People have been trying to make modular housing work for awhile, with limited success. For various reasons, it's a lot more challenging than it seems like it should be. One of the problems is that the US doesn't really have a single national regulatory regime for building codes, they are mostly local and regional. You can't really design a house that works everywhere so the economics are a lot different than selling something like a car or a washing machine.
I think a large part of it is consistent demand, and that must be regional because of the size and shipping of the final product. Hurricanes solve both to some extent.