local stories
Cabinovo: reimagining the way Canada builds housing right here in Waterloo
We're sharing the story of Cabinovo as part of the Support Local, Support Waterloo campaign.
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Building a house is a little like playing jazz. You get a group of highly skilled individuals improvising to create something unique and unpredictable.
But for Marc Morin, that unpredictability is part of the reason Canada is facing a housing crisis. The serial entrepreneur says the solution isn’t just building more housing, it’s changing how we build. Morin wants to ditch the "jazz" of construction for the "orchestra" of manufacturing.
Morin, a University of Waterloo alumnus who arrived from North Bay for his studies and never left, is no stranger to scaling complex systems. As the former CTO of PixStream and Sandvine, and co-founder of Auvik Networks, he has deep roots in Waterloo’s lineage of engineers who see broken systems as bugs to be fixed.
After retiring 3 years ago, Morin found he still had the itch to solve complex problems and turned his sights on the "missing middle” — the small-scale density needed to revitalize aging neighbourhoods.
"Doing a small infill project conventionally is uneconomic," Morin explains. "You’re buying property at current value, destroying it, and building new. To make the math work, you usually need to increase density by 8 times. But most bylaws only allow 4. That’s a math problem."
His solution is Cabinovo, a 75,000-square-foot “industrialized housing" factory in one of the former Kraus Carpet buildings in north Waterloo.
Unlike traditional builders, Cabinovo doesn't construct housing on-site. Instead, they manufacture precision-engineered modules using an innovative technology stack. Similar to an auto plant, Cabinovo produces two standardized models that are 90% finished before they leave the factory floor.
Cabinovo’s process is split into two distinct phases. First, a specialized crew works on-site handling the essential groundwork—demolition, pouring the foundation, and even planting the greenery. Once the foundation has cured and the units are ready to ship from the factory, the transformation happens with startling speed. A crane installs transport modules that can arrive almost every 15 minutes, completing the structure in a matter of hours.
As Morin puts it: "You leave in the morning, there’s nothing there. You come back after work, the building’s up. The lights are on."
Choosing Waterloo as Cabinovo’s headquarters was a strategic move beyond personal ties. Morin says the region offers a unique "risk-taking" culture and a perfect geographical vantage point. Being in the center of Southwestern Ontario allows Cabinovo to service a massive radius within a single day’s trucking window.
By treating housing as a scalable product rather than a one-off project, Morin is working to redefine the supply-and-demand curve of housing.
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