One solution to high Phoenix housing costs? Build units in Mexico and truck them here

Article originally posted on AZ Central on September 18, 2025

Building housing that families can afford has continued to be a challenge in Arizona, especially as the cost of construction materials and labor has continued to steadily rise.

But one developer is proposing a different solution: build the housing in Mexico, where materials and labor are significantly cheaper, then ship and assemble them to the United States.

The company, Tudo Capital, recently completed construction on its first apartment project in Arizona, called the Stacks on Polk, near Loop 202 and Polk Street.

The project, a 19-unit apartment building, is made of 45 shipping containers. The containers are recycled boxes that have already been used for shipping. They are then fabricated into homes at the company’s factory in Hermosillo, Mexico, then transported to Phoenix to be installed on the site, Evan Glickman, founder of Tudo Capital, said.

Rent at Stacks on Polk starts at $1,250 per month. Leasing for the apartment complex will open in mid-September, but Glickman said they often get people stopping by and asking about the project, so he is confident leasing will be strong.

Glickman said he started the company after working in a real estate investment trust and wanted to do something more impactful in development. He was living in San Francisco and saw that the cost to develop apartments had gotten so high, it was virtually impossible to build new housing at an attainable price for people earning average wages without losing money.

In Phoenix, overall construction costs increased 5.2% over the 12-month period that ended in June, according to research done by construction firm Mortenson.

Shipping containers seemed to be the right choice for the modular construction, Glickman said, because they are already designed to be transportable and durable. For modular construction, the modules need to be able to handle much more stress, because they need to be transported, than a traditionally built home. The modules also need to fit together perfectly, unlike a stick-built home that could be adjusted slightly for a measuring error.

“Containers are made in a factory that is designed to put out the same precise, extremely strong box,” he said, adding that they are already watertight and resistant to other damage.

As much of the construction as possible, including flooring, building out kitchens and bathrooms, drywall, paint and other work, is done in Mexico before shipping the container to the United States, then some of the walls are cut and combined with other containers to create the apartment unit. A one-bedroom unit generally uses two containers, and a two-bedroom unit uses three, Glickman said. A one-bedroom unit is about 640 square feet, and a two-bedroom is 960 square feet.

Construction at the Stacks on Polk took between four and five years, Glickman said, partially because of disruption from the pandemic, and because of a flaw that was noticed by a state safety inspector that needed to be corrected.

“It is a new construction type, there is a little bit of a learning curve on that,” he said.

Stacks on Polk is not the first shipping container apartment in Phoenix. IDA on McKinley, Containers on Grand and the Oscar all used shipping containers to create housing units. But constructing with containers that are completely fabricated in the U.S. can be expansive, Glickman said.

“Containers have the allure of low cost, but a shipping container is high-strength steel,” he said, adding that specialized labor is often needed for cutting, welding and other work on the containers,” he said. “In the U.S., you need to hire specialist labor, so the cost benefit is gone. In the U.S., the focus isn’t on cost, it’s usually on aesthetic or for environmental reasons, because it’s a repurposed material.”

In Mexico, constructing with steel and concrete is much more common, so it is easier to find trade workers who can complete the skilled labor, Glickman said.

Tudo Capital is under construction on another shipping container building in Mexico and is in the preliminary stages of planning another apartment development in Arizona.