Europe is one market for manufacturing, and eleven for everything else
There is a genuine reason luxury modular construction works at a European scale, and it is not marketing. Structural design across the European Union shares one family of standards. Construction products carry harmonised conformity documentation that is recognised in every member state. Inside the single market, finished modules travel between countries as goods, with no customs clearance. A house can therefore be engineered and built in one country and legitimately assembled in another without starting the technical work from scratch.
What does not unify is everything that touches the ground. Planning permission is granted locally — by a municipality, a federal state, a canton. Energy requirements are set nationally. Snow and wind loads are national values. The VAT treatment of new housing is national. Site labour and groundwork prices vary by a wide margin between European markets, and so does how long an authority takes to answer.
So the accurate way to describe a luxury modular home in Europe is this: the house is a European product, and the project is a local one. Our job is to hold both halves — which is why the same drawing set can result in three different build-ups depending on where the plot is.
Where we build in Europe
Eleven markets, grouped by what the grouping actually changes for your project rather than by geography.
| Market | What is distinctive about building there |
|---|---|
| Spain Costa del Sol · Balearics · Costa Blanca · Madrid | Our home market, and the one we run end to end in house. Municipal building licence with a stamped project to the Technical Building Code (CTE). Design is dominated by solar control, cooling and shading rather than by heat loss. |
| Germany · Austria · Switzerland | The most technically demanding permitting of the group and the most exacting client expectations on documentation. Approval sits with the federal state or, in Switzerland, the canton and commune — so requirements and timescales vary inside the same country. Structural verification to the Eurocodes with the national annex. |
| France · Belgium · Netherlands · Luxembourg | Dense, mature markets where site access is frequently the binding constraint: narrow streets, canal frontages, restricted craning windows. Environment and planning permission, with quality-assurance obligations attaching to new housing. Modules travel entirely by road within the single market. |
| Poland | A building permit (pozwolenie na budowę) with the design prepared to the national technical conditions. Continental climate: real snow loads and a heating-dominated envelope, which changes insulation and glazing specification substantially. |
| United Kingdom · Ireland | Outside the single market: planning permission and Building Regulations approval are two separate processes, and delivery includes a sea or ferry leg plus import formalities. Well-established familiarity with offsite construction among planners and lenders. |
| Albania | Coastal and mountain plots where access and utility connections deserve checking before anything else. Non-EU, so import documentation forms part of the logistics package. |
| Russia | Long-haul delivery planned as a route rather than a distance, with customs clearance and a severe-climate envelope specified from the outset. |
If your plot sits outside that list, the useful question is rarely whether we can manufacture the house. It is whether the modules can physically reach the plot and be legally connected there. That is a short, free assessment, and it occasionally prevents an expensive mistake.
Three climates, three different houses
The single biggest technical misunderstanding about modular construction in Europe is that a model is a model. It is not. The envelope of a luxury modular home is calculated for the location, and Europe spans conditions that pull the specification in opposite directions.
| Region | What drives the design | Where the specification changes |
|---|---|---|
| Southern Europe Spain, southern France, Albania | Cooling loads, solar gain, summer comfort. Heat is the problem, not cold. | Deep overhangs and external shading, solar-control glazing, thermal mass and night ventilation, cooling capacity, corrosion protection on coastal plots. |
| Atlantic and Central Europe France, Benelux, Germany, UK, Ireland | Heating demand, rain and wind exposure, very high national energy requirements. | Thicker continuous insulation, tested airtightness, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, driving-rain detailing, heat-pump-led services. |
| Continental and Northern Europe Poland, Russia, Alpine plots | Snow load, sustained sub-zero temperatures, freeze-thaw cycles. | Structural sizing for snow, high-performance triple glazing, thermal-bridge-free junctions, frost-depth foundations, protected service runs. |
This is also the honest answer to a question we are often asked: no, a house designed for Andalusia cannot simply be shipped to Silesia. The plan, the volumes and the architectural language travel. The build-up is recalculated.
Eurocodes, national annexes and why compliance is not portable
Structural design in the EU is governed by the Eurocodes — a shared family of standards used across member states. What makes them practical rather than theoretical is the national annex: each country publishes its own values for snow load, wind zones, seismic parameters and safety factors, reflecting local conditions and local policy.
The consequence matters to anyone comparing European suppliers. A structural calculation is produced to the Eurocodes plus the annex of the destination, so a design verified for Spain is not automatically verified for Germany or Poland. When a builder tells you their model is "European certified" and can go anywhere, they are describing the product standards for the components, not the structural verification of your house on your plot. Those are different things, and only one of them gets you a permit.
Steel components in our structures are supplied with the conformity documentation required for the European market, and the load cases are calculated for the actual location. Everything below is a map of approval routes, not legal advice: the authority with jurisdiction over your plot sets the real procedure, the documents and the timescale, and those change.
The European energy standard — and why factories are good at it
New homes across the EU must be built to a very high energy standard, and the direction of travel is towards buildings that consume very little and generate part of what they use. Reaching that level is not really a specification problem — anyone can write thick insulation into a document. It is an execution problem. Performance is lost at junctions: where the wall meets the roof, where a window is fixed, where a pipe penetrates the airtight layer, where insulation is interrupted by a batten nobody drew.
