# The return of the American rowhome

**Published by:** [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/)
**Published on:** 2026-04-08
**Categories:** bobby-fijan, rowhome, american-housing-corporation, urban-housing, family-housing, urbanism, development, real-estate, housing, prefab, modular
**URL:** https://brandondonnelly.com/the-return-of-the-american-rowhome

## Content

My internet friend Bobby Fijan is one of the founders of a mission-driven company called The American Housing Corporation. It was founded in 2024. They opened their first factory in Austin in 2025, and they're now actively working on their first collection of modular homes. The mission is both simple and awesome: The American middle class can no longer afford a family-oriented starter home in the cities they love. This has people leaving cities, abstaining from having kids, and forgoing economic opportunity. To correct this, they're going back to what they refer to as "the original American urban home" — the rowhome. And they're working to perfect it through vertical integration and a modular approach where prefabricated components are built in a factory and then shipped flat-packed to the site. They're obviously not the first company to try to reduce the cost of new housing through prefabrication, but they believe that total vertical integration will make them different. And boy, would I like to see them succeed. If we truly want to bring down the cost of new housing, we need to (1) stop taxing it like we want less of it and (2) think of it in every possible way as a repeatable product and not as a custom prototype. Good luck, team!Photos from The American Housing Corporation

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