The 2026 Women of Distinction met in June in Costa Mesa, California. Photo courtesy of Barry Cole.
On June 26, the third annual Cole Accolades Luncheon Honoring Women of Distinction in the manufactured housing industry was held at the private Park Club in Costa Mesa, California.
This event is sponsored solely by Barry Cole of MHIS, a California-based insurance provider for the industry. What started as a way of identifying those women who have worked hard during their careers, assisting in the successes of their companies — some now retired and others still working — has become an annual tradition.
“This yearly program was established for women, in all areas of the manufactured housing industry, who might not have had the recognition they absolutely, surely deserve,” Cole said to the attendees. “Some of you have made your own success, and some have made your bosses successful.
“Hopefully, having all MH associations and non-profits join and publicize the efforts of this event will bring awareness of great manufactured housing women achievers,” he said.
In 2026, 12 women who have given their time to help develop the successes that their companies have enjoyed were honored.
They are:
Tisha Anderson | Star Management Patty Gritton | Homes Direct Sharon Mann | Skyline Donna Meckel | Les Frame Management Lynn Plumlee | Nu Trend Homes Debbie Rebolo | HomeQuest Rebecca Rebelo | Saddleback Mobilodge Angel Rogers | Star Training and Consulting Veronica Tachias | Newport Pacific Erica Taylor | Augusta Communities Josie Wheeler | Cousin Gary Homes Robin Youngdahl | Clayton Homes
One woman among the 12 honorees, Lynn Plumlee, passed away before the event. Her mother attended the luncheon on her behalf. It was an emotional moment for everyone in attendance.
Many who have been honored in the past two events attended and supported those newly chosen honorees.
Each honoree looks forward to the beautiful event each year, and enjoys the company of so many from throughout the industry.
Maria Horton is the director of business development and a regional manager for J&H Asset Property Management, an owner of manufactured home communities and a provider of third-party and fee-based management services for communities. She lives in Garden Grove and works in Yorba Linda, but at any moment can be found anywhere in Southern California.
The Midwest Manufactured Housing Federation has announced that attendee registration is now open for the 2027 Louisville Manufactured Housing Show, returning to the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, KY. from Jan. 20-22.
The Louisville Show draws thousands of industry professionals to tour over 40 model homes from the nation’s leading manufacturers, making it the largest indoor display of factory-built homes in the country. As the precursor to the spring and summer selling season, the Louisville Show provides manufactured housing professionals across the country the opportunities needed for a strong sales year.
“The Louisville Show has been an industry cornerstone for over 60 years and is definitely a must-attend event for any manufactured housing professional,” MMHF President Eric Oaks said. “With the latest model homes on display and hundreds of exhibitors showing off the newest innovations, this is the event for anyone looking to gain a competitive edge in the industry.”
Attendees can also learn from industry leaders as they share their insights for 2027 and beyond. Topics covered during the educational seminars at the 2026 show ranged from state of the industry, to builder/developer trends, to financing, to community management.
“Not only will this year continue the positive momentum for the Louisville Show, but we’re excited to have more than 425,000 square feet of exhibit space,” Byron Stroud, 2027 Louisville Show Chairman, said. “That means attendees will get to see even more innovations from our exhibitors, have more chances to connect with their peers, and of course see more model homes.”
For information about attendee registration, sponsorship opportunities, hotel block announcements, and other updates regarding the Louisville Show, visit TheLouisvilleShow.com.
Those interested in exhibiting or becoming a sponsor are urged to visit TheLouisvilleShow.com/exhibitors or call (616) 888-8030 today, as exhibitor booths and sponsorships are quickly selling out.
The Louisville Show is an industry trade event not open to the general public. For more information, visit TheLouisvilleShow.com.
The Grande Arbor, from Cavco Industries, is the first-of-a-kind chassis-free manufactured home, on display Sept. 22-24, 2026, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Photo courtesy of Cavco.
HUD’s Innovative Housing Showcase, MHI’s Homes on the Hill and Annual Meeting Begin Sept. 22
Two of the country’s largest builders of manufactured homes will be featured Sept. 22-24 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Innovative Housing Showcase in partnership with the Manufactured Housing Institute and its Homes on the Hill event that this year coincides with the annual member meeting.
