belyea.
This isn’t the first time Belyea has designed his own solution to a problem he’s seen. Back in early 2020, he launched FlightComp, a free website that helps gives passengers the information they need to get the compensation they deserve from airlines.
Though plans to monetize Flightcomp were stalled due to the pandemic, Belyea sees the potential to monetize PrefabList in the future by offering a service to the prefab manufacturers.
“I think there’s space to provide service to the manufacturers at the same time we’re providing service to the end customer which is what we’re starting with now,” he says.
In real estate, especially in the Maritimes, many don’t consider the other options besides a new build or moving to a new house, which are usually the most costly routes. PrefabList aims to show there are other options out there.
“There’s a lack of education in the whole space that could help remedy a lot of people’s problems.”
Cherise Letson is the associate editor of Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
