Maine’s Knickerbocker Group to Build Modular Homes to Help State With Housing Crisis

According to News Center Maine (6-8-23), Maine’s Knickerbocker Group, best known for custom building multi-million-dollar coastal Maine homes, has begun a new venture—building small modular homes, called prefab pods. The company aims to help Maine meet its ongoing housing crisis.

To achieve its goal, Knickerbocker has purchased a warehouse in Wiscasset that once housed discount store merchandise. The facility has since been transformed into a giant construction shop where the company plans to build multiple houses at the same time, all under cover, out of the weather, and with virtually all of the work being performed by the in-house crew—no subcontractors.

Bill Burge, Knickerbocker’s project manager, told News Center Maine that the new system is designed for maximum efficiency to lower cost. “They will have a cut list and they will pre-cut everything on that side of the shop and put it in a cart and wheel it over and be assembled.” Burge added that the group hopes to have several dozen crew members and produce a complete modular house every three to four weeks. Those houses will then be loaded on trucks and transported to the customer’s building site and placed on the foundation.

Knickerbocker Group says that their modulars will be different from most of the others on the market because they will be locally built, highly energy efficient, and with the same higher level finish details as the company’s large custom homes.

Knickerbocker Group’s president Danielle Betts said the 500-square-foot model will roll out the warehouse door for about $225,000, while the two-bedroom model will cost $300,000. Land, foundation, site work, and utility costs will be extra.