Cavco Industries, based in Phoenix, Arizona, is partnering with UMH Properties to show the first-ever chassis-free manufactured home, a design and engineering option unleashed by the historic 21st Century ROAD to Housing bill that became law in July. UMH, based in Freehold, New Jersey, makes the showcase viable by agreeing to share cost and to purchase the homes on display for its community residents or potential buyers. Champion Homes, based in Troy, Michigan, is bringing a pair of homes, each of which also leverages the new design flexibility — a two-story manufactured home that is geared toward urban infill in tight metropolitan settings — as well as a thoughtfully designed ranch home that fits nicely in nearly any residential setting.
The annual showcase is held each year to highlight housing designs and technologies intended to increase the supply of homes and lower costs for owners and renters. The showcase draws policymakers, industry leaders, members of Congress and the public for tours of model homes, as well as educational discussion panels on housing affordability.
Cavco said the new home, Grande Arbor, and its “double grande suite floor plan” target the growing demand for multigenerational living.
“Addressing the affordable housing crisis remains a top priority for our company,” Cavco President and CEO Bill Boor said. “Innovation and advocacy for manufactured housing at the national and local level go hand in hand.
“That’s why events like the Innovative Housing Showcase are so important,” he said. “Policymakers and others can see for themselves the homes we are developing to meet buyers’ needs while keeping prices affordable. The Grande Arbor does both, and we’re proud to showcase it this year.”
According to the Pew Research Center, about 22 percent of Americans — more than 74 million people — currently live in a multigenerational household. The National Association of Realtors reported that in 2024, 17 percent of homes purchased in the U.S. were bought specifically for multigenerational use, the highest share on record. Aging parents, adult children returning home, and the rising cost of maintaining separate households are among the factors driving the trend, Cavco stated in its release on the new home.
Building HUD-code homes without a permanent steel chassis allows for lower-profile installation of a manufactured home. This ground-set capability provides improved curb appeal for smooth integration into traditional neighborhoods, access to new urban and suburban markets and developments, as well as greater design flexibility, including multi-story construction.
The new frameless display home places two primary suites at opposite ends of the home, private areas that are connected by a shared kitchen, dining, and living space to fit the needs of households looking for multigenerational housing options.
Cavco’s home was built in the company’s Rocky Mount, Virginia, homebuilding facility, the same production team that introduced the first nationally available HUD-approved duplex at the showcase in 2023.
Champion Two-Story Home Rises to the Occasion
The New Horizon, from Champion Homes, is an innovative new two-story manufactured home, on display Sept. 22-24, 2026, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Rendering courtesy of Champion.
Champion Homes is taking affordability to new heights for the 2026 Innovative Housing Showcase. With an eye toward urban infill lots in nearly any metro area in the U.S., the New Horizon features a two-story layout and a small building footprint designed for high-density city settings. The company’s first two-story manufactured home with a removed second-floor chassis, the New Horizon leverages the benefits of vertical construction to lower costs for builders, buyers, and renters.
The New Horizon has a front porch, a second-story balcony, and a large deck that’s ideal for entertaining. Families looking for spaces for intergenerational living will love the primary bedroom and en suite bathroom on the first floor, offering an affordable, attainable solution for aging in place.
As land costs are increasingly becoming a barrier to homeownership across the U.S., the New Horizon answers the call with a trailblazing two-story layout and an affordable price point.
What Makes New Horizon Different
The two-story manufactured home with a removed second-floor chassis provides increased curb appeal because there’s substantially less space between the first and second floors, where a second-floor chassis would have been used. It is a 1,698-square-foot home with a dual vanity and shower/tub combo in the primary suite. In addition to the kitchen, living, and dining areas is a dedicated office and half bath. The second floor has a pair of bedrooms, another full bath, a loft space, and access to the upstairs balcony.
The use of two-story homes in a community setting allows for increased square footage on a smaller land footprint, Champion said in its release on the new design. The use of two-story homes by retailers allows for increased livable square footage at an attainable price in historically high-cost real estate areas. This allows retailers who are used to predominantly placing homes on rural land to expand their business into urban markets.
Champion’s New Frontier
The New Frontier, from Champion Homes, is a new ground-level, ranch-style manufactured home, on display Sept. 22-24, 2026, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Rendering courtesy of Champion.
The ranch home from Champion is called the New Frontier and delivers the style homeowners want and the affordability they need. It offers exceptional curb appeal and in-demand features homeowners desire — and its appealing design fits in with existing neighborhoods across the country. It provides a practical solution for single-story living with its classic ranch design, main-floor laundry room, and standalone bathtub in the primary bathroom.
