Amherst Group CEO Sean Dobson and the Amherst team do a ribbon cutting at the new StudioBuilt factory in Cuero, Texas.
The Amherst Group, LLC, a vertically integrated real estate investment, development, and operating platform, has opened its first StudioBuilt™ manufacturing facility for new homes.
Amherst held a grand opening and ribbon cutting on April 5 in Cuero, Texas.
Amherst purchased a closed textile factory in Cuero, Texas in 2021 to launch its first StudioBuilt manufacturing facility. Revitalizing this facility will, at full capacity, create more than 250 manufacturing jobs and produce hundreds of new, high-quality homes each year.
“As a real estate investment, development, and operating platform, we seek to fill unmet consumer demand for affordable, accessible, safe single-family housing across the U.S,” Amherst CEO Sean Dobson said. “Our StudioBuilt homes initiative is a testament to our commitment to identifying innovative solutions to combat the nation’s housing crisis by increasing affordable housing supply in areas of opportunity.”
Amherst’s StudioBuilt homes are prefabricated homes, constructed in a factory and then installed on-site.
This off-site construction process enables the homes to be completed 50% faster than the standard process, Amherst stated in a release and provides better quality controls during the construction process, and is a more sustainable housing product.
“We are thrilled to celebrate the opening of this manufacturing facility as we seek to apply our innovative approach and resources to providing more accessible, affordable, and quality housing for communities,” Amherst Vice Chairman Spencer Lindahl said. “We look forward to bringing these high-quality homes to neighborhoods in Texas and nearby states, and we welcome the opportunity to work with local leaders to bring this unique housing solution to their communities.”
Amherst stated it has plans to invest more than $12 million in the Cuero factory, which will enable it to produce more than 600 new housing units every year.
The number of job openings decreased to 9.9 million — the lowest since May 2021 — on the final day of business in February, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
New hires and total separations changed little, at 6.2 million and 5.8 million, respectively. Within separations, quits edged up at 4 million while layoffs and discharges decreased at 1.5 million.
The largest decreases in job openings were in professional and business services, down 278,000, health care and social assistance down 150,000, and transportation, warehousing, and utilities are down 145,000 positions.
In February, establishments with one to nine employees saw little change in their job openings rate, hires rate, and total separations rate, but the layoffs and discharges rate decreased. Establishments with more than 5,000 employees saw little change in their hires rate and total separations rate while the job openings rate decreased.
Many analysts point to the jobs report as early evidence that Fed activities are taking hold.
Jobless Claims Jump
Two days after the job openings report, unemployment claims jumped to 228,000. Economists expected a slight rise to 201,000, compared with 198,000 in the previous week.
‘With a little time and effort you too can increase your company’s marketing expenses and lower results’
When not dispensing contrarian marketing advice, Darren Krolewski is co-president and chief business development officer of MHVillage, the top website for manufactured homes, retailers, and communities, and leads efforts that generate home transactions of more than $3 billion.
On the subject of marketing, the legendary department store pioneer John Wanamaker famously lamented, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
Just imagine what it was like to be a marketer in the late 19th century laboring under such adverse conditions. No websites. No Internet. No social media. You could only rely on newspapers, a few catalogs and the occasional holiday parade on which to throw away your marketing dollars. Meanwhile, you’d be forced to toil on with the knowledge that some unknown share of your advertising could actually be working. The horror!
Thankfully, marketing has come a long way since those barbaric times. With the advent of digital marketing, choices in advertising channels for manufactured housing professionals have increased exponentially. Yet despite these advancements, so many communities, retailers and service providers continue to struggle with how to deplete their advertising investment in the fastest and most gratuitous manner possible.
But don’t worry, with a little time and effort you too can increase your company’s marketing expenses and lower results. Here are a few tips to almost guarantee the complete and total failure of any and all marketing initiatives.
1. Don’t Track Your Advertising
Not tracking your advertising is a surefire strategy to ensure the greatest ineffectiveness of your marketing campaigns. If you don’t know what specific channels, platforms and creative are generating leads, you’ll never be able to shift your marketing budget into the ones that are the most profitable. One of the best free tools for tracking the effectiveness of online advertising is Google Analytics. Less experienced marketers use this tool to generate a unique tracking code that can be placed in different types of digital ads to help determine which are generating the most clicks. Best to avoid it. Just send all your visitors to your homepage so you have no idea how they got there. After all, knowing how people are finding you, where they are coming from and if your website is doing its job can only lead to better results. And we definitely don’t want that.
