Gub Mix, Former Association Director and Event Organizer
MHInsider Visionary Award Winner
Gub Mix, the winner of the MHInsider Visionary Award, is a legend among state executives and industry-wide, having operated four organizations simultaneously in the westerns U.S. — Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah. Mix, who is related to the Old West film star Tom Mix, has been described as a “fearless promoter”. He organized and hosted the first industry congress in Las Vegas, which became the MHI Congress & Expo held each year in the spring.
What do you view as the biggest achievement in your career?
The biggest achievement in my 34-year career within the MH industry was the establishment of the National Manufactured Housing Congress in Las Vegas in 1991. Between l986 and 1990 I held a series of regional MH conventions in Reno, Lake Tahoe, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Las Vegas, including attendees from three to 11 states. Following a very successful meeting in Las Vegas in 1990, and since the MH industry had no official annual get-together, I decided to go national and booked the old Desert Inn Resort for the event. MHI agreed to assist with program planning and approximately 600 industry leaders attended. Between 1991 and 1998 we grew from 600 to 2,000 annual attendees and our exhibitor count grew from 100 to about 250. Following the 1998 event, MHI agreed to buy my ownership interest in the Congress and retained me for an additional five years to serve as Congress chairman.
What work or life skill do you give the most credit for your achievements?
What success I’ve had in my business life came from setting goals and working hard to achieve them. While attending the University of Idaho from 1951 through 1955 I worked full-time at the local radio station. In 1956 I bought that station and operated it until 1964. I next invested in several auto dealerships in Idaho and Hawaii and followed that by opening three manufactured housing sales centers in 1972 in Idaho. This led to the creation of a management company within the MH industry in 1982. In each of these moves, I recognized an opportunity and applied myself to succeed.
MHInsider is a publication of MHVillage and is the premier source of manufactured housing news with a national audience of manufactured housing professionals dedicated to producing and delivering high quality, affordable, off-site built housing.
Don Westphal, the winner of the MHInsider Legacy Award, developed his first community in 1964. He was paid $45. Westphal opened his Rochester, Mich., landscape architecture firm in 1969. He has planned and designed all variety of property in his career, but his heart is in the affordable housing sector, bringing to life communities for workers and families, and has become a leader in the smart, holistic design of manufactured home community and RV resorts all across the country. His company in 2020 merged with The Nadi Group, a landscape architecture and design firm operating in Canada and the U.S.
What do you view as the biggest achievement in your career?
Being able to do what I enjoy for more than 50 years is my biggest achievement. Having the opportunity to provide decent living environments for average families and planning in a responsible way has been especially rewarding. Seven community of the year awards for projects we designed, MHI President’s and Lifetime Achievement awards are testaments to our commitment to excellence and the ability to satisfy the needs of our clients.
What work or life skill do you give the most credit for your achievements?
Our ability to look at each project as a unique opportunity to change the face of the earth in a positive way while stressing affordability is important. Involvement in industry organizations, local, and church activities have created rewarding experiences and friendships that I cherish. Being able to withstand the ups and downs of a small business owner is a skill that is needed to survive and exceed in one’s life work. I have been blessed in so many ways.
MHInsider is a publication of MHVillage and is the premier source of manufactured housing news with a national audience of manufactured housing professionals dedicated to producing and delivering high quality, affordable, off-site built housing.
Steve Schaub, the winner of the MHInsider Influencer Award, is the founder and CEO of Yes Communities, one of the largest portfolio ownership groups of manufactured home communities in the United States. Schaub created a company that focuses on building and operating affordable communities nationwide and connecting residents together to form communities in every sense of the word. He oversees all the company’s acquisitions, capital market activities, and corporate strategy. His influence with the company and in the industry has been felt particularly in the area of resident relations, hospitality, and service to the customer. For instance, Schaub has authorized the reallocation of vital resources during times of stress and adversity, including for residents during inclement weather events and in the economic impact of coronavirus measures.
What do you view as the biggest achievement in your career?
Throughout my career in manufactured housing, I have met some incredible people along the way. Each day in the MH industry, I am thankful for those who are moving this great industry forward. The most satisfying piece of what I do is to ensure that we provide best-in-class homes and a sense of pride in our communities to hundreds of thousands of people across this country. Providing homes and communities is the most significant part of what we do.
The biggest achievement in my career has been building a world-class team that has allowed exceptional growth and success for Yes Communities. The Yes Team provides an exceptional customer experience by offering knowledge, support, and a caring nature in everything they do. From our maintenance team members to our community management team and all of our supporting employees in the home office and field offices, the central focus is our residents and how we can better serve them. One of our Yes senior executives started as a leasing agent and now is overseeing an entire division of the country. Mentoring and building great leaders in the organization has been a central focus. At Yes Communities, each of us believes that it’s best to leave it better than we found it!