The need for affordable housing has never been greater, Champion stated, and the New Frontier rises to the occasion with a standout design that families can afford. The 1,759-square-foot floor plan features three bedrooms, two bathrooms, island and bar seating in the kitchen, a dedicated dining area, and a primary suite with dual vanity, shower, and standalone tub.
The New Horizon and the New Frontier, Champion stated, are designed for flexibility and will be available in multiple configurations like HUD Code, HUD Code with a removed chassis, and modular.
The 2026 sponsors for the Innovative Housing Showcase are MHI, International Code Council, National Association of Home Builders, Rocket, and Structural Building Components Association. The theme for the 2026 event, while celebrating the nation’s 250th birthday, is “Made in America.”
“Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD is bringing the public and private sectors together to advance bold, practical solutions for housing affordability,” said Secretary Turner. “This Showcase is a powerful reminder of what is possible when free enterprise, American grit, and strong public-private partnerships come together to make the American Dream of homeownership a reality. I am grateful to our incredible sponsors and exhibitors for bringing this experience to the National Mall and giving Americans an opportunity to experience firsthand the innovation emerging across our nation.”
MHI CEO Lesli Gooch said MHI is pleased to again partner with HUD for the Innovative Housing Showcase, and at this historic moment for manufactured housing.
“As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the HUD Code, the manufactured homes on display will showcase the next generation of housing innovation and the transformative potential of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, legislation that will help unlock greater design flexibility and expand housing supply,” Gooch said. “We are grateful for HUD’s leadership and encouraged by Congress’ embrace of manufactured housing as an essential part of the nation’s housing supply strategy. Together, we are making homeownership attainable for more Americans and delivering high-quality housing options to communities across the country.”
Nearly 5,000 manufactured housing professionals attended the Louisville Show in 2026. Register now!
The Midwest Manufactured Housing Federation announced today that the 2027 Louisville Manufactured Housing Show will take place from Jan. 20-22.
Once again held at the Kentucky Exposition Center in Louisville, KY, the Louisville Show will bring together manufactured housing professionals from all over the country. As the precursor to the spring selling season, the show offers the support and resources needed for industry professionals to make 2027 a strong sales year for their business.
This year’s show is set for more than 425,000 square feet of exhibit space, filling the entire south wing of the facility. With more room to explore, attendees will have even more opportunities to view dozens of the newest model manufactured homes on display and preview the latest industry trends and innovations.
“The Louisville Show has seen significant growth in recent years, and we’re proud to continue that in 2027 by offering more opportunities for exhibiting, networking, and education,” MMHF President Eric Oaks said. “Now, more than ever, the show is THE place to not only view the newest trends in manufactured home design, but connect with thousands of decision-makers at the start of the selling season.”
In addition to the largest collection of factory-built homes, the show also brings out the latest in technological advancements, the best in suppliers’ offerings, and a look at all the newest amenities and system-built options in the industry. Attendees can also benefit from an extensive lineup of educational seminars from industry thought leaders, experts, and innovators.
“We’re always looking for new ways to bring more to the Louisville Show, and 2027 is no exception,” Byron Stroud, Louisville Show chairman, said. “From an exciting and relevant educational program to the massive increase in exhibit space, the show is the must-attend event for any manufactured housing professional.”
Attendee registration for the 2027 Louisville Show will go live in the coming weeks. To receive more information, including sponsorship opportunities and hotel block announcements, visit TheLouisvilleShow.com
Those interested in exhibiting or becoming a sponsor are urged to visit TheLouisvilleShow.com/exhibitors or call (616) 888-8030 today, as exhibitor booths and sponsorships are quickly selling out.
The Louisville Show is an industry trade event not open to the general public. For more information, visit TheLouisvilleShow.com.
About The Midwest Manufactured Housing Federation
The Midwest Manufactured Housing Federation is a trade-association dedicated to the promotion and advancement of the manufactured housing industry throughout Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and Ohio. The Federation holds the Louisville Manufactured Housing Show annually in Louisville, Ky.
Trove is a new software company built exclusively for manufactured and modular home retailers. It ties together the three business solutions most dealers run through separate vendors — digital marketing, the customer-facing website, and the CRM — into a single connected system.
The company, founded and operated by brothers John and James Connelly, is betting on the convenience and efficiency of selling homes online in one continuous motion — attract, educate, convert, and close. And smart technology should be doing the heavy lifting at every step.