2. Don’t Bother Having a Good Website
Studies have shown that this internet thing will probably end up being a complete waste of time. Centuries from now, future civilizations will ponder our attachment to cat videos, sharing pictures of our meals, and buying products and services without leaving our homes. On the other hand, a terrible website can be a great way to consume a large portion of your advertising budget and erode the effectiveness of your digital campaigns. Remember, when it comes to websites, speed rarely matters. Be sure your website loads as slowly as possible so visitors will get frustrated and leave. Also, make sure your website is nearly unusable from a mobile device. Give particular attention to making forms and buttons insidiously difficult to use on a small screen. Focus instead on the proven desktop experience.
3. Don’t Optimize Your Ad Campaigns
Remember those late-night rotisserie grill infomercials that touted “Set it and forget it?” It’s a strategy that works on more than just poultry. Once you come up with some creative advertising, you should never change a good thing. Or a bad thing. Or anything. Just let your ads keep running forever until any response gradually fades away. Changing ads every few weeks to keep them fresh is just a myth perpetuated by unscrupulous graphic designers. Don’t be a sucker. The fewer clicks you get, the higher your cost per click. It’s simple math. Trust your instincts. There’s no point in A/B testing different versions of your ads against one another to see which headlines and content work best. That would only expose faults in your initial judgment. Some may argue that impressions without clicks indicate a problem with your ad creative. Or clicks without conversions may suggest an issue with your landing page. Then again, some people argue about most everything.
4. Don’t Limit Yourself to a Single Call to Action
It’s been said that variety is the spice of life. What better way to encourage consumer happiness than to give your website visitors lots of choices? Don’t limit the possibilities by suggesting a single, straightforward call to action such as the completion of a lead form or application. No, like an old Choose Your Own Adventure® novel, you should strive to provide as many potential outcomes as possible. Even if some of them lead to dead ends. Be sure to utilize as many different domains and subdomains as possible, including switching over to third-party service providers, to make it as tough as possible on your web developer to keep the tracking straight. When in doubt, share the blame. The same holds true for promotional emails as well. Be sure to incorporate as many calls to action and clicks as you can. Ask the recipient to take a survey, watch a video, click on a button, and click to learn more. People love to feel like they are part of something. Give it to them.
5. Don’t Advertise Consistently
Many marketers believe repeating a message multiple times builds awareness and recall. Many marketers believe repeating a message multiple times builds awareness and recall. See what I did there? Wasn’t it annoying? Part of the fun of marketing is constantly coming up with new advertising ideas and ways to spend your company’s money. That way you can enjoy the creative process again and again. If you maintained a consistent advertising budget over time, you’d be able to establish and maintain momentum much easier than starting from a dead stop. Sure such a radical strategy may purport to be more successful and cost efficient, but where’s the fun in that? Instead, try stopping and starting your advertising every chance you get. Salesperson call in sick? Turn off the ads. Rain in the forecast? Turn off the ads. Prospect says they’ll “think about it”? Turn off the ads! You get the idea. Turn off the ads.
6. Don’t Follow Up
According to a study by Brevet, 80% of sales require an average of five follow-ups in order to close the deal. Five follow-ups? Who has time for that!? Everyone knows that if a prospect isn’t ready to make a commitment right away, they’re not a serious buyer. Don’t let them lead you on. It’s difficult to contemplate why so many tire kickers spend their time responding to ads and visiting manufactured home sales centers. The world may never know. As a marketer, you should focus all of your advertising budget on one thing and one thing only: generating a steady flow of new leads. The vast majority of these aren’t going to convert. Learn to accept it. Don’t waste your time on marketing pseudoscience like mapping the customer journey and crafting specific follow-up campaigns for different personas and phases of the buying process. Absolutely not. Try lots of new things. Get your marketing budget out there. Keep the economy humming. So what do you do with all those bad leads? Put them in a file and never look at them again. Out of sight, out of mind.
So while marketing may have evolved, that doesn’t mean you have to. When sales are cooling off and it’s taking twice as much effort to generate the same results, don’t be afraid to stop. Stop it all. Why even question which half of your advertising is working when you can ensure none of it is? Let your competition carry the load. Those fools. Because if there is one thing we’ve learned about marketing over the last century and a half it’s this: sometimes the best thing you can do is nothing at all.
Champion showed the Pelican, a factory-built three-bedroom, two bath home at the Biloxi home show in 2023.
