Zoning codes run to 3,000 pages, contradict themselves, and change without warning — and right now, they're the single biggest reason most housing projects never leave a napkin.

Recorded live at World of Modular 2026, this episode brings in Avi Kaufman, co-founder and Chief Real Estate Officer of FutureLot, to unpack what it actually takes to answer "what can I build here?" across 30,000 US jurisdictions. Avi started with a light-bulb moment during refugee resettlement — a carriage house behind a main house, housing a family no one knew could be housed there — and built a platform to make that question answerable at scale.

**What we get into:**

- The pre-feasibility gap: more housing projects die from discouragement than from bad economics — nobody's counting the permits never filed

- Massachusetts alone has 200+ definitions of "gross floor area." Multiply that across 30,000 jurisdictions and you understand why builders stall - FutureLot's traffic-light system (green/yellow) tells builders whether a project clears each zoning criterion before a dollar goes to plans - Why the homeowner-builder conversation is broken — and how a shared interface changes "let me drive by" into a real-time answer at any US address

- The tension between local zoning control and the tyranny of whoever has time to show up to meetings

- What a customer who lives in the tool 4–5 hours a day looks like — and why that feedback loop is the product

**Chapters:**

- 00:00 — Intro: What FutureLot does

- 00:50 — Origin story: Afghanistan, carriage houses, and untapped housing potential

- 02:01 — Why zoning data, not building?

- 03:35 — What real estate taught Avi: visuals and ease of use aren't nice-to-haves

- 04:30 — Product walkthrough: the builder experience

- 07:14 — The homeowner interface and what 8 minutes of dwell time means

- 09:10 — Connector, not replacement: the role of FutureLot in the stack - 10:38 — 30,000 jurisdictions and the data complexity behind one screen

- 12:11 — Two years in: the regulatory maze is worse than you think

- 14:00 — Should we standardize zoning? The tension between local control and paralysis

- 15:19 — AI + human review: how the sauce gets made

- 16:28 — Trust mechanisms: overrides, alarms, source citations

- 18:42 — The customer as collaborator: ground truth flows both ways

- 20:30 — Roadmap: 50-state coverage, multifamily, lot splits - 21:07 — The inflection point: why now feels different

- 22:18 — Find FutureLot

**Find FutureLot:**

- [futurelot.com](https://futurelot.com) — free account, 3 property searches

- [avi@futurelot.com](mailto:avi@futurelot.com)

- [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@FutureLot)

- [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/tryfuturelot)

- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/futurelot)

- [X / Twitter](https://x.com/futurelot) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/futurelot/)

**Most Podern:**

- [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/3zYvX2lRZOpHcZW41WGVrp)

- [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/most-podern-podcast/id1725756164)

- [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/most.podern)

- [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@MostPodern)

The housing crisis is real. So why isn't modular construction fixing it?

Dwayne Torrey is the Director of Construction and Infrastructure at CSA Group — the organization that writes the standards every builder, regulator, and manufacturer in Canada has to follow. He's been working at the intersection of modular construction and policy for seven years, and his answer might surprise you: the technology isn't the problem. The rulebook is.

In this episode we get into how consensus standards actually get written, who's fighting in the room when they do, and why a 1972 document about school portables is still shaping how Canada builds homes today.

🔗 CSA Group: https://www.csagroup.org/

CHAPTERS

0:00 Intro1:20 What is CSA Group?3:45 Standards vs. regulation — what's the difference?6:30 Who sits in the room when the rules get written10:00 The modular construction problem nobody talks about14:15 CSA A277 — the standard that's been around since 197218:00 What the new structural design standard actually covers22:30 Certification — what it means and why it matters27:00 Why building officials are nervous about modular31:00 The education gap — who needs to learn what35:30 "Inflection point" — what this moment means for housing

#modular #housingcrisis #construction

What happens when an architect stops designing one-off buildings and starts designing a system?

Justin Brechtel is a licensed architect in California, principal of Iterate Architecture, and VP of Architecture at West Modular — and he's making the case that the way we deliver buildings is broken. Architects have spent decades reinventing the wheel on every project, slowly ceding their leadership role to developers and contractors. Justin's answer: treat architecture like a product. Build the bones once. Refine them like an iPhone.

In this episode we get into what it actually looks like to embed architects on a factory floor, why talking to a modular manufacturer early can save your entire project, and why "slow is responsible" has quietly become one of the most expensive ideas in American cities.

Links:

Website: www.iterae.com

Instagram: @iteraearchitecture

https://www.westmodular.com/