When the long-term ground lease expires, you can simply lift the house and relocate it onto well-manicured lawn or carefully tended garden of your choice as POSCO has recently introduced the modular home in Korea.

Seoul, Korea ¶ July 20, 2012 -- At a glance, it might look like a stack of Legos, but once you step into the building it is just like any other house. Celebrating the successful foray into the modular housing sector, POSCO A&C commemorated the completion of multi-family modular houses with a ground lease “MUTO Cheongdam” first ever built in Korea.

Unlike the stand-alone mobile home, the vertically stacked multi-unit modular house was never seen before in Korea. The MUTO Cheongdam now offers 36-square-meter units for 18 households. The modular house is built within one and a half month after the groundbreaking event at the end of last May.

While the modules are in the production process at the plant, the construction site is kept busy with the basic groundwork. Once the basic preparatory work is covered and the modules are delivered, the final assembly on site takes only three days to finish the 18 modules, six modules making one floor.

The construction contractor explains that the advent of modular homes will change the paradigm of the housing market as people would trade houses more like cars. Up until now, builders design and make the houses for pre-sales, but the manufactured modular houses can be leased, or easily traded and even bought back.

With a series of discussions between the government and private developers under way, it is expected the new type of homes currently promoted as an alternative to resolve the housing shortages would be commercially available in the residential property market soon enough.

Jeansun Kim (press@whowired.com)