Four men from Nanaimo, thinking outside and inside of the box, so to speak, have gone offshore to try to bring home affordable housing. Cueva Homes is the brainchild of realtor Ryan Stolz, builders Bill Xing and Adam Splawski, and Elliot Layton, who partnered to create a line of manufactured modular carriage homes, designed and engineered in Canada and built in China, that could be one piece toward solving B.C.’s housing puzzle. “We’re all involved in real estate and finance in Canada right now, and development, and the reality is … it’s unsustainable to build the housing that the government is saying we need and we want, and [affordably] it can’t be done,” said Stolz, Cueva vice-president of sales and marketing. Under provincial Bill-44, the government is trying to increase housing density. One way to do go about that is to maximize use of existing single-family home properties by adding a second structure. But with traditional building, homeowners can run afoul of hurdles, such as rising costs and wait times for available trades and permitting. “Knowing all that because we go through it, we decided to say, what could we do that is … controllable, that’s adaptable to all aspects of life?” Stolz said. The partners surveyed owners of properties that can accommodate carriage homes. “How can we make living situations easier? … How can something like this serve as an extra suite for income? Families? People who want to age in their [property], but they want to move out to something like this and have their kids [move] into their home? Investors? Airbnb? There’s just lots of different ways this could work with people in backyards,” said Splawski, Cueva’s chief executive officer. From the survey data they planned a home design that can be sited with minimal preparation and permitting. The first two units – a one bedroom and a two-bedroom, each with 495 square feet of floor space – arrived in Nanaimo in late October. The units come complete with German-made appliances sourced locally, outdoor canopy and front deck, everything except furniture and can be delivered and installed in a matter of weeks. The units are welded steel frame construction and designed for energy efficiency, incorporating an energy recovery ventilation system. Nine-foot ceilings give rooms a sense of spaciousness. Xing, Cueva Homes president, said the homes are designed by Canadian engineers and teams. “And then we have [specialists] in tiny houses, all in China, who did an amazing job on the interior layout and the material finishes … there’s not a single drywall throughout the house … There’s no potential for moulds, water damages or anything like that. All materials are recycled materials or composites … We put a lot of thought into the design to make sure that, even though it’s as tiny as 495 square feet, it doesn’t feel like 495 square feet,” he said. The first units are being shipped completely assembled, but that drives up shipping costs and limits the unit floor space and configuration. “In the future we want to be truly modular, so we’re going to have a warehouse with stacks of wall panels and have everything assembled on site, which obviously we’re going to have local – our own guys and contractors – to do the work, but that is the only way to make this home bigger than what it is because we’re already at the upper limit of the size,” Xing said. “If we want to do anything beyond 495 square feet we’ve got to go modular.” Switching to modular assembly will allow the company to connect modules to create floor space and configuration variations for townhome and condo projects, temporary housing and other applications. “In the time being we’re trying to fill the void, which everyone is trying to do, but they can’t get the price down,” Xing said. The cost, landed in Vancouver, for either the two- or one-bedroom unit is $165,000 plus site preparation and installation, which Splawski said for a “fairly straight forward one” in Nanaimo is another $40,000 to $50,000, putting the total cost at around $210,000 plus GST. Final costs would vary depending on delivery costs to more remote locations on the Island or the B.C. Interior and the type of installation required. The homes can also be configured for remote sites to run completely off-grid. Cueva Homes handles all aspects of site preparation, including foundation work, trucking, crane operation and utility connections. Installation for the company’s two show homes took about four days. “You’re looking at a week to two weeks of foundations in, services hooked up and ready to go and then when crane day shows up it’s landed, another day to unpack and set the deck up and that’s it,” Splawski said. The company currently has manufacturing capacity for 100 homes per month, but is still waiting for full CSA certification, expected in early 2026, Stolz said, so the company is taking reservations for sales. City of Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog and chief administrative officer Dale Lindsay have met with the Cueva Homes partners to view the products. “I am excited by what I saw. We need to encourage innovative approaches to meet our housing challenges. This type of housing is definitely a real solution for part of our housing crisis,” Krog said. Lindsay said the city has been encouraging detached secondary suites on properties for a number of years. “With the more recent changes that the province has required for zoning, I think there’s opportunity on many properties in the city to consider additional housing units, whether those be site-built or factory-built homes, that are available to residents and it’s great that people have options to pick from,” Lindsay said. He noted manufactured homes are approved by the Canadian Standards Association and negates the city’s role in permitting for traditional on-site building permitting. “We don’t inspect those units. They’re done at the factory,” Lindsay said. “We provide permitting for siting and making sure that they’re serviced properly. It’s a slightly different role we play, but at the end of the day, more housing opportunities is what everybody wants.”
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