Have we hit a tipping point for residential construction where the cost and quality of a factory-built home always compares favorably to the cost and quality of a conventionally-built home? Are Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists beginning to train their sights on this mammoth industry? In the sixth and final episode of a series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew discusses how entrepreneurs eager to disrupt this space might conceive of building and financing a modern homebuilding factory. To evaluate this opportunity, he interviews machinery and factory experts including Hansbert Ott of Weinmann, Reza Nasseri of Landmark Homes, and Professor Ryan E. Smith.

In 2012, six single-family homes were made by a 3D printer in China. The inventor of that technology is now working on a 3D printer designed to construct buildings on Mars. Does this technology have a future on Earth? Or does the future of homebuilding involve modern factories that leverage robots to build wood or steel framing similar to the types of machines you might find in modern automotive plants? In the fifth episode of a series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew speaks with innovators and academics about technologies that have the potential to revolutionize the homebuilding industry, including interviews with Behrokh Khoshnevis, inventor of Contour Crafting; Professor Jeffrey Liker, author of The Toyota Way; and Michele Francovigh, Lead Project Engineer at Fincantieri.

In the summer of 2016, the world’s tallest modular building at 32 stories high was completed at 461 Dean Street in Brooklyn, NY. Once the building’s apartment modules were completed at a factory located in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they were transported to the development site and essentially stacked one on top of another into a high-rise building. To the dismay of its original backers, the building was delivered years late, riddled with construction problems, and the subject of a costly litigation. Still, excitement about modular construction in New York abounds with new projects under development. In the fourth episode of a series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew interviews a few of the key players in NYC’s modular building space, including Roger Krulak of Full Stack Modular, Chris Sharples of SHoP Architects, Mimi Hoang of nARCHITECTS, and Robby Kullman of Capsys to hear their learnings from the 461 Dean Street project and other modular buildings that have been built in New York City. He’ll also speak with modular builder Steve Glenn of LivingHomes and Plant Prefab about multi-family building opportunities on the West Coast.

If a trillion dollar market opportunity exists, you can bet the people at Google are thinking about it. Within X, Google’s most secretive lab, they’ve been working on solving the problem of how to make building construction more efficient in order to deal with the world’s severe and worsening urban housing shortage. By the year 2050, the global population is expected to grow by 2.2 billion people, and 90% of that growth is expected to take place in cities that are in dire need of new housing. In China, one company has figured out how to deal with this challenge by prefabricating components for skyscrapers inside of a factory. In the third episode of a series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew interviews some of the most ambitious people figuring out how to make urban housing more efficient, including Jen Carlile of Flux, Zhang Yue of Broad Group, and Professor Austin Williams.

Modern homebuilders have taken the art of prefabrication to new heights where they can construct entire rooms complete with insulation, plumbing, and electric wiring all within a factory. These rooms, called “modules,” are then transported from the factory to the building site and stacked to form a home in mere days. In the Hamptons, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and a number of other major cities, it’s now possible to build a beautiful modern home modularly for dramatically less than the cost of building with local contractors. In the second episode of a series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew interviews game-changing modular builders who believe that the future of their industry is factory-built, including Bill Haney of Blu Homes, Ed Mahoney of Cocoon9, Jared Levy of Connect Homes, Joseph Tanney of Resolution: 4 Architecture, Aaron Holm of Blokable, and Pat Fricchione of Simplex Homes.

Between 1908 and 1942, Sears sold 100,000 homes that were delivered in kits consisting of 12,000 pieces. While Sears is no longer in the business of making prefabricated homes, a number of technology-driven startups have picked up the mantle and are now delivering new kinds of kits, which, once they’re put together, make modern homes. In the first episode of a 6-part series on the future of homebuilding, Andrew interviews some of the most innovative companies that are reinventing the way we think about prefabricated housing, including Andrew Dickson of Acre Designs, Bill Haney of Blu Homes, Jack Armstrong of SIPA, Matthew Stannard of Stillwater Dwellings, and Tom Sandonato of kitHAUS.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you could predict where the world was headed? What kind of company would you build or invest in if you could see what disruptions were coming next? This is a sneak preview of the new podcast, Predicting Our Future, where serial entrepreneur Andrew Weinreich interviews leaders in different verticals to predict what changes and opportunities await.