Factory-built housing: spare capacity and a slow planning phase

On 12 February 2026 Roland Berger published the second edition of its Prefab Homes Radar, compiled in collaboration with the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations. The figures come from an online survey of 42 active producers of prefabricated homes and from interviews with seven large players, which together built about 35 per cent of the prefab homes. In 2025, 14,700 prefab homes were added, 21.2 per cent of all new-build homes, against about 10 per cent five years earlier. Prefab output grew by 8 per cent while total housebuilding stayed level. For 2026 the producers expect more than 19,000 homes, but from 2018 to 2025 they delivered on average about 82 per cent of their own forecast. Correcting for that, Roland Berger arrives at 16,100 homes, about 45 per cent of an estimated capacity of almost 35,000. According to the report, extra shifts could add some 30,000 more. The firm concludes that production capacity is not a bottleneck for the market as a whole. At the current pace the prefab share will reach 30 to 40 per cent by 2030, below the 50 per cent the producers themselves support. One large player says in the report that prefab needs to be involved early in the design, because key choices are often made too early for prefab still to be the best option.

TNO set out to find where the delay does lie, and on 19 February 2026 published a study based on sixteen in-depth interviews with, among others, municipalities, a province, the ministry, developers, building quality inspectors, software companies and housing associations, supplemented by validation interviews and literature. The researchers point to the long and unpredictable planning phase before construction. They describe nine interconnected bottlenecks. Respondents give priority to slow policymaking and lead times at municipalities, which according to TNO often stem from a shortage of staff and expertise; to unstructured public participation and objection procedures; to a difficult business case; and to a siloed process in which each phase follows the previous one. According to TNO, clients still often ask for fully bespoke designs and set out their requirements in technical terms, whereas builders of standardised housing concepts need functional requirements. Municipalities and concept builders rarely work together on a product vision, and local rules differ from one municipality to the next. So every project gets its own adjustments, ends up resembling traditional construction and produces no learning curve. The market works widely with BIM; many municipalities do not, which makes it harder to exchange data. TNO also calls scaling up a question of culture for clients and builders.

Central government is steering at the same point. In its State of Public Housing report of 8 December 2025, the Ministry of Housing and Spatial Planning (VRO) describes the Innovation and Scaling-up of Housebuilding programme, which focuses on standardisation. Eight builders of factory homes have a recognised quality certificate, which means the technical construction work no longer needs a separate permit or notification. With the Green Metropolitan Region Arnhem-Nijmegen and Rotterdam, the ministry is working on a digital fast lane for permits for industrially built homes, and since 1 July 2025 every province has had a regional acceleration table. On 29 January 2026 eleven parties, including the provinces of Noord-Holland and Flevoland, the ministry, the Nieuw Hollandse Bouwstroom, four municipalities, two housing associations and an area developer, signed the Afsprakenbrief Opschalen Industriële Bouwstroom, a letter of agreement on scaling up a steady pipeline of industrially built homes. These parties link industrial construction to sites for about 6,000 homes as early as the design, development and permit phase. The goal on the horizon is about half of all new build by 2030; a first evaluation is planned for the autumn of 2026.

How solid is this? That the share of factory-built homes is growing is a multi-year series. What is new is that two independent studies from February 2026 place the brake outside the factory, in the planning phase and in the way clients, municipalities and builders work together. TNO relies on sixteen interviews and Roland Berger on a survey of producers. The agreements between central government and the regions have only just begun and have not yet been evaluated, so how widely the picture holds remains to be seen.