Apples and
Oranges, Itemized.

The most expensive option in Tier 1 but for good reason. They are also the most engineered, the most insulated, and the most explicitly turnkey-on-the-envelope. The 7-day install with their own crew and crane is not a marketing line. Andrea Michael at Love Schack confirmed it in Issue 03, on a project that hit weathertight in under a week. They generously provided four quotes in total to try and accommodate my budget, with the lowest price option of 134K, eliminating the roof system entirely and relying on local labor.

The CLT is a very cool product that leaves you with three inches of solid wood as the interior finish. No drywall, no paint, which offers some real cost savings. The committing nature of the manufacturing lock is also real: electrical penetrations get CNC-routed into the CLT, and you have to know where every outlet goes before fabrication.

The Most attractive part of the TA quote was $28K for roof panels alone, half what the other manufacturers charge. This is the outlier that opened the hybrid approach I wrote about in Issue 06. Site-built walls plus a Timber Age roof is the only configuration in the entire spreadsheet that gets me under budget without sacrificing the vaulted ceiling.

The assembly is a high-performance double-stud wood frame with high-density natural fiber insulation (R-3.6/inch, ASTM E84 Class A fire rated, no toxins) sourced from Maine farm partners. Sheathing is natural 1x pine board on all wall, roof, and floor panels. All materials are sourced locally in Maine through family-owned lumber yards. Both the interior and exterior air barriers arrive with all seams taped and made weathertight, and the panels include a pre-installed interior utility chase that doubles as a nailing plane for interior wall finish. Window, door, and skylight rough openings are prepped and ready for install. The quote also includes 10 hours of project management per week of production and temporary storage and loading of panels onto trucks for shipping. This quote does not include design or engineering coordination (Croft's time for shop drawings), delivery ($15K allowance, actual TBD).

These straw insulated panels came in at a lower cost than Croft but also with the significantly less included. The panels arrive without vapor barriers or strapping. Shop-applied Intello vapor barrier is available as a $2.8K add-on. As shipped, the wall is not in a state ready for siding or drywall. They are able to keep their shipping costs relatively low by partnering with manufacturers in Washington and Colorado that can produce and ship the panels closer to the site.

The "pretty good wall" R-30 option at $159K is the cheapest custom-design panel quote I've received And the most similar to conventional framing. It us 2x8s at 24" on center with dense-pack cellulose and a separate inboard service cavity. For the roof panels, there is no "pretty good” tier. Your options are R-59 or R-80.

The only bid in Tier 1 that isn't panelized. Ben Schachner, of Stillwater Builders, and Ted Tetrault, of Larch Creek Builders, teamed up to provide the quote. Both have built with panels in the past. Their original envelope-only number was $155K for site-framed double-stud walls and roof, insulated with Hempitecture hemp fiber, with the air barrier built on site. R-44 walls. R-70 roof. The highest insulation values in the entire matrix. No cross-country shipping.

In May they sharpened the broader number: $415K to take the project from site prep through drywall, but with a more standard, lower-performing wall assembly. That number includes site work, foundation, roof, exterior trim and siding, plumbing and electrical rough-in, and drywall. It is the closest thing in the matrix to a true comparable-total-cost number, because it doesn't leave the most-expensive parts of the build for me to figure out separately.

It also comes with a clear value-engineering case: pivot to a standard 2x6 build, swap Schuco for Andersen 100 windows, design out the wall jogs, and simplify the roof. Ben framed it as how to close the last $15K with more confidence, not how to get to $400K.

The surprise of the Tier 2 set, and now a moving target. I'd written them off as too expensive years ago. Going back to them after three recent calls with Pete and Robbie, the per-square-foot ratio of "what's included" is favorable when you actually itemize. The kit comes with Loewen windows, Velux skylights, standing seam metal roofing, Douglas fir T&G ceiling on the first floor, the staircase, and Western Red Cedar gable interiors.

The R-24 walls look low compared to everyone else, but the assembly philosophy is different And the continuous insulation makes for minimal thermal bridging, and likely a higher “whole wall” R-value. At my request, the BHC team is working on a four-module Layout G, the garage configuration that's in their catalog but has yet to be built. Preliminary pricing on the 4-module Layout G is approximately $280K, and would represent their first design that incorporates a slab on grade, so the engineering is a work in progress.

These guys initially just offered plans but have moved into the prefab kit space, and their scope is similar to the Tier 1 companies. Rather than timber and natural fibers, they're using steel and closed-cell foam. They're claiming R-58 for the whole system, which is surprising considering that steel conducts heat roughly 300 times faster than wood. But from the assembly diagrams they sent, the foam insulation seems to be continuous and sandwiched between the steel stud frames with a horizontal wire chase cut out of the foam.

The only company in the matrix selling a genuinely finished home through volumetric modular construction. Initially, I was looking at their Model 202, which is closest to my current design, but that is listed on their website at $750k CAD. I have since switched it to the Carriage House Model C. It's a one-bedroom, 1.5-bath with 659 SF of livable area on a 912 SF footprint. It's definitely as small as I would want to go, but if I were also building a detached garage with a rental unit above, the price could be right to achieve that. Their website claims passive house wall assemblies with high-performance windows and doors, but is extremely lean on the details. Listed at $350K CAD, which is roughly $255K USD. Shipping is the big X factor here. They list a 200 km allowance as included. Located just outside of Revelstoke, BC, I'd be looking at about 6x that distance.

What Zook is selling isn't really a kit; it's a near-finished structure that arrives on a flatbed and gets set on your foundation. Walking through what's included, it's closer to a built home minus the site work than to a panelized envelope. The price reflects that. If your program matches one of their existing designs, the all-in math could actually be competitive with Tier 1 plus everything Tier 1 leaves out.

The most kit-like of the kit options, in the original sense of the word. No insulation in any tier. No doors. No windows. No foundation. No mechanical. The Estonian company has a US headquarters in Salt Lake City, and the strongest A-frame community in the matrix. The kit is genuinely transparent about what it is and isn't. The third-party-reviewed contractor-finished cost in the US ($339-$596 per sqft) tells you how much variability is downstream of what looks like a $124K kit. But that's also where the scrappy DIY owner can get creative.

MyCabin slots in next to Zook and Good Way as a near-finished catalog unit delivered on a flatbed instead of a stack of panels. The Milla XL is 682 SF (552 on the ground floor, 130 in the loft), two bed plus loft, one bath, at a published $184K. It's one of the more transparent spec sheets in Tier 2: R-38 walls, R-49 roof, 139 mph wind and seismic ratings, with plumbing, electrical, appliances, cladding, paneling, mini-splits, heated floors, and a tankless water heater all included in the unit price.

The brand reads European, founded in Latvia, but North American units are built by PrefabPads in Waukegan, IL, no import duty, no border crossing. The catch is logistics. The unit is 12 feet wide, an oversize load, and Waukegan to Livingston is roughly 1,300 miles. Delivery, site prep, installation, foundation, and utility hookups are all excluded, and Montana isn't pre-permitted, though they ship a stamped permit package.

Masaya is the most price-transparent entry in the matrix. Masaya itemizes kit, preconstruction, foundation, and installation and sums them, $215K kit, $13.2K preconstruction, $87K utilities and foundation, $182.8K installation, for $498K all-in. The teak is grown and milled on Masaya's own farm in Nicaragua, flat-packed for shipping. The M Two Bedroom is small, 800 SF, two bed, two bath, more ADU than primary house. Currently only offered in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara, but they claim to be growing into new areas soon.