The new software startup is using cutting-edge technology to help manufactured home dealers attract more buyers, convert more leads, and close more deals. It replaces a paperwork-heavy sales process with the kind of modern shopping experience buyers expect.
Attract: Marketing that learns about the real buyer
Trove runs Facebook, Instagram, Google, and local SEO campaigns on behalf of dealers, but the interesting piece is the feedback loop.
“When a Trove site captures a lead, it lands in the dealer’s Trove CRM. When that lead closes, or doesn’t, the outcome syncs back to Facebook and Google,” Trove CEO John Connelly said. “The ad networks learn what a real manufactured home buyer looks like, and next month’s spend chases more of them.”
The platform also auto-syncs each dealer’s inventory to Facebook Shop, and runs an SEO program built for the era of ChatGPT, because buyers increasingly ask AI assistants for recommendations before they ask Google.
Educate and convert: A Smart Digital Showroom
A Trove website is a full digital showroom out of the box. It catalogs and provides inventory management that is already connected to more than 150 homebuilding factories that auto-sync as offerings change. It works as a design studio that allows buyers to pick floor plans, finishes, and upgrades with live pricing and visualization.
“We have a property mapping tool that drops the home onto a satellite view of the buyer’s actual parcel with setbacks accounted for,” Trove President James Connelly said. “It also covers the everyday marketing-site essentials: a built-in blog, custom marketing pages and blog, full branding and domain control, and automatic SEO that ranks the dealer’s homes for hundreds of long-tail searches.”
Among these capabilities, three new features stand out this year.
Smart Renderings. A typical factory photo shows whatever finishes were on the line that day. When a buyer uses Trove’s Design Studio to pick cabinets, tile, countertops, and flooring, the platform generates a photorealistic, floor-plan-specific image of the home as the buyer has just designed it. Buyers fall in love with their home before they ever step on the lot. Factory order errors collapse because the dealer confirms the order against an actual image of the aligned configuration.
Smart Search. Buyers don’t think in checkboxes. They think in terms of “3-bedroom under $80k with an open kitchen” or “something for a young family on a tight lot.” Trove’s natural-language search reads queries the way ChatGPT taught the world to expect, and surfaces matching plans from the dealer’s catalog instantly.
Smart Responses. Every Trove site comes with an AI sales assistant trained on the dealer’s specific catalog. It answers questions on home specifications, recommends floor plans, qualifies the lead, and books tours even at 9 p.m. on a Sunday, when no human is around. Leads stop going cold.
Close: A CRM that already knows what the buyer wants
The last mile is where most dealers leak deals. A buyer designs their dream home at 9 p.m., fills out an inquiry, and it lands in someone’s email inbox. The salesperson rebuilds the quote in a spreadsheet. Two days later, three competitors have already followed up.
“Trove’s CRM helps close that gap,” John Connelly said. “We find that the added focus of a 24/7 optimized system is that we are able to capture many more leads than most websites.”
The CRM ties directly into factory cost data for every plan in the dealer’s catalog. A salesperson opens a proposal, picks the home and the buyer’s design studio configuration, and the underlying invoice cost is pre-populated.
Standard dealer markups can be made to apply automatically.
Site-work estimates layer on next: foundation, utilities, skirting, decks, septic, permits, all from reusable line-item templates the dealer programs once.
Property site mapping drops in where it’s relevant, so the buyer sees exactly where the home will sit.
The output is one branded, line-itemed quote with the home, finishes, smart rendering, site work, totals, and signature block.
“That process goes from ‘I want a tour’ to ‘sign here’ in a single document,” James Connelly said.
Among the other capabilities, Trove takes command of…
Automated email and SMS. Drip sequences trigger on real events that the platform detects, like if a lead viewed a catalog, saved a design, scheduled a tour, or requested a callback. Sales reps can also fire one-off texts and emails directly from the contact record, with every message logged on the timeline.
Native integrations with industry-specific lead sources. Trove plugs directly into the systems dealers already get business from, including factory programs operated by industry partners like Champion Homes. It pulls accepted leads straight into the CRM, pre-attributed and pre-routed, with no copy-pasting from one inbox to another.
A homebuyer portal that bridges shopping and ownership. Each customer gets a secure, branded portal with their assigned team member, their live project details and quote, their tasks, their required document uploads, and a single shared message thread. It’s the kind of experience people are used to from their bank, and increasingly expect from any large transaction.
