Britain is full of boring-looking, traditionally built houses, so what's so bad about an equally boring-looking house that has been built in a factory?
There is even a school of thought that says that factory-built houses ought to look boring so that customers don't get frightened off by their home's origins.

Of course, the shock of the new can cost housebuilders dear if it is not swiftly followed by a queue at the sales centre – but fear of failure means that many developers may not be getting the best out of the build techniques, and may be selling the product short.

Those housebuilders using off-site manufacturing are doing so because they have already found it better than traditional build methods – or they have confidence that it will be. If that's the case, why don't more of them promote those benefits to the customer? Tangible benefits like design quality and energy efficiency are what will win over the consumer. Without that, factory-build could be mean producing yet more dull houses.

Postscript

Josephine Smit