Tony and Deb Amato, who founded Amato Group Builders, take great pains to make sure you don't confuse their modular home business with a manufactured home operation.

	V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette Tony and Deb Amato, of Amato Group Builders, stand in front of some of their company's modular homes in Brookline. Click photo for larger image.

Tony had prior construction experience and knew how to estimate costs realistically and how to pick good suppliers. Deb was strong on sales management experience and record keeping, and had a degree in business to boot. Both had a desire to strike out on their own.

What is the difference between manufactured and modular homes? A modular home is a "stick built" home just like a conventional home; the only difference is that it is built under a factory roof (with the pieces reassembled at the building site). Manufactured homes are built on a steel chassis, and you can hook them up to a trailer and move them. It's more or less like a doublewide trailer. The only thing we have in common with manufactured homes is that they both arrive on trailers. Also, we don't believe that manufactured homes build equity (like modular and regular homes do).

How did you get started? We started out in development, buying raw land, getting it rezoned, subdividing it and then selling it. It was while doing that we decided we wanted to get into building, too. We explored modular construction because of the exorbitant prices being charged for site-built homes at the time.

How do prices for modular homes compare to conventional homes? We buy our building materials by the trainloads as opposed to the project load. If you go out to price out a site-built home, your builder will price it according to today's prices for lumber, dry wall, nails and other materials. But because we already have materials on hand that we've priced by the trainload, our pricing is substantially less because we buy in such big volumes. Our prices for homes usually end up being at least 20 percent less than a site-built home.

What were the biggest challenges in getting started? The biggest hurdle that we had as a private small business was procuring a $500,000 loan, but thank goodness we were able to get some help on that from SCORE. We also had to go put a very detailed business plan together. That was a really big challenge. The weather ended up presenting a very big challenge, too. We had to wait to dig out our utilities on one project.

So what kind of features does a modular home have? Our homes are built to international building codes, with a nine-foot wall foundation, and we use wiring for smart home capabilities. We provide 50-gallon hot water tanks and we use double-hung windows. We can do vaulted ceilings, cathedral ceilings and open floor plans. And we do all custom homes and custom floor plans. We work with the customer.

What kind of people buy modular homes? A very educated consumer. With the Internet available now, people know what they are getting and how they can get the best for their money. We have people with high income jobs, everyday people, people with a business background -- all kinds.