Industry leaders Champion Homes and Quartz Properties have joined forces to create an innovative new build-for-rent community in Asheville, N.C. The community, Belle Meadow, will have 74 homesites outside of Asheville in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Champion Homes has more than 70 years of experience in manufactured and modular housing and has 42 manufacturing facilities across the United States and western Canada. Quartz Properties is a rapidly growing modular builder and was named the 2022 Off-site Construction Builder of the Year by the National Association of Home Builders.
The partnership aims to demonstrate the full benefits of off-site construction for high-quality affordable housing, particularly in build-for-rent applications. The detached single-family homes and duplexes will each have four bedrooms, two or three baths, and an average size of 1,600 square feet.
“We are thrilled that Champion chose Quartz to launch their build-for-rent development platform,” Quartz Properties CEO Joanna Schwartz said. “We have had an excellent experience working with Champion to support our other North Carolina developments, and we are looking forward to deepening our partnership and making Belle Meadow a reality.”
Champion Modular’s Excel brand of homes will be featured on the Belle Meadow homesites. Since 1984, Excel Homes has provided more than 29,000 homes.
Belle Meadow’s single-family and semi-detached rental homes will be built off-site in a controlled environment using Champion Modular’s A Smarter Way to Build® process. The process reduces waste and cost while delivering precise quality and move-in-ready homes within a fraction of the time that it takes to build on site.
“Our build-for-rent and Manufacture-to-Rent™ homes and services provide developers with a turnkey solution at a price point, quality, and speed for today’s market,” Skyline Champion President and CEO Mark Yost said. “We are excited to collaborate with Joanna and the Quartz team on this critical community development. It reflects our commitment to our long-term relationship and working together to accelerate and deliver innovative housing across North America.”
Groundbreaking for Belle Meadow is anticipated in the second quarter of 2023, and the development will be Quartz’s third in the Greater Asheville region.
The interior of a new home by Sunshine Homes, shown at the Biloxi Manufactured Housing Show in 2023.
April JLT Reports for mobile home community data in Alabama and Georgia have been published and are available for purchase, including immediate download. Datacomp is the national leader in manufactured home and mobile home valuation and community data.
JLT Market Reports provide detailed research and information on communities in 187 housing markets throughout the United States. These include the latest pricing trends and statistics, marketing programs, and a variety of other useful management insights.
Datacomp maintains and provides the JLT Market Reports and is the nation’s #1 provider of market data for the manufactured housing industry. JLT Market Reports are recognized as the industry standard for manufactured home community market analysis.
The April 2023manufactured housing market data published in JLT Market Reports for Alabama and Georgia include information from four markets on 66 “All ages” and “55+” manufactured home communities.
Altogether, the reports from Alabama and Georgia manufactured home communities include data representations for 14,180 homesites.
What’s in JLT Market Reports?
Each JLT manufactured home community report from Datacomp has detailed information about investment-grade communities in the major markets. The detailed information includes:
Number of homesites
Occupancy rates
Average community rents, and increases
Community amenities
Vacant lots
Repossessed and inventory homes, and much more
JLT Market Reports also include management insights that rank communities by the number of homesites, occupancy rates, and highest to lowest rents. Established reports show trends in each market with a comparison of April 2023 rents and occupancy rates to April 2022, as well as a historical recap of rents and occupancy from 1996 to the present date in most markets.
The April 2023 JLT Market Reports for Alabama and Georgia manufactured home communities are available for purchase and immediate download online at the Datacomp JLT Market Report website, or they may be ordered by phone in electronic or printed editions at (800) 588-5426.
Each fully updated report for mobile home communities is a comprehensive look at investment-grade properties within a market, enabling owners and managers, lenders, appraisers, brokers, and other organizations to effectively benchmark those communities and make informed business decisions.
Current Deadline of May 31 Too Early for Compliance
Builders and many other manufactured housing professionals have understood for some time that “something needs to give” in regard to the U.S. Department of Energy’s pending standards for new manufactured homes. On March 23, just weeks after the Manufactured Housing Institute and the Texas Manufactured Housing Association filed suit against the DOE, the department published to the Federal Register a request for input on a delay of compliance largely to give time for clarity on “noncompliance and enforcement”.
MHI sent a message to members encouraging them to contact the Energy Department on the matter.
“It is critical that DOE extends the compliance date for the manufactured housing energy efficiency standards until after the Department’s future enforcement procedures are created and take effect,” the message said.
The Energy Department seems to agree.
DOE has yet to issue procedures for reviewing and enforcing against noncompliance with the manufactured housing energy conservation standards, the register reads.
“A delay of the current May 31, 2023, compliance date is therefore necessary to ensure that DOE can receive and incorporate meaningful stakeholder feedback into its enforcement procedures prior to the Rule’s compliance date,” it states.
