Why Housing Gets More Expensive - and What All3 is Doing About It

How construction's productivity gap is holding back affordability - and how All3 aims to close it.

The affordability paradox

In most industries the rule is simple - innovation brings costs down. Whether it's smartphones, electric vehicles, or solar panels, progress typically makes things cheaper and more accessible over time.

But housing defies that logic.

Despite decades of public investment, rising policy urgency, and growing demand, homes keep getting more expensive - not only in absolute terms, but also relative to what people earn.

In Germany, the average house-price-to-income ratio has increased from around 3× annual earnings a generation ago to approximately 6× today. Affordability is getting worse, and no matter how hard we try to subsidise, regulate, or incentivise, supply struggles to keep pace.

Why? Because housing is still built on a model that hasn’t fundamentally changed in centuries.

Construction has a productivity problem

While industries like manufacturing, agriculture, and logistics have embraced automation, digitisation, and systems integration, construction remains the exception. According to McKinsey, productivity in the global construction sector has grown by just 1% annually over the past 20 years - far behind the 3–4% average seen elsewhere.

The problem is that construction remains one of the most manually intensive industries in the world. More than 80% of tasks on typical building sites are still performed by hand, with limited automation or digital coordination. From laying foundations to final finishing, most operations depend on physical labour, subject to local availability, weather, and site conditions.

This labour-heavy model is the root cause of construction’s stagnation. It’s also why costs keep rising while output struggles to grow.

In essence: we're still building homes the way we did 500 years ago - just with more paperwork.

The cost of stagnation

This outdated approach has real-world consequences.

It means slower project timelines, higher costs, and limited capacity to build at the scale needed. It restricts what’s possible on complex urban plots, where logistics and time constraints multiply. It puts pressure on developers to sacrifice quality for speed, and forces governments to spend more to achieve less.

The result? A structural barrier to affordability. One that subsidies can’t solve and regulation can’t reverse.

If we want to build more homes that people can actually afford, we need to fix the root problem: productivity.

What if housing could scale like other industries?

At All3, we believe affordability follows productivity. That’s why we’ve built an entirely new kind of construction system - one designed from the ground up to be scalable, automated, and cost-efficient, without sacrificing design flexibility or sustainability.

Rather than dropping robotics into legacy construction workflows, we’ve created a fully integrated process - combining AI-powered design, robotic manufacturing, and on-site autonomous assembly. Each layer of the system is built to work together, enabling faster, cleaner, more consistent building at scale.

This isn’t modular construction. It’s systemised construction - customised by default, but driven by repeatable processes and real-time data.

Proof that it works

By integrating digital design, fabrication, and assembly from day one, All3 unlocks levels of efficiency the traditional industry simply can’t reach:

This isn’t just about building greener or faster - it’s about changing the economic equation of housing altogether.

Converting construction productivity into affordable housing

In every other sector, productivity gains unlock affordability. When industries scale, consumers benefit. That’s how smartphones, solar power, and electric vehicles moved from luxury to mainstream.

Housing should be no different.

All3 is making it possible - by rebuilding the construction process around speed, precision, and integration. No more one-off projects. No more fragmented supply chains. Just a smarter, faster way to build better buildings.

This isn’t about doing the same thing with new tools. It’s about changing how construction works so that affordability, sustainability, and scale can finally align.

If you’re ready to build differently, we’re ready to help.

Let’s build. Together.