What work or life skill do you give the most credit for your achievements?
Throughout my career and being in various roles has helped me gain a better understanding of the business and having boots on the ground helps me understand what my team members might need to help them do their jobs better and the support I can give them to succeed. I worked as a sales and leasing agent and as a community manager, regional manager, and then went into operations. Having that field experience gave me a more acute understanding of the day-to-day business. My life skill that has contributed to my achievements is really about relationship building, learning from others, and being committed to those I work with. Creating motivation for my team and treating everyone as equals is what makes me love what I do. My team members know how much I admire them and how they matter. Yes Communities has been successful because of our employees, their dedication, and their love for our residents. That’s what inspires me to continue to move our business and the Industry forward.
MHInsider is a publication of MHVillage and is the premier source of manufactured housing news with a national audience of manufactured housing professionals dedicated to producing and delivering high quality, affordable, off-site built housing.
Sam Landy, the winner of the MHInsider Leadership Award, works at the highest levels of the manufactured housing industry, from litigating on disparate impact against communities and residents, to establishing more generous financing terms for community owners who rent affordable housing, to expanding affordable living and homeownership from their home base in New Jersey down the Atlantic states, and now expanding nationwide. UMH operates 127 communities in 10 states.
What do you view as the biggest achievement in your career?
Obtaining Fannie Mae financing for communities with 60% rental homes. This dramatically increases the affordability of our rental homes and financed home sales. Second is listing UMH on the New York Stock Exchange.
What work or life skill do you give the most credit for your achievements?
Perseverance. We persevered through many business cycles but never giving up and knowing we can profitably and fairly provide quality affordable housing kept us going through some long downturns.
MHInsider is a publication of MHVillage and is the premier source of manufactured housing news with a national audience of manufactured housing professionals dedicated to producing and delivering high quality, affordable, off-site built housing.
Karl Radde, the winner of the MHInsider Advocacy Award, is a 1993 graduate of Texas A&M University where he started working part-time for Yellow Rose Mobile Homes as a sales associate. After graduation, Radde became the full-time finance manager working with national lenders in the manufactured housing industry. In 1999, the dealership became Southern Comfort Homes and evolved into one of the top five independent retailers in Texas. Radde devotes significant time to the Texas Manufactured Housing Association and the Manufactured Housing Institute to stay aware of trends and activities that affect a consumer’s abilities to purchase and finance manufactured housing, lending his knowledge and experience into the conversation in an effort to create a more meaningful and beneficial transaction for everyone.
What do you view as the biggest achievement in your career?
While a bit unusual in our industry, other than a short stint as quality control manager at Schult, I have been with Southern Comfort Homes since 1999. This has allowed me to participate at a higher level in our industry associations and to help present the industry in a positive light to elected officials and while we may not always get the outcome we would like, we are at least in the discussions. As far as success, I have always had good people with me and around me that allowed us all to be successful and achieve our goals whether that was in business or in professional organizations.
What work or life skill do you give the most credit for your achievements?
Growing up, I was active in 4-H and FFA, which taught me communication skills. I was raised in a good Christian home on a ranch where we took care of sheep and cattle. That helped develop my work ethic and every year I would show that livestock in the county and state fairs, which taught me responsibility. While I was attending Texas A&M University, I went to work in sales at a local manufactured home retailer and I wasn’t as successful in sales as I would have liked, but, thankfully, they saw potential in me for working with lenders and insurance and put me in charge of finance and insurance. We eventually bought the company and it became Southern Comfort Homes where I am today.
MHInsider is a publication of MHVillage and is the premier source of manufactured housing news with a national audience of manufactured housing professionals dedicated to producing and delivering high quality, affordable, off-site built housing.
President Joe Biden has said he will nominate Sandra L. Thompson to serve as the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
Thompson has more than four decades of government experience in financial regulation, risk management, and consumer protection. She has served as the deputy director of the agency’s Division of Housing Mission and Goals since 2013. She also has served as acting director following the exit of Mark Calabria.
FHFA was created by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 to oversee Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System and is responsible for oversight of the $7.2 trillion mortgage finance market. It also is responsible for the oversight of new programs to support financing for manufactured homes and manufactured home communities.
As DHMG Deputy Director, Thompson oversaw FHFA’s housing and regulatory policy, capital policy, financial analysis, fair lending, and all mission activities for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks. Prior to joining FHFA, Thompson worked at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), for more than 23 years in a variety of leadership positions, most recently as Director of the Division of Risk Management Supervision.
During her time at FDIC, Thompson led the Agency’s examination and enforcement program for risk management and consumer protection at the height of the financial crisis. She also led the FDIC’s outreach initiatives in response to a crisis of consumer confidence in the banking system.
Thompson is a native of Chicago, a graduate of Howard University, and has two adult sons.