Why It All Matters
The transaction for a manufactured home should be as easy or easier than most anything else purchased online. With the right technology handling the marketing, the website, and the CRM as a single system, it doesn’t have to be.
Why the Future Belongs to Retailers Who Reach Conventional Homebuyers Earlier
Editor’s Note: John Ace Underwood is providing a series of articles to MHInsider on retail sales strategy that reach the site-built homebuyer. This is the first in a five-part series.
By John Ace Underwood
John Ace Underwood
For decades, much of the factory-built housing industry has operated from a relatively straightforward business model: build a sales center, generate and pull in traffic, and sell homes to the people who show up.For many years, that model worked reasonably well. Buyers were more familiar with manufactured housing, competition looked different, and the industry relied heavily on visibility, location, and walk-in traffic.
But today’s housing market has changed dramatically.The reality is that many conventional single-family home buyers never seriously consider factory-built housing at all. Not because they evaluated it and rejected it. Not because they compared it side-by-side against site-built alternatives and decided against it. In many cases, they simply never meaningfully encounter it during their home-buying journey.
That distinction matters.
Most conventional buyers begin their search online, but not with factory-built retailers. They engage with builder websites, realtors, housing portals, social media, model homes, and local developments long before they ever speak with a salesperson. Their perception of homeownership is often shaped months before a purchase decision is ever made.
And while many of those buyers may drive past a manufactured housing retail center, very few ever drive onto one. Yet many of those same buyers would likely be surprised by the quality, residential appearance, design flexibility, speed of construction, and overall value today’s factory-built homes offer.
In many ways, the industry does not have a product problem nearly as much as it has a positioning and discovery problem. For years, factory-built housing has often been discovered almost accidentally. A family member owned one. A friend recommended one. Someone happened to drive by a retail center. A buyer stumbled across a model online while searching for something else.
Accidental Discovery is Not Long-Term Strategy
The next wave of success in factory-built housing will not come from waiting for more manufactured home buyers to walk onto a sales lot. It will come from reaching conventional single-family home buyers earlier in their decision-making process and introducing them to the value factory-built housing offers before they emotionally commit to a site-built solution.
That requires a very different way of thinking about the marketplace.
One of the industry’s biggest misconceptions is the belief that manufactured and modular housing are already fully competing against conventional site-built housing. In reality, in many markets, they are not truly competing at all because large numbers of potential buyers never seriously enter the factory-built housing conversation in the first place.
That represents both the challenge and the opportunity.
The United States continues to struggle with affordable housing shortages, rising construction costs, labor constraints, and increasing barriers to homeownership. At the same time, factory-built housing has never offered more quality, more flexibility, or stronger residential appeal than it does today.
Yet manufactured and modular housing still account for less than 10 percent of new single-family housing starts nationally. That should not be interpreted as a lack of opportunity.
It should be interpreted as evidence that the industry has not yet fully positioned itself within the broader housing conversation.
Manufactured Housing Seen in New Light
Importantly, this change does not mean retailers need to abandon their traditional customer base or completely reinvent their businesses overnight. Nor does it mean manufactured housing retailers must become conventional home builders.
But it does mean they must begin learning how to market, position, and sell to conventional single-family home buyers who are currently shopping elsewhere.
This may prove to be one of the most important strategic shifts facing the industry over the next decade.
The retailers and community operators who grow moving forward will likely be those who become far more intentional about where buyers discover factory-built housing in the first place.
If the ideal future customer is not naturally visiting a sales center, the entire growth strategy cannot depend solely on increasing sales center traffic.
The industry must become visible where conventional buyers are already shopping and researching. That may involve stronger relationships with realtors, partnerships with developers, better online positioning, off-site model opportunities, land/home packages, builder-style marketing, or entirely different approaches to lead generation and customer engagement.
This is not about abandoning or even a fundamental change with manufactured housing itself. It is about expanding the audience exposed to it.
Realtors and Developers
One of the most overlooked opportunities in the industry today may be relationships with realtors and developers. Many real estate professionals still know very little about modern manufactured or modular housing. Many developers continue defaulting to conventional site-built solutions simply because factory-built options are not part of their normal conversations or planning processes.
Outdated perceptions continue to dominate much of the marketplace.
That creates tremendous opportunity for retailers willing to position themselves not simply as manufactured home retailers, but as housing solution providers participating in the broader single-family housing market.
