Commonwealth Bank is stepping up support for Australia’s prefabricated housing sector, backing modular builder Oly Homes to significantly boost its output and launching a new lending initiative to make prefab home buying easier.
The move comes amid growing demand for faster, more affordable housing solutions to help ease the national supply shortfall.
Prefabrication, where homes are built off-site and assembled on-site, is gaining government interest as a fast, scalable solution to housing supply issues. Prefab builds can take half the time of traditional construction.
The federal government recently committed $54 million to expand prefab and modular construction, recognising it as a key strategy to address Australia’s housing shortage — including a 62,000-home shortfall recorded in 2024.
With help from CommBank, Oly Homes will build a new 21,900 square metre modular housing factory on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, allowing the company to lift production from 200 homes a year to around 550.
Oly Homes managing director Dale Funston said the new factory will improve delivery times and efficiency.
“Factory production means we don’t lose build days to weather, we have all trades on hand every day so there’s no time lost to scheduling errors, and with standard plans and multiple projects going concurrently, we deliver high quality homes to our customers faster, with less waste,” Funston said.
“But the number of customers knocking on our door wanting a home is now outpacing what we can deliver, even with all our efficiency, so it’s time to expand.”
The new facility is expected to be operational in the second half of 2026 and will create 70 new jobs, helping boost local economic activity.
Alongside the Oly Homes funding, CommBank has rolled out its new Assessed Manufacturers list – a panel of modular builders that meet the bank’s eligibility criteria for expanded progress payments.
“CommBank’s prefabricated home lending policy gives customers access to funding during the offsite construction phase, so they don’t have to fund this all themselves,” said Marcos Meneguzzi (pictured left), executive general manager home buying at CommBank.
“Customers building with a CommBank Assessed Manufacturer will now be able to access more funding upfront providing even greater financial flexibility.”
Customers using an Assessed Manufacturer with a fixed-price contract up to $1.5 million can now access progress payments of up to 80% of the contract value or 150% of the land equity (whichever is lower) before the home is affixed to land. Previously, many borrowers had to fund up to 90% of the upfront costs themselves.
Those choosing a non-Assessed Manufacturer will still have access to progress payments capped at 60% of the contract price or 120% of land equity.
Oly Homes is among the first modular builders to qualify under the new program.
Mike Vacy-Lyle (pictured right), group executive business banking at CBA, said prefab construction has a vital role to play in boosting supply quickly and efficiently.
“Oly Homes can build and install a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house in just nine weeks – but even they can’t keep up with the surging demand amid the national housing shortage,” Vacy-Lyle said.
“We’re proud to support Oly Homes to scale up and deliver much needed housing. Imagine what could be achieved if this innovative housing model was more widely adopted – bringing more homes to market quickly and easing housing accessibility and affordability pressures across Australia.”
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