Panelized vs modular vs stick-built — the honest comparison

The three methods, defined

Panelized (what Interhabs builds)

Walls, floor systems, and roof components are framed flat in a shop using engineered drawings. Panels include studs, sheathing, and often windows and doors pre-installed. They ship flat on a flatbed and are crane-set on the foundation. A typical panelized shell goes from delivery to roof-tight in 3–7 days.

Modular (also called "volumetric")

Entire 3D sections of the house — finished interiors, plumbing, electrical and all — are built in a factory and trucked to site as oversized loads. Cranes set them on the foundation and crews stitch the modules together. Faster on-site but limited in design (modules must fit on the road) and harder to customize after the fact.

Stick-built (conventional site framing)

Lumber arrives loose. Framers cut and assemble everything outdoors, exposed to Atlantic Canada weather, until the house is closed in. Maximum design flexibility, but the slowest method, with the most weather risk and the most on-site waste.

How they compare

Cost

Stick-built is usually the cheapest per piece of lumber but loses ground to weather delays, on-site waste, and labour. Panelized is competitive on shell cost and meaningfully faster — fewer weeks of site supervision, fewer interest payments on construction financing. Modular can win on raw build cost for repeated designs but transport and crane costs erode the savings, especially for sites off main highways.

Speed

Panelized shells are typically roof-tight within a week of delivery. Stick framing the same house can take a month or more on site. Modular is fastest from crane day to closed-in, but front-end factory queues are often long.

Design flexibility

Stick-built and panelized can build essentially any design you draw. Modular is constrained by what can legally travel on the highway as a finished box.

Performance in Maritime weather

Panels framed indoors are level, square, and plumb when they arrive — and they aren't sitting in three weeks of fog before the roof goes on. That tighter envelope translates directly into lower heating bills across the long Nova Scotia heating season.

When to pick which

• Panelized: custom or catalogue design, sites across HRM and the South Shore, owners who want shop precision without giving up design choice.
• Modular: repeated identical units (e.g. resort cabins, multi-unit), good highway access, simple rectangular footprints.
• Stick-built: highly unusual designs, very remote sites where shipping panels is impractical, or owners doing significant self-build labour.

For most Nova Scotia homeowners building one custom home, panelized is the default we'd recommend — it's why we've been doing it from Hubbards since 1975.

See our full panelized build process or browse the plan catalogue.