The companies that thrive over the next decade will likely be those that stop waiting for buyers to find them and instead become active participants in how buyers discover, evaluate, and ultimately purchase homes.
This article is intended to introduce a larger conversation about where factory-built housing retail is headed and how independent retailers, community operators, and industry professionals can better position themselves for the future.
In my series of articles, we will explore why many of the industry’s best future customers never visit a sales center, how retailers can market more effectively to conventional home buyers, why realtors may represent one of the industry’s most underutilized growth channels, and how partnerships with developers could create entirely new opportunities for factory-built housing professionals.
The future opportunity for factory-built housing may be larger than it has ever been.
But the companies that benefit most will not be the ones waiting for more traffic.
They will be the ones willing to rethink how conventional single-family home buyers discover factory-built housing altogether.
John Ace Underwood is a recognized 35-plus-year veteran of the factory-built housing industry, specializing in sales leadership, organizational development, and growth strategies for retailers, communities, and manufacturers. His work focuses exclusively on helping retailers expand beyond traditional manufactured housing buyers and compete more effectively for conventional single-family home buyers.
The event will begin with a welcome reception and dinner, followed by a full day of exhibitors and speakers.
“We anticipate a good cross-section of the industry attending from all parts of the state, as well as some industry professionals from other states who do business here,” MMHA President and CEO John Lindley said. “We have remarkable content, a fantastic environment for a professional meeting, an array of industry exhibitors, and an awards program that honors career achievements and great work done in the state of Michigan.”
For 85 years, the association has been building communities, promoting factory-built housing, and supporting the organizations and individuals in the manufactured housing industry.
Soaring Eagle is a casino and resort with conference spaces is located in central Michigan.
Thursday morning at the conference begins with a breakfast in the Black River Banquet Room, with opening remarks from association board chairman Jarrett Levine, an industry attorney who represents property owners. Lesli Gooch, CEO of the Manufactured Housing Institute, will provide an industry update and an overview of emerging opportunities in manufactured housing. There will also be a manufacturers panel, a talk from a demographer on population, social, and geographical trends that impact housing, as well as a housing overview from Eric Finnigan of John Burns Research.
Thursday afternoon provides an opportunity to visit exhibitors to learn about the latest innovations from industry services and supply professionals. MMHA is also hosting an outing at Buck’s Run Golf Club from 1-5 p.m. Painting with a Purpose, from 1-3 p.m., is a fundraiser for the Harvest Foundation, which supports students in Michigan who are pursuing careers in RV, camping, and manufactured housing.
That evening is a reception and awards dinner.
Friday morning starts with breakfast and goes into a legislative and political panel geared toward operators of manufactured home communities.
New York State in 2026 has paid a lot of attention and provided increased funding for affordable housing.
New York state is directing more than $19 million toward the construction of 56 factory-built starter homes as part of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s effort to expand affordable homeownership.
The funding, awarded through the second round of Hochul’s MOVE-IN NY program, will create new homes in the cities of Amsterdam, Auburn, Lackawanna, and Schenectady and the town of East Hampton.
The program uses CrossMod homes, which are manufactured in factories and can be built in a fraction of the time and at nearly half the cost of standard site-built construction. State officials say the typical cost to build a small single-family home onsite in New York has climbed to more than $450,000.
The new homes are expected to be sited this summer and will be sold below the cost of construction to low- and moderate-income buyers.
Four organizations received awards: the AHA Development Corporation, $3,025,000 for 10 homes; the Capital Region Land Bank, $6,655,000 for 22 homes; the Lackawanna Housing Development Corporation, $2,420,000 for 8 homes; and the town of East Hampton, $7,040,000 for 16 homes.
The latest awards bring the total number of homes funded through MOVE-IN NY to 128. The program is backed by $50 million secured in the state’s fiscal year 2025-26 budget.
Hochul has also proposed an additional $100 million in her fiscal year 2027 executive budget to further expand the program.
America’s housing affordability crisis has many proposed solutions. Few are as ready and as scalable as manufactured housing.
Modern manufactured homes compete on design, energy efficiency, and price in ways the industry has never seen. Zippy, a digitally native lender, argues it is no longer the home that is holding the industry back.
The next hurdle is the capital market that finances manufactured homes.
Ben Halliday, Zippy’s CEO, sees blockchain as a meaningful part of the answer. It brings truth, efficiency, and transparency to a market that has historically been opaque and inefficient, he said.
