By Nora Kowalczyk
BUFFALO — A Rochester developer is betting that factory-built houses can fill some of Buffalo’s vacant lots and sell for about $175,000, without public subsidy. The same week, Albany handed out another round of money for factory-built starter homes and the White House ordered federal agencies to clear the way for them.
Jeff Cook, managing general partner and CEO of Cook Properties, is buying 18 vacant lots in the city to place modular homes that buyers would own along with the land, The Buffalo News reported Friday. The first phase combines eight lots on Northampton Street on the East Side into six house sites.
The Buffalo plan
According to The News, each house would be a roughly 1,600-square-foot, three-bedroom, two-bath home built by Champion Homes in Sangerfield, Oneida County. Mr. Cook told the paper he can build each house for about $170,000 or less. He plans to price the first homes from $175,000 to the low $200,000s, sell them first come, first served at fixed prices with no bidding, and finish the Buffalo homes by spring 2027.
“We’re doing these on spec,” Mr. Cook told The News. “Our hope is that we garner enough interest that we either buy additional city lots or homeowners that own city lots can come to us, and then we can customize it to how they like it.”
He said the margins are thin. “For us, it’s not a lot of money on each individual home. We will do better as we do more homes,” he said. “And on these first test cases, for proof-of-concept, I don’t know if we’ll make anything. It may end up costing us. But we want to learn.”
“The goal is to show this can work and then do it at scale in each of these communities across New York,” Mr. Cook said.
Cook Properties is running the same kind of pilot in Rochester and Syracuse. In July the company was closing on nine city-owned lots in Rochester, where it planned homes for about $170,000, including a $10,000 profit, the Rochester Business Journal reported.
“They’re affordable without subsidies,” Mr. Cook told that paper. “We’re hoping to really transform communities. We can change a neighborhood or change a block.”
Rochester’s commissioner of neighborhood and business development, Erik Frisch, told the Business Journal that a traditional stick-built house there “would be in the vicinity of $400,000,” so selling one at a price affordable at 60 percent of area median income “would need considerable subsidies.”
Not the only modular project on the East Side
Buffalo already has a subsidized version of the idea in the works. Mt. Aaron Missionary Baptist Church’s Community Hope Builders LLC has proposed 15 single-family homes of modular construction on Grey Street, south of Genesee Street, on 18 lots bought from the city, Buffalo Rising reported in July. The project application says those homes are backed by a state Homes and Community Renewal block-by-block grant and the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency, and are aimed at households earning 60 to 80 percent of area median income.
The two projects test different models. Grey Street relies on public money to serve lower-income buyers. Cook Properties is trying to show that factory construction alone can bring the price down to what a working household can afford.
Albany’s starter-home program skipped Western New York this round
On Friday Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the final 2026 round of her MOVE-IN NY program: nearly $20 million for 61 factory-built homes. All of it went to land banks in Essex County, Wayne County, Rochester and Suffolk County, with nothing for Western New York, according to her office. The state says more than $80 million has been awarded to date for 250 households.
The program buys “CrossMod” homes. These are built to HUD’s federal manufactured-home code and meet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac design guidelines, so buyers can use conventional mortgages. Once the homes are placed, they are sold below construction cost to low- and moderate-income buyers. The state puts the typical cost of building a small single-family home in New York at “upwards of $450,000 or more.”
“By harnessing the benefits of factory-built technology, the MOVE-IN NY program is bringing modern, affordable single-family homes to the market more quickly and in more regions than ever before,” Ms. Hochul said. The state has set aside another $100 million in the current budget to expand the program.
Washington orders a review of factory-built housing rules
On Oct. 22, President Donald Trump signed an executive order, “Decreasing Housing Costs for the American People,” that creates a Task Force on Manufactured Housing Innovation. HUD and the Federal Housing Finance Agency co-chair the task force, which also includes the secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce and Veterans Affairs.
The order gives the task force 180 days to recommend ways to “eliminate Federal requirements and duplicative reviews” that slow factory production or “increase the time or cost of bringing homes to market.” It also asks the task force to look at using federal financing and insurance programs “to encourage innovation and increased production of affordable manufactured and factory-built homes,” while “maintaining appropriate standards for safety, quality, durability, and consumer protection.”
The order also tells the task force to consider whether federal grants could be tied to state and local adoption of standardized permitting for factory-built housing. That provision could matter to cities like Buffalo, which approves new homes on its own lots through its own zoning and permit process.
“The American Dream of homeownership is a vital pillar of our great country,” the order states.
What to watch
Whether the Northampton Street houses sell at the advertised prices will show whether unsubsidized factory-built homes work in Buffalo’s housing market. Mr. Cook told The News he hopes the first homes generate enough interest to lead to more lots and custom orders.
The Chronicle is asking Cook Properties for its lot list and timeline, and asking the City of Buffalo about the terms of the sale. This story will be updated with any responses.
Photo: Eastwood Place in Buffalo’s Hamlin Park neighborhood. Andre Carrotflower / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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