FABMAC HOMES
Twice the house, half the cost
When Francesca Carey moved to Maui more than 20 years ago, she engaged in activities to connect to her new home and culture.
She enrolled in the Hawaiian Studies program at University of Hawaii, Maui College and began dancing hula with Keali’i Reichel’s halau. These two rich commitments shone a glaring spotlight on one disturbing aspect of island life: the lack of affordable housing.
“My hula sisters were all telling me how hard it was because their families were being broken up,” Carey recalls. “Because when their kids wanted to get married and have their own children, they found they couldn’t afford to live here.”
A former licensed California contractor, Carey had been building with pre-fabricated houses since the 1990s and realized she could use her expertise and contacts to improve the housing crisis on Maui.
“Teachers, police, firefighters, nurses, nonprofit and county workers were leaving the island,” she remembers. “Something had to be done, and I wanted to help. I decided in 2006, with my husband’s assistance, to form FABMAC Homes, Inc.”
By 2009 and 2010, the Hawaii-based corporation began bringing pre-fab homes over from the Mainland.
“It took us a while to get through the building department and everything put together,” Carey acknowledges. “Now, it’s much easier, and we presently have more than 60 homes erected here.”
FABMAC Homes offers houses from 500 square feet (one bedroom, one bath) up to over 2,600 square feet with four or five bedrooms and three bathrooms at approximate base costs of $130,000 to $468,000 respectively.
In addition to a significant reduction in cost, one of the major benefits of a FABMAC home is speed, Carey explains.
“I can have a house completely move-in ready in six to eight months,” she says. “And often it would take six to eight months just to get your permits.”
Once contracted, FABMAC Homes is responsible for all aspects of development from start to finish, including pulling permits, transport and delivery, foundation, construction, electrical, plumbing, utility hookups — even the tiniest decorative details, such as cabinet knobs and Lever handles, are overseen by FABMAC.
Prices listed on the FABMAC website or in FABMAC promotional materials are allinclusive. However, if significant grading is needed or septic tanks installed, a driveway poured, electricity run underground — those tangential services are charged separately but all additional work is handled by FABMAC Homes.
“We put together a preliminary worksheet which we revise as we go along until we’re at the place where the client is satisfied with the price and amenities,” Carey explains.
On average, FABMAC homes run approximately $200 per square foot with larger homes skewing on the lower end of that range as the cost goes down as the square footage increases.
Each FABMAC home, regardless of model or size, comes standard with two-bysix-foot exterior walls, which allow for the generously wide wood windowsills; insulated floors, ceilings and walls; plantation blinds with two-inch cornice boxes; pullout faucet and recessed lights in the kitchen; laundry room with cabinets; 80-gallon solar hot water system — the extensive list goes on and on. There are also myriad upgrades and custom options available, such as additional lanai/porches or fully functional, beautifully designed fireplaces for Upcountry clients.
In addition, a FABMAC house is certified energy efficient at the LEED Silver level, using Energy Star appliances and constructed with Energy Star dual-pane thermal windows and additional insulation to help save money on utilities.
FABMAC homes are built to federal building codes, not county or state. And federal codes are considerably stricter, notes Carey.
“Every plan has to be engineered well in advance,” Carey explains, “so when I’m working with a factory, all of these
plans have already been engineered for hurricanes or earthquakes in the state of Hawaii.”
The homes are shipped and
trucked in sections, which are then “married” during the assembly phase. But you’d be hard-pressed to identify where sections are joined once the home is complete — the result is so seamless.
“I’ve had traditional contractors come into our model homes and ask where the sections are put together, because even they can’t tell,” Carey observes.
One of the company’s largest current projects, Carey explains, is taking place in the Waiale Elua subdivision, a 100 percent workforce housing project with 70 units in Waikapu.
FABMAC Homes is responsible for constructing nine three-bedroom units selling between $310,000 to $326,000 to families with household incomes below 80 percent of median family income established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
While supplying affordable housing is a key component and drives FABMAC’s mission statement, the company’s clientele varies widely, from homeowners looking to add an ohana to their property or convert open lots to usable, income-producing rental opportunities to extended families intent on keeping their ohanas together.
“We can accommodate all manner of family situations,” Carey advises. “We can add mother-in-law quarters and come up with a lot of great ways to carve out additional spaces.”
Among FABMAC’s most popular models are the Melia, a 1,041-square-foot home with three-bedrooms and two-bathrooms, and the Lokelani, a three-bedroom two-bath home boasting almost 2,000 square feet of living space including a large family room and 31 customizable options.
Homes can be reconfigured from the model plan to a certain degree. The kitchen is the most difficult to “mess around with,” as it has complex electrical and plumbing needs says Carey.
“What I tell people is find a kitchen that you’re happy with and then we can play with the bedrooms and bathrooms,” she continues. “I can add bathrooms; I can move walls. And I can make bedrooms larger or smaller.”
The first action to take when
considering a FABMAC home is to survey the property in question through a site visit.
Although FABMAC does employ cranes to “drop” sections onto geographically challenging properties, there are limits to where FABMAC homes can be delivered and erected, such as Hana and portions of Olinda, Carey acknowledges.
“There are some situations in which I cannot build,” Carey says. “We can’t do two-story homes and certain areas that are either unaccessible or have rules and regulations that don’t allow pre-fabricated homes. But it’s still amazing what we can do.”
At the end of the day, it’s all about offering more affordable, well-constructed housing for Maui residents, Carey professes.
“I think this way of building makes so much more sense,” she concludes. “You don’t build a car in your garage, why would build a house right there on your lot where the lumber can get rained on and the materials can be pilfered?
“Why not have your house built on the Mainland where the waste gets recycled to other factories and utilized as insulation or other uses? When the house gets here, there’s no waste to fill up our landfills. It’s a greener, more affordable way to build and live.”