Paired with the company’s broader infrastructure build, including automated underwriting, digital servicing, and standardized data systems, it is a powerful stimulant to the market potential manufactured housing has long held.
“We always thought: one day we could build an originator and a servicer, and then create a marketplace, more investors bidding to buy more loans, and the market gets to grow. We shouldn’t be 6 or 7 percent of homes if a huge portion of the country wants an affordable home.”
The Cost of an Inefficient Market
In the mortgage market, trillions of dollars of assets trade hands through standardized documentation, transparent performance data, and liquid secondary markets.
Because investors can easily buy, sell, and price those assets, capital flows in from everywhere, competition intensifies, and costs compress. Borrowers benefit directly, in the form of lower rates.
Manufactured housing operates with a fraction of that infrastructure.
Loan pools are relatively difficult to compare, expensive to diligence, and slow to trade. That illiquidity means fewer investors participate, less capital competes for manufactured home loans, and the cost of that capital stays higher than it needs to be.
Higher capital costs translate directly to higher interest rates for consumers, which determines how much home a buyer can afford and ultimately limits how many homes the industry sells.
Building the Foundation
Before co-founding Zippy with Jordan Bucy, Halliday was a member of the founding team that built J.P. Morgan’s Technology and Disruptive Commerce group, where he saw firsthand the impact of capital efficiency and innovation. He also lived the manufactured housing financing problem as a community owner, selling homes and building performing loan portfolios with no efficient way to sell them. Zippy was built from the ground up to address this, one layer at a time: digital origination with no paper, a controlled data infrastructure ensuring every loan is documented and reported in exactly the same way, and servicing built to the same standard.
“We created a control infrastructure where the loans are highly uniform, regardless of whom they’re sold to, with a rich amount of data,” Halliday said. “That took years of engineering to get right. That standardization is the source of what eventually goes onto the blockchain.”
The company’s institutional partnerships reflect the same discipline. BrandFoundry, Zippy’s first strategic investor, shaped the consumer and dealer experience. FirstBank of Tennessee established the legal, risk, and compliance foundation built to stand the rigorous test of time and institutional diligence. And most recently, Forum Markets, an equity investor and platform purpose-built to tokenize real-world credit assets. Each step is intentional. Each one is an acceleration toward a larger vision for the industry, Halliday said.
Where Blockchain Comes In: Truth Over Trust
Halliday calls the core value of blockchain “truth over trust.” As loans are originated and serviced, their characteristics and monthly performance are written to a digital ledger. Once recorded, the data cannot be changed. An investor evaluating a pool can see the full history permanently and transparently, creating an investable benchmark against which manufactured home loan performance can be measured. It also makes historical abuses in asset-backed finance, such as pledging the same collateral to multiple buyers, effectively impossible.
“While we hope investors trust us, we are also very comfortable proving it,” Halliday said.
How Tokenization Works
Once a loan pool’s data is on chain, tokenization creates a new mechanism for trading it. Ownership interests in a defined loan pool are represented as digital tokens, each corresponding to a defined economic stake. Instead of investing $50,000 in just one home loan for example, an investor can purchase 50 tokens each representing $1,000 of a $10 million pool that spreads risk and return across 200 loans, for instance, to earn a proportional return, and sell that interest to another qualified buyer through the platform.
“If you decide to buy, it is the press of a button,” Halliday said. “You bid. The seller accepts. Ownership transfers on the digital ledger. Because we made the transaction easy, the price is a real market price, not an illiquid one.”
This infrastructure is designed to work alongside the traditional structured finance process, not replace it. Investment banks, rating agencies, and institutional loan buyers bring discipline, scale, and credibility to the asset class. What tokenization does is drive down the cost of larger transactions already happening and extend the benefits of that rigor to smaller pool sizes that have historically been too small to justify a full structured transaction. The goal is to widen the market for everyone. Both traditional and new players benefit when the infrastructure gets better.
How the Ecosystem Works
For asset managers evaluating manufactured housing credit, the combined infrastructure creates a clear participation pathway into and out of the market.
A digitally enabled originator like Zippy originates and services standardized loans, with every loan documented and tracked uniformly from day one. Loan investors provide the aggregation capital that creates homeownership. As loans season, that capital builds toward a performing pool with a clear path to liquidity, managed through an integrated tokenization platform such as Forum Markets.
A New Opportunity for Community Owners
Community owners are already experienced managers of institutional capital. Historically, supporting homeownership has meant creating arrangements largely from scratch: custom small-pool mortgage contracts, lease-purchase agreements, negotiated individually with limited to no secondary market access.
