Fading west
Modular housing solutions for attainable community development.
| Date | Investors | Amount | Round |
|---|---|---|---|
| - | investor | €0.0 | round |
* | $2.0m | Debt | |
| Total Funding | 000k | ||
Fading West is a vertically integrated housing company tackling the affordable housing crisis in the Rocky Mountain region and Western U.S. Founded by CEO Charlie Chupp in 2016, the company emerged from his direct observation of the housing shortage affecting the local workforce in Buena Vista, Colorado. Chupp leveraged over two decades of experience in lean manufacturing, previously as CEO of Load King Manufacturing, to apply industrial efficiency to the construction sector.
The company's business model integrates design, development, manufacturing, construction, and property management services. Fading West operates a 110,000-square-foot modular manufacturing facility in Buena Vista, opened in late 2021, where it produces homes in a climate-controlled environment. This factory-based approach, utilizing lean principles, allows the company to build homes significantly faster—in as little as five to eight days per unit—and reduce project costs by up to 20% compared to traditional site-built methods. The homes are built to International Residential Code standards, ensuring they are of the same or higher quality than their site-built counterparts.
Fading West serves a range of clients, including private developers, municipalities, housing authorities, general contractors, and non-profit organizations like Habitat for Humanity. The business is structured to allocate approximately half of its factory output to its own development projects, such as its flagship community "The Farm at Buena Vista," and the other half to external developer clients. This dual approach allows Fading West to act as a turnkey community provider, managing projects from site identification and planning through to final construction and property management. The company offers a catalog of flexible floor plans for single-family homes and multi-unit developments up to five stories, which can be combined to create numerous designs.
Keywords: modular construction, affordable housing, workforce housing, real estate development, lean manufacturing, offsite construction, vertically integrated construction, property development, single-family homes, multifamily housing, housing crisis solutions, community development, sustainable building, construction technology, Rocky Mountains, Colorado housing, factory-built homes, turnkey housing, housing innovation, residential construction, modular design, construction management