Cheaper housing needs to be built in Russia by developing the house kit segment, Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin told journalists.
“We certainly need to learn, for the purpose of increasing housing affordability, how to build cheaper housing technologically, by which I mean house kits. And, if financing is available, we are prepared to help manufacturers of house kits, including wooden house construction,” Khusnullin said.
The point here is not that a house kit is cheaper than a “piece of timber” or a “bag of cement.” The main thing is shifting the construction process from the outdoor site to a workshop, explains economist and Partner at Goldman Agency Akhmed Yusupov.
Today, according to data from developers themselves, the basic “shell” of a house, consisting of a foundation, walls and a roof, accounts for only about 40% of the final price per square meter. The rest of the price is made up of “wet” processes, insulation, finishing, and facades, which are done manually on site, with losses of time and materials, in the open air, and depending on the weather.
Factory-produced panels make it possible to significantly automate these construction stages. As recent experience at Moscow plants demonstrates, upgrading production lines – for example, through the introduction of robotics – can reduce the cost per cubic meter of precast concrete by 15-20%, primarily due to lower energy consumption. As the expert notes, this is not a theoretical assumption, but a proven economic outcome.
“When it comes to individual housing construction, the advantages become even more apparent. Consider the cost breakdown: materials alone currently account for 25,000 to 40,000 rubles per square meter, depending on the technology used, while the work of crews and subcontractors adds another 10,000 to 18,000 rubles. However, when a house is assembled from a prefabricated kit that arrives on site pre-cut and ready for installation, the share of manual labor decreases dramatically. Construction time is being reduced from six months to only a few weeks. And time on construction sites, as we know, also means money, both in terms of credit costs and the client’s peace of mind,” the economist notes.
In his view, multi-apartment buildings should not be overlooked either:
“We are already observing cases where an industrial approach delivers breakthrough results. The large-scale modular construction plant at Technopolis Moscow, with an annual capacity of 450,000 square meters, shows that a 23-story tower can be assembled in 28 days, with apartments arriving on site already finished and with utility systems installed. This creates an entirely different project economics and level of labor productivity. That is why Khusnullin advocates for a systemic approach to industrializing the entire construction sector, rather than limiting it to the construction of inexpensive sheds where prefabricated housing becomes a tool for lowering the final price through the speed and precision of factory assembly lines,” the expert concludes.