Tokenization creates an entirely new way to formalize and scale that expertise. By originating standardized loans through a digitally enabled originator, a community owner can build a branded loan pool reflecting their underwriting philosophy, their knowledge of their residents, and their standards for the communities they manage. Those pools can be tokenized in customized structures designed to meet the specific risk and return demands of their investor base, with participation shared across multiple asset managers and community partners.
This represents an AUM expansion opportunity in a separately tradable asset class that supports community growth, creates new earnings for investors, and expands access to homeownership simultaneously.
Opening the Market to the World
A more efficient, open market also opens the door to international investment. U.S. mortgage-backed assets have long attracted significant international capital. Manufactured housing, without standardized infrastructure, has been largely inaccessible to those buyers. A transparent, tokenized, compliant platform changes that directly.
Progress and Scale
Forum Markets has already purchased a portfolio of performing manufactured home loans onto its own balance sheet, holding those loans and earning the yield as it builds and validates the tokenization platform on which those assets will trade. As Forum creates the first tokenized manufactured housing loan pool, the goal is to prove the process so that when other originators and community owners want to follow, the path is frictionless.
“We were able to watch the first loans enter the ledger,” Halliday said. “It was genuinely cool to watch history in real time.”
Forum Markets chairman and CEO McAndrew Rudisill said the investment in Zippy reflects the kind of opportunity Forum was built to pursue: real-world credit assets ready to be made more transparent, more liquid, and more accessible to global capital.
“Zippy has spent years engineering the standardized origination and servicing infrastructure that makes manufactured housing investable at scale, and we’ve already put that to work, acquiring a portfolio of performing manufactured home loans onto our balance sheet as we build the first tokenized MH loan pool together. This is a company executing on a clear vision in a market with enormous untapped demand, and we’re proud to be a strategic partner in unlocking it,” Rudisill said.
Cottage Grove, a new manufactured housing community in Miami. Images courtesy of RHP Properties.
Michigan-based Operator Provides New Homes, Family Amenities
Florida has a large concentration of manufactured housing communities of all varieties, but one vital area of the state has seen no growth in new communities for many years. Miami, one of the top destinations in the Sunshine State, now has its first new community in 30 years.
RHP Properties, based in Michigan, recently announced that the first phase of construction at Cottage Grove, a new all-ages community in southwest Miami, is complete.
“We are excited to announce our newest community, offering 5-star amenities at affordable prices for families. This new housing supply is coming at a time when it is most needed,” RHP Properties CEO Ross Partrich said. “Cottage Grove provides a path to homeownership in Miami-Dade County at a price point that is otherwise difficult to achieve, while replacing capacity that has been lost to redevelopment.”
Cottage Grove’s 349 new manufactured housing sites address a critical gap in Miami-Dade County housing supply at a time when rising home prices and construction costs are putting homeownership out of reach for many families, and at a time when supply is shrinking due to redevelopment. In the past year, more than 1,100 manufactured housing sites have been removed or are slated for removal, and new manufactured housing has been virtually non-existent in Dade County for decades.
The clubhouse at Cottage Grove.
The community provides convenient access to everything Miami has to offer and features brand new, modern multi-section homes in a luxury-inspired, amenity-rich setting at an affordable price point. With homes starting at $129,900, the community will offer spacious, four-bedroom single-family residences with open floor plans, multiple living areas, and kitchens equipped with stainless steel appliances and islands. There is access to two primary arterial corridors in Southwest Miami-Dade County, connecting residents to US-1 and the broader Miami metro area. Residents will benefit from the nearby 100-acre redevelopment of Southland Mall into Southplace City Center, a mixed-use project featuring retail, medical, hospitality, and residential components, as well as the proposed southwest extension of the Dolphin Expressway, enhancing east–west connectivity to the regional expressway and Florida Turnpike system across South Miami-Dade. Additional nearby attractions include the Sports Performance Hub campus, a large-scale project incorporating athletic, medical, and hospitality uses.
Cottage Grove is designed for an active lifestyle. It includes a large pool with a sun deck, a contemporary clubhouse, fitness center, yoga and lounge rooms, scenic biking and walking trails, and serene gazebos.
The playground, expansive green spaces, and gated entrance add to the community’s appeal for families. Model homes became available for tours in the early summer, with the first home sales closing by mid-summer.
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