DOE stated it would expect compliance with provisions 60 and 180 days after the publication of its final enforcement procedures for Tier 1 and Tier 2 homes, respectively.
Delaying the compliance date until after the enforcement procedures are effective will provide manufacturers time to understand DOE’s enforcement procedures and prepare their operations to ensure compliance with DOE’s standards.
“…these benefits may not be fully realized if manufacturers lack clarity on how best to comply with DOE’s standards or what to expect from DOE’s enforcement of such standards,” the DOE stated.
On April 3, Sen. Tim Scott, (R), S.C., Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, sent a letter to U.S. Department of Energy Sec. Jennifer Granholm urging her to immediately delay the new standards.
“I am concerned the DOE standards will unnecessarily limit consumer choices and raise costs for families seeking affordable homeownership opportunities,” Scott stated in his letter. “The DOE Standards are overly broad, unduly burdensome, and undermine commonsense efforts to increase supply and assist families looking for affordable housing opportunities.”
Chairman Jerome Powell explains the rationale for a 0.25 hike in interest rates during the FOMC's March meeting.
Powell Indicates Quarter Point Hike May Be Final Push
The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by 0.25 despite recent instability in the financial sector.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell indicated in comments following the decision to raise rates that it may be the final boost this year.
Analysts coming into the day had mixed opinions about what might happen with rates following the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the state regulators’ seizure of Signature Bank in New York, and evidence across the sector of shaky ground for smaller to mid-size lending institutions, particularly those with ties to the tech sector.
The Fed’s move in March pushes the base rate range to 4.75% to 5%
Powell in answering questions at the meeting said there was discussion of pausing rate increases, but recent data showed that the economy is strong and the financial sector is stable. The result was the smallest possible increase to further abate inflation and hold of recession.
“Inflation pressures continue to run high. The process for getting inflation back down to 2% has a long way to go, and is like to be bumpy,” Powell said. “We understand that our actions effect communities, families, and businesses across the country.
“Everything we do is in service to our public mission,” he said. “We at the Fed will do everything we can to achieve our maximum employment and price stability goals.”
The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States. It performs five general functions to promote the effective operation of the U.S. economy and, more generally, the public interest. The Federal Reserve…
conducts the nation’s monetary policy to promote maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates in the U.S. economy;
promotes the stability of the financial system and seeks to minimize and contain systemic risks through active monitoring and engagement in the U.S. and abroad;
promotes the safety and soundness of individual financial institutions and monitors their impact on the financial system as a whole;
fosters payment and settlement system safety and efficiency through services to the banking industry and the U.S. government that facilitate U.S.-dollar transactions and payments; and
promotes consumer protection and community development through consumer-focused supervision and examination, research and analysis of emerging consumer issues and trends, community economic development activities, and the administration of consumer laws and regulations.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has submitted to the Federal Register for publication a Final Rule entitled Restoring HUD’s Discriminatory Effects Standard. The Final Rule rescinds the Department’s 2020 rule governing Fair Housing Act disparate impact claims and restores the 2013 discriminatory effects rule. In the Final Rule, HUD emphasizes that the 2013 rule is more consistent with how the Fair Housing Act has been applied in the courts and in front of the agency for more than 50 years, and that it more effectively implements the broad remedial purpose of eliminating unnecessary discriminatory practices from the housing market.
“Discrimination in housing continues today and individuals, including people of color and people with disabilities, continue to be denied equal access to rental housing and homeownership,” HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said. “Today’s rule brings us one step closer to ensuring fair housing is a reality for all in this country.”
The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing and housing-related services because of race, color, religion, national origin, sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity), familial status, and disability. The discriminatory effects doctrine (which includes disparate impact and perpetuation of segregation) is a tool for addressing policies that unnecessarily cause systemic inequality in housing, regardless of whether they were adopted with discriminatory intent. It has long been used to challenge policies that unnecessarily exclude people from housing opportunities, including zoning requirements, lending and property insurance policies, and criminal records policies. Accordingly, having a workable discriminatory effects standard is vital for the Biden-Harris Administration to accomplish its goal of creating a housing market that is free from both intentional discrimination and policies and practices that have unjustified discriminatory effects.
HUD’s 2013 discriminatory effects rule codified long-standing caselaw for adjudication of Fair Housing Act cases under the discriminatory effects doctrine, for cases filed administratively with HUD and for federal court actions brought by private plaintiffs. Under the 2013 rule, the discriminatory effects framework was straightforward: a policy that had a discriminatory effect on a protected class was unlawful if it was not necessary to achieve a substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest or if a less discriminatory alternative could also serve that interest.