East Fork Crossing is a Sun Communities property in Batavia, Ohio. Photo courtesy of Sun Communities.
December JLT Reports for mobile home rent comps in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee are available now for purchase, including immediate download through Datacomp, the national leader in manufactured 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 rent 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 December 2021 manufactured housing market data published in JLT Market Reports for Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee include information from 13 markets on 353 “All ages” and “55+” manufactured home communities.
Altogether, the reports from the three states’ manufactured home communities include data representations for 68,399 homesites.
Regional Trends in Manufactured Housing Community Rent, Occupancy
Midwest region manufactured home communities show a year-over-year 3.2% increase in average adjusted rent and a 1.5% increase in occupancy rate.
Northeast region manufactured home communities show a year-over-year 3.0% increase in average adjusted rent and a 0.5% increase in occupancy rate.
Southern region manufactured home communities show a year-over-year 4.3% increase in average adjusted rent and a 0.5% increase in occupancy rate.
“Manufactured home community occupancy and average rents were steady in a majority of the 13 markets represented in the December 2021 publications, though we see one major market that showed among all-ages communities a greater than average increase in rent and occupancy than the others,” Datacomp Co-President and Chief Business Development Officer Darren Krolewski said.
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
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 December 2021 rents and occupancy rates to December 2020, as well as a historical recap of rents and occupancy from 1996 to the present date in most markets.
The December 2021 JLT Market Reports for Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee 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.
UMH President Sam Landy and Vice President Chris Lindsey, far left, honor UMH employees from the corporate office during its 50th anniversary in 2019.
UMH Properties has entered into a joint venture with Nuveen Real Estate for greenfield development and acquisition of new manufactured housing communities.
Nuveen, a TIAA company, brings an initial capital commitment of up to $170 million for the projects. UMH will have a 40% stake in the venture and serve as the managing member and operating member of the joint venture.
UMH will earn customary fees associated with property and asset management, the New Jersey-based company said in a public release.
“We have long been advocates for the development of new communities and are pleased to have found a partner who understands and shares our vision,” UMH President Sam Landy said. “This joint venture gives us the financial capacity to develop and acquire new manufactured housing communities, creating long-term shareholder value while limiting the short-term impact on our FFO during construction and lease-up.”
Landy said Nuveen has an in-depth understanding of the company, the manufactured housing industry, and the real estate market.
“We are excited to work with them to continue our mission of providing the country with a much-needed supply of affordable housing,” he said. “Our country needs at least 5.5 million new homes to keep pace with demand, with that number increasing to 6.8 million when considering obsolescence.
“Through this joint venture, UMH and Nuveen Real Estate intend to make significant investments in developing and acquiring new communities to help to ease the affordable housing crisis.”
UMH Properties will have the right to purchase from the joint venture the communities they plan and develop after a pre-determined period of time.
Potential elements of the deal are three to-be-built communities UMH has entered into agreements on in Florida, the news release stated. The communities are planned for 804 sites and a total purchase price of approximately $90 million.
The first community contains 219 sites and has an approximate purchase price of $23 million, and is scheduled to close in early 2022.
UMH Properties was organized in 1968 and is a public equity real estate investment trust that owns and operates 127 manufactured home communities with 24,000 developed homesites in New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Maryland, Alabama and South Carolina.
How Owners Have Gained the Upper Hand During the Last 10 Years
Fractured. Scattered. Unorganized. That’s where the mobile home park landscape was 10 years ago. When I first entered the commercial real estate industry just a little over a decade ago, I was looking for one thing… opportunity.
Kevan Enger, a seller-focused broker for manufactured housing communities.
When I looked out into the marketplace, the retail, office, residential, and multifamily asset classes were in full swing, organized, and with well-established marketplaces. However, one property type caught my eye — mobile home parks.
Living in one of the states with the most mobile homes in the country, Florida, I quickly realized there was incredible opportunity right in front of me, and no one else was paying attention. In addition to being fractured, scattered, and unorganized the landscape also was primed.
The Opportunity of Mobile Home Parks
I’m fascinated by the evolution of the mobile home park brokerage landscape. It’s a case study of the capitalistic forces at play that can birth a marketplace where none existed. Back then, there was nothing even resembling a marketplace.
I remember speaking with owners that wanted to sell their property to get a first-hand understanding of the process from the seller’s point of view. Almost all transactions were off-market with many buyers using the phone book to find mobile home parks, and driving around to talk directly to owners.
The more tech-savvy owners were sharing a Word doc with property information and highlight, while others may have a folder or had to gather the information when requested. Because many of the properties had been family-owned and generational, many parks didn’t have formal record-keeping or tracking systems in place.