This is the strongest technical argument for building a luxury modular home in Europe, and it is a quiet one. Those junctions are assembled indoors, at a bench, to a drawing, by people who make the same junction repeatedly — and they can be inspected before the module is closed up, which is the last moment a correction is cheap. Airtightness stops being an aspiration and becomes a measured number. On a site in a Belgian November, it is neither.
What moves the budget from one European market to another
The manufactured house is the most predictable part of a European project, because it is made in a controlled environment to a closed specification. What varies between countries is mostly everything else:
- Site works and foundations. Ground conditions, frost depth, slope and retaining requirements differ enormously, and this is routinely the largest single variance between two otherwise identical projects.
- Local labour and trades. Rates for groundwork, craning, connections and external works vary widely across Europe, and they are local by nature.
- The delivery route. Distance matters less than the route: module width against permit thresholds, tunnels and bridge clearances, urban approaches, ferry legs, and the last few hundred metres to the plot, which decide the crane.
- Permits, fees and technical studies. Application fees and the studies an authority demands are set locally.
- VAT and taxes. Work on immovable property is taxed where the land is. The rate and the treatment of new housing follow the destination country, and for non-EU destinations import VAT and duties enter the picture.
- Utility connections. Bringing water, power and drainage to a rural or coastal plot can cost more than a bathroom or nothing at all, depending entirely on what is already at the boundary.
We do not publish a price per square metre for Europe, because a figure that ignores all of the above is not information. Every proposal we issue breaks the budget into architecture, manufacturing, transport, assembly, building services and finishes, with permits, foundations and connections named separately so you can see which numbers are ours and which belong to your plot.
Delivery across Europe, practically
Inside the EU, modules move between member states as goods: no customs clearance, and transport planned against the permit rules of each country crossed. For the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Albania and Russia, import formalities and — where the geography requires it — a sea or ferry leg are planned and priced into the logistics package from the outset rather than discovered halfway through.
Module width is the decision that governs all of it. Up to roughly 2.55 m a load travels as ordinary freight; wider, and you are into abnormal-load permits, escort vehicles, restricted hours and route-by-route approval in every country on the way. Wider modules mean fewer joints and better interiors, so we set the dimensions during engineering against your real route — not from a standard product sheet.
The full mechanics of a cross-border project, including how a remote client stays in control of it, are set out in international luxury modular homes.
Why clients choose a Spanish manufacturer for a European plot
A fair question, and worth answering directly. Manufacturing in Spain and delivering across Europe works for three reasons: a competitive industrial cost base for a genuinely high level of finish; year-round production conditions, since a Spanish factory is not weather-limited the way a northern site is; and — most relevant to a luxury project — the fact that the architecture, the engineering, the manufacturing and the assembly sit inside one organisation instead of being split between a designer, a distant factory and a local contractor who have never worked together. When something needs deciding, one team decides it.
What that does not buy you is an exemption from local rules, and we would not claim it. Your plot is governed by its own authority, its own code and its own annex. We work to those, in their language, on your behalf.
Frequently asked questions
Which European countries do you build luxury modular homes in?
Spain is our home market, and we build across the main European markets: Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Poland, Russia, the United Kingdom and Albania. For a plot elsewhere in Europe the question is not whether the house can be manufactured but whether it can be delivered and legally connected, so ask us for a route assessment early.
Can the same modular design be built anywhere in Europe?
The architecture can travel; the engineering cannot. Snow, wind and seismic loading, insulation thickness, airtightness, glazing specification and the heating and cooling strategy are all recalculated for the actual location. A house designed for the Costa del Sol and the same house built in Poland share a plan and a look, but not a build-up.
Are luxury modular homes legal everywhere in Europe?
Yes, where the plot itself is buildable. A luxury modular home is a permanent dwelling and is assessed exactly as a site-built house would be on that plot: the same planning rules, the same structural codes, the same energy and safety requirements. There is no separate modular category and no regulatory shortcut. What differs between countries is the approval procedure, not the legality of the method.
What is a national annex and why does it matter?
Structural design across the EU shares one family of standards, the Eurocodes, but each country publishes a national annex that sets its own values for things like snow load, wind zones and safety factors. The structural calculation for your house is produced to the Eurocodes with the national annex of the destination country, which is why a compliant design in one market is not automatically compliant in another.
Do European energy rules favour modular construction?
They suit it well. EU rules require new homes to be built to a very high energy standard, and the hardest part of reaching it is not the specification on paper but executing it without defects — continuous insulation, sealed junctions, measurable airtightness. Those are exactly the things a factory does better than a building site in the rain, because they are assembled indoors and can be checked before the module is closed up.
How much does a luxury modular home cost in Europe?
There is no fixed catalogue price, and the same house does not cost the same in two countries. The budget is broken down into architecture, manufacturing, transport, assembly, building services and finishes, plus permits, foundations and utility connections — and the items that move most between markets are the site works, the local labour, the delivery route and the VAT treatment of new housing.
Is the VAT the same across Europe?
No. Building a house is treated as work on immovable property, so it is taxed where the land is rather than where you live or where the factory is. The rate and the treatment of new housing are set by the destination country. We show it transparently in the project breakdown and ask every client to have it confirmed by a tax adviser in that country before signing.
How wide can a module be on European roads?
As a general rule a load up to about 2.55 m wide travels the European road network as ordinary freight. Beyond that you enter abnormal-load permits, escorts, restricted hours and route-by-route approval, country by country. Wider modules give fewer joints and a better interior, so the width is a genuine design decision taken during engineering, against the real route to your plot.
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