The 2020 rule complicated that analysis by adding new pleading requirements, new proof requirements, and new defenses, all of which made more difficult to establish that a policy violates the Fair Housing Act and harder for entities regulated by the Fair Housing Act to assess whether their policies were lawful. HUD now returns to the 2013 rule’s straightforward analysis.
This Final Rule will go into effect 30 days after it is published in the Federal Register. Due to a preliminary injunction staying the implementation of the 2020 Rule in Massachusetts Fair Housing Center v. HUD, the 2020 Rule never went into effect, and the 2013 Rule – which has been in place for nearly a decade – has been and is currently still in effect. Accordingly, regulated entities that were complying with the 2013 Rule have no need to change any practices they have in place to comply with this rule.
Timber Creek is one of several builders showing homes in Biloxi.
Miss., Ala., Show in Second Year Draws More 1,400 Professionals
The Biloxi Manufactured Housing Show and Expo at the IP Casino and Resort has staked its claim as a key industry event, drawing nearly double the number of attendees as the inaugural show in 2022. The 2023 rendition opened with a golf tournament at Shell Landing in nearby Gautier, and offered a Mardi Gras-themed opening night reception.
Tuesday was the first full day of education, exhibitor conversations, networking, and home tours.
For this year’s event, seminars and education were divided into two tracks aimed at retailers and community operators, respectively.
The event, overseen by South Central Manufactured Housing Institute comprising the Alabama Manufactured Housing Association and the Mississippi Manufactured Housing Association, runs through March 22.
Jennifer Hall is the executive director of MMHA and one of the show’s organizers.
“We surpassed 1,300 registrations, and we have more coming in. There are people who will arrive from within the state, from Alabama, and Louisiana who will register when they get to the show, so there is a lot of excitement building for this event,” Hall said. “We have 35 homes to show and I think any time you have that many new homes on site you’re going to get a lot of attention.”
Conner Mansell is the regional manager for Timber Creek Housing, a builder that began production in 2020.
“This home has a lot of flash and pop, but we manage to keep it affordable. It is a home that is very competitive for buyers who are in the site-built market,” Mansell said of The White Oak model, a 3-bedroom, 2-bath home with more than 2,200 square feet of living space. “Business is good, and traffic in Biloxi has been steady and I’m sure it will pick up as the day goes on.”
Cinnamon Woods, a UMH Properties community located in Conowingo, Md.
Datacomp, the publisher of JLT Market Reports and the nation’s #1 provider of market data for the manufactured housing industry, announces the publication of its March 2023 mobile home park comps with occupancy, home details, and other vital data on manufactured home communities from seven markets in Maryland, New Hampshire, and New York.
Recognized as the industry standard for manufactured home community market analysis for more than 20 years, JLT Market Reports provide detailed research and information on manufactured home communities located in 187 primary housing markets throughout the United States. This includes the latest trends and statistics, marketing programs, and a variety of other useful management insights.
Datacomp’s manufactured housing market data published in the March 2023 JLT Market Reports includes information on investment-grade “all ages” and “55+” manufactured home communities. Altogether, the Maryland, New York reports include data representations on 240 communities and 41,229 homesites.
What’s in JLT Market Reports?
Each JLT manufactured home community rent and occupancy report from Datacomp has detailed information about investment-grade communities in the major markets. The detailed information includes:
Number of homesites
Occupancy rates
Average community rents, and increases
Community amenities
Vacant lots
Repossessed and inventory homes, and much more
Established reports show trends in each market with a comparison of March 2023 rents and occupancy rates to March 2022. In addition, JLT Market Reports include a historical recap from 1996 to the present date in most markets.
The March 2023 JLT Market Reports for seven markets in Maryland, New Hamphire, and New York are available for purchase and immediate download online at the Datacomp JLT Market Reports, or they may be ordered by phone in electronic or printed editions at (800) 588-5426.
Each fully updated report for mobile home communities is a comprehensive look at investment-grade properties within a market, enabling owners and managers, lenders, appraisers, brokers and other organizations to effectively benchmark those communities and make informed decisions.
More than 1,500 manufactured housing professionals are expected in Las Vegas April 7-9 as the Manufactured Housing Institute’s Congress and Expo returns to the...
With more homes, more exhibitors, and more buzz than ever before, the 2026 Biloxi Show is expanding, and fast.
The Biloxi Manufactured Housing Show &...
