Housing Innovators Converge on Washington, DC, To Showcase Cutting-Edge Building Methods

Homebuilders will be the first to admit it's very difficult time for the business. But they're also hopeful that the nation's housing crisis will spur new ideas and solutions to bring costs down.

This week, at the Innovative Housing Showcase on the National Mall in Washington, DC, builders touted the latest housing ideas, from manufactured housing to 3D-printed homes and modular construction.

At the event, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sought to highlight new innovations in the homebuilding world. This comes on the heels of Congress passing the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, the largest housing reform package in 30 years.

But it also comes as Americans are more and more concerned about affordability in daily life. And younger Americans, in particular, are more and more pessimistic that home ownership is slipping further out of reach.

Bill Owens, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders, said the new federal housing law is just the beginning. NAHB estimated this year that regulatory costs add $131,000 to the cost of a new home. But those are from all kinds of sources, including state, local, and federal regulations.

Regulatory costs also compound with many business challenges such as supply chain disruptions, rising materials costs, labor shortages, local resistance to new housing, and natural disasters.

"It's not one policy, it's not one issue," Owens said, in a panel focused on increasing housing supply. "If we look at the composite of what keeps housing so expensive right now, it's sort of death by a thousand cuts."

Housing's next frontiers

On the mall, inventors had plenty of ideas.

Austin-based startup Uplift launched its emergency housing microunits four months ago, raising a $7 million seed funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Uplift co-founder Charlie Nitschelm told Realtor.com® the idea is small mobile housing units that can be quickly deployed. Think natural disasters, job sites and short-term housing, for instance.

The company just sold its first unit to a paying customer this month, said Nitschelm, who is a former engineer at SpaceX. It features plug-in power and water, self-leveling "feet," and even built-in truck straps. Two or three fit on a flatbed truck.

Azure Printed Homes, based in Gardena, CA, 3-D prints homes from recycled plastic. TIME Magazine named it one of the best inventions of 2025. Azure co-founder Gene Eidelman spent the day showing curious onlookers the X_180, a 180 square-foot "studio on the move" that can be transported on a chassis.

Eidelman said the industry is ready for new ideas. One of these homes can be printed in a matter of hours, starts at $69,900. The units have drawn interest from 'glampers' and can also be used as accessory dwelling units.

There's also a market for new materials. And inventors have taken on the challenge, sometimes bringing back old ideas. Godfrey Riddle is founder of Kansas City-based Civic Saint, a contractor with an innovative concept for compressed-earth blocks made from local clay. These blocks could produce housing more quickly and more cheaply.

Riddle said this method originates from the building techniques of ancient history. Using local clay soil and producing bricks on-site results in construction that produces 70% less carbon dioxide emissions than traditional construction. Civic Saint is building its first home as a test, and Riddle said it will debut next May.

Overcoming resistance to change

A real challenge is that the industry is famously averse to change, said Sean Shields, director of Strategic Partnerships at the Structural Building Components Association.

"Innovation in the housing industry is very difficult," Shields said. "There's a lot of resistance because there are so many players that are impacted by any innovation that we try to implement. That's the challenge, because anything that moves the needle needs to be scalable."

Contractors need to see a clear value proposition to buy in, Shields said. For instance, it took decades for builders to adopt the now-ubiquitous truss plate when assembling roofs and floors. But innovators visited job sites, and showed off the idea. And contractors eventually realized how much time and labor it saved their projects.

Homebuilder Cavco Industries, meanwhile, touted "Grande Arbor"—a 1,250-square-foot, two-bedroom manufactured home. It's not built on a steel chassis, a change that follows the housing bill and one that experts hope will save on the cost of affordable housing.

In one of the first communities featuring the new model, Rolling Hills Estates in Carlisle, PA, one unit retails for $139,000 with a $571 lot rent per month. With the median price of homes now north of $400,000, it's a far more attainable option.

And just across the way, SBCA showed off its own "big green house," a two-story duplex it assembled in hours by moving components in from elsewhere. Shields said that kind of building could be ubiquitous thanks to proposed HUD building code changes.

HUD wants to make room for new ideas in housing, Secretary Scott Turner said in remarks on the National Mall.

"The private sector is the real engine of innovation," Turner said. "We want to get out of the way.”