Is Prefabricated Housing the Future Trend?
Prefabricated housing represents a significant future development trend.
Strong policy support establishes industry status: The state continues to intensify its support for the prefabricated housing industry. The '15th Five-Year Plan for Urban Renewal' issued by the State Council explicitly calls for the vigorous development of intelligent construction, the promotion of prefabricated decoration, and the steady expansion of the application ratio of prefabricated buildings. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the National Development and Reform Commission have introduced a carbon peak implementation plan, setting a core goal of achieving a 40% share of prefabricated buildings in newly constructed urban buildings by 2030. This top-level design provides strong guarantees for the development of the prefabricated housing industry and establishes its important industry status.
Robust market demand opens up growth space: Urban renewal has spurred a trillion-dollar rigid demand market, with a large number of old residential communities and dilapidated buildings in China entering a cycle of renovation and refurbishment. Traditional construction methods struggle to meet large-scale, fast-paced demands, while prefabricated housing, with its modular, standardized, and lightweight advantages, perfectly fits scenarios such as old house renovations. It can significantly shorten construction periods and reduce disruptions to residents' lives. Meanwhile, domestically produced prefabricated houses have gained popularity overseas due to their quality and cost-effectiveness, with a 45% growth rate in prefabricated building exports in the first quarter of 2026. The simultaneous explosion in both domestic and international markets has opened up vast growth space for the industry.
Significant inherent advantages improve construction quality: The construction efficiency of prefabricated housing is doubled, with overall project durations shortened by more than 50%. It is green and low-carbon, with outstanding energy-saving and environmental protection advantages, reducing construction waste by 80%, significantly decreasing on-site wet operations, and minimizing dust and noise pollution. Quality standardization ensures better control over quality, with standardized specifications for residential prefabrication technology in China. The prefabrication rate of most commercial residential buildings reaches 30%-50%, and high-assembly-rate demonstration projects can exceed 70%. Core issues such as structural safety and joint waterproofing have been brought under controllable standards.
Existing problems need resolution, facing competitive challenges: Prefabricated housing also faces some issues, such as insufficient adaptability for small-scale customized residences and relatively high transportation costs for prefabricated components in some remote areas. There is a need to strengthen quality control over prefabricated joint construction to avoid hidden dangers such as joint leakage and insufficient structural connection strength. Additionally, the industry is experiencing increasingly fierce homogeneous competition, with profits being increasingly diluted. It is expected that more than one-third of factories will exit the market in the coming years.
