>There's a startup building prefabricated house using robots and cheap labor in a factory,
Not my area but various companies have been trying to do this sort of thing forever. I can remember reading stories about partially pre-manufactured modular homes decades ago and it's never panned out. It seems to be one of those ideas that makes a lot of sense on paper but people don't want it.
I grew up in a Sears & Roebuck home, as were a good portion of those on my block. The Wikipedia article on the subject says that there were 70,000 of them built[1]. So I see this as more of something that has come and gone, probably a few times, and we are back on the up-swing.
The Sears & Roebuck were partially assembled (think wall by wall), and then those parts were hoisted off the freight trains and nailed together. There was still a lot of work that needed to be done (often by professionals), but it really cut down on the (especially local) costs.
Not my area but various companies have been trying to do this sort of thing forever. I can remember reading stories about partially pre-manufactured modular homes decades ago and it's never panned out. It seems to be one of those ideas that makes a lot of sense on paper but people don't want it.