What is a
catalog home?
A catalog home, also called a pre-designed home, is a house you choose from a catalog and have built, instead of designing one from scratch. The design is set, but it can be adapted to your wishes, site and budget. That gives you the choice and quality of good design, without the price tag and lead time of a fully custom project.
Homes that lend themselves to a catalog
A catalog home is not an architectural style or building method, but a principle. It is independent of how it is built: a catalog home can be built prefab, modular or on site (traditionally) — or a combination of these. It is about designs that lend themselves to a catalog: well thought out, repeatable and robust enough to be offered again and again, yet flexible enough to be tailored. That is exactly what pre-designed means: the design is finished, you choose and adapt. The principle stretches from a compact tiny house to a full-size family home, and from a prefab modular house to a rural barn home.
The idea is not new, either. From workers' cottages to family houses, well-designed homes have been offered in series for more than a century, so that more people can afford them. To read that story, see our brief history of the catalog home.
Leaf through an original catalog. This is what was on offer a century ago — turn the pages of a real Sears catalog.
Leaf through the complete Sears "Honor Bilt Modern Homes" catalog of 1925 — model homes, floor plans and the famous "Already Cut and Fitted" pages behind hundreds of mail-order houses. (123 pages; use the arrows.)
Source: Building Technology Heritage Library (APT) — public domain (Sears, Roebuck & Co., Honor Bilt Modern Homes, 1925).
A category on the rise
In recent years this type of home has grown rapidly. Tiny homes and holiday homes have brought the catalog home to a wide audience, and prefab and modular construction are growing fast. The drivers are clear: the housing shortage calls for faster solutions, building costs are rising, and buyers want more certainty about price, quality and sustainability up front. The rise of the online configurator is part of this: you adapt a home to your wishes and immediately see what that does to floor area and price. Choosing and configuring online — as you would with other products — makes the catalog home even more accessible and transparent.
That growth is expected to continue in the years ahead, with catalog homes becoming an ever more natural choice alongside a fully custom home.
From tiny house to family home
Tiny houses and holiday homes, prefab and modular homes, barn homes and full-size family homes all fall under the catalog home banner. On Cataloghomes.com you go through the whole journey online: browse hundreds of designs by architects and builders, compare them by size, floor area and price, adapt your favourite to your wishes, and request it directly from the provider.
Each home shows a starting price. Keep in mind that transport, foundations, groundwork and permits are usually not included in that price; each home lists what is and isn't included.
