I stumbled across a suburban tract house development in an east Phoenix area called 'Ironwood Crossing' built by Fulton Homes, self described as one of Arizona's biggest builders, while hiking in the nearby San Tan Mountains.
Luckily I was able to chat with a company project supervisor in charge of 47 detached houses to learn some detail about how they build. Fast, cheap and large is how I would describe local building technique. The finished homes look fairly similar to what you'd find deep in Calgary suburbia, but the similarities end there. There is hardly any commonality in construction cost or technique vs infill housing in the Calgary inner city. A lot of this is a function of climate. One product they wouldn't use is an asphalt shingle, they use a very durable concrete tile for protection of the roof. There are a lot of ways they save time and money in this area, some examples are;
1. Pads are poured for the entire house and garage in a single pour. The mild climate allows a type of pour that would not meet Calgary code for a detached garage pad in a laneway. No basements are excavated or poured. Cost saving is significant vs a home in a frost zone (machinery, trucking, backfill, concrete, cribbing, engineering. etc).
Pad is ready for framing. I guess you could say plumbing is done as well. Plumbers must like these bungalow jobs.
2. Services are shallow and already in place. In the established communities in Calgary a builder can spend $30k getting sewer and water, gas and electricity installed. In Arizona the cost is a fraction of that.
3. Framing a bungalow takes a few days (not weeks) and all framing is 2x4 material. I couldn't get an answer on the price to frame a bungalow and cost of a lumber package. If I had to guess I would say less than $15k per home. My recent semi detached project was in the $75k range for labour and lumber, two homes.
Day 1 of framing - there may only be a few more days...
3. Exteriors are all stucco and roof material is a concrete tile rather than asphalt shingle. They apply a 1 inch styrofoam to the wall and then a light gauge wire, almost like a chicken wire and then sand/cement stucco. They don't appear to smooth the finish or apply an acrylic coat. I wasn't particularly impressed with the stucco product, but I'm sure it works well in the dry heat.
This one is ready to stucco. Water penetration in windows gets some attention but it doesn't rain enough to be a serious worry.
With a limited amount of customization these homes are built fast and sold for a low price, around $250k, and a few years ago were only worth $150k. The finished bungalow is a lower cost than just the land value of any inner city property. The location is sort of terrible, I think I will stick with North Scottsdale and the high desert boulder fields if I was to build a house in Arizona. But building this quantity of affordable homes is a real achievement. Can we learn anything from this to apply to making inner city Calgary more accessible?