Can the rise of Contech mitigate the US housing crisis?
Amid climate and political crises, the rapid advancement of construction technology is redefining the US real-estate industry – but can we really trust AI to build a home?
The US housing crisis has become structural: by some estimates, the country is short of more than five million dwellings, while the price of new homes has climbed by nearly a third in five years. Meanwhile, about 40 per cent of the workforce is expected to retire within the decade, leaving an industry trying to build more with fewer hands and under the growing stress of wildfires, floods and rising temperatures.
Enter “contech” (construction technology). A new generation of firms is using robotics, data and design automation to rethink how we make buildings. Some firms in this sector have already flown too close to the sun: remember Katerra, the Silicon Valley darling that tried to reinvent everything, everywhere, all at once? It raised $2bn (€1.7bn) but collapsed in 2021. Today, others are learning to play smaller and smarter, treating the housing shortage not as a mass-production problem but as one of mass customisation.
In Los Angeles, there’s Model Z, which provides prefab infill homes; in Chicago is the US office of Tel Aviv-based Buildots, which digitally manages construction progress using AI. Another Californian firm, Versatile, uses data about building sites to improve processes. In Massachusetts, you’ll find Reframe Systems, a venture founded by former Amazon roboticists. Its answer to the housing crunch is a network of AI-optimised micro-factories: compact, robotic workshops that can be deployed in under 100 days to produce energy-efficient, healthy and affordable homes suited to a changing climate. Reframe focuses on small homes, duplexes and multi-family residences. Its first micro-factory is in Massachusetts, with the second one running in Los Angeles to support post-wildfire rebuilding. “We want to act as co-developers,” says its CEO, Vikas Enti. “We’re working with communities to make resilience accessible, not aspirational.”
Automation, he says, isn’t about displacing labour but augmenting it. The company uses AI-powered work instructions to enable apprentices to perform complex tasks with precision and create accurate floor and roof systems. Just as Enti’s team once helped Amazon to unlock the economics of same-day shipping, Reframe now aims to use robotics to rethink the factory and bend the rules of construction along the way.
Comment:
Advanced construction technology is already helping to build housing both at scale and at speed – but it’s not just a matter of passively waiting for robots to solve all of our problems. Human innovators need to keep finding clever ways to use the tech.