Owners who wanted to sell their properties, whether to retire or cash out and invest in something else, would either sell to a buyer who approached them, a person they had approached, or they’d list with any real estate agent they knew. Sometimes the agents sold commercial properties, often they sold residential, and every now and then you’d find a broker that had some multifamily experience or had previously sold a manufactured home community. However, in many parts of the country, brokers often had to sell other property types to make any real money in the business.
The lack of a marketplace — what was essentially an off-market environment — put owners at a huge disadvantage as sellers. There was no real credible data by the owners themselves or the market to obtain fair pricing based on comparable sales or even yield since information on market rents, park rent rolls, and occupancy rates were scarce. As a result, owners didn’t have the data to substantiate a higher price. In addition, buyers were scarce, so when one did show interest, they had the upper hand. Here’s why:
Bad rep Back then, mobile home communities were known as trailer parks. Images of run down parks in blighted areas on the outskirts of town were what was popularized in the media so that was the common concept of them.
Lack of financing Blanket mobile home community lending took a huge hit during and after the recession. According to Fannie Mae, after peaking at close to $3 billion in 2007, lending volume dipped below $1 billion in 2010. Most community owners, however, had to hold paper —offer seller financing — to sell their property. From the brokerage standpoint, the lack of financing made it difficult to scale the business, prompting many to stay out of the game altogether.
No competitive bidding The informal, off-market nature of the landscape meant that there was no mechanism for a competitive bidding process. Buyers either directly approached sellers or they used buyer-focused brokers to approach sellers. This meant that there was one buyer, not multiples competitively bidding to win the property. Cap rates were somewhere in the range of 10 or 12% making it a buyers’ market.
Recognizing the disadvantaged position of sellers at the time and the fractured landscape, I saw an opportunity to change the mobile home brokerage landscape with a seller-focused approach. That’s when I joined Capstone Companies, a native multifamily brokerage founded in 2008 in the middle of the Great Recession. As founder and then director of the manufactured housing division, it was exciting to be one of the first companies to treat mobile home parks like a multifamily asset class.
Something From Nothing
Then, the game changed. In the late 2010s, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae got in the game with focused programs to finance manufactured home communities. Much of this was driven by the lack of affordable housing and the need to find suitable housing alternatives. This move alone changed the landscape and we now had a legitimate asset class. CMBS followed suit and the industry was ready.
Suddenly it was easier to buy and sell mobile home parks, more brokerage firms started adding manufactured home reps, and we suddenly had the makings of a mobile home community marketplace.
Even though at our shop we were selling properties on-market and creating a competitive bidding process from day one, many owners and brokers were still following the old, off-market model. However, in those earlier days, brokers would approach sellers as buyer representatives. While transaction volume increased, it didn’t do much for the property values or pricing — and as a result, the seller.
Enter the Institutional Buyers
Institutional money made its biggest dive into the industry in 2018 and that’s when things started heating up.
Sniffing out the tremendous value-add opportunity manufactured housing communities represented, new capital from institutional investors put manufactured housing communities on everyone’s radar.
Suddenly buyers were coming out of the woodwork.
In 2019, we had the clear makings of a sellers market as buyers competed for on-market properties driving values and prices up and cap rates down to historically low levels. Often described as a “recession proof” asset class, institutional interest seemingly justified that positioning.
Institutional capital made waves again last year with a resurgence in investments mid-pandemic placing the capital source second only to private money for the year. Further enhancing the asset class’s recession-proof reputation are 2020’s high-occupancy rates and increased inbound capital from REITs, cross-border, and users.
Last year, the pandemic certainly reinforced that concept.
The COVID Test
Manufactured housing was without question one of the best-performing property types over the last year.
The latest Green Street Commercial Property Price Index places the asset in the top spot in terms of change in commercial property values since pre-Covid with +25%.
Self-storage follows with +24% and the much-touted industrial coming in third place with +21%.
During the last year or so, dating to Aug. 2020, manufactured home parks tied self-storage for first with +30% a piece. Industrial followed with +27%.
MH REITs also performed exceptionally well during the last year. In 2020, according to Hoya Capital, “the combination of robust earnings growth and a favorable ‘Goldilocks’ macroeconomic backdrop of lower interest rates and slow-but-steady domestic-led economic growth has lifted the MH REIT sector by another 12% since the start of the year.”
If that doesn’t pass the pandemic test, I don’t know what does.
On top of that, Hoya Capital noted that “Manufactured Housing REITs were the best-performing real estate sector of the past decade, and it wasn’t particularly close.
“The sector produced cumulative returns that nearly doubled the next closest REIT sector. MH REITs outperformed the REIT average for a remarkable seventh straight year in 2019, surging nearly 50%.”
What is Next?
The next evolutionary phase for the industry is a greater demand for data, more consolidation, and more professionally run operations.
Now squarely in front of investors as an accessible investment opportunity through publicly traded REITs that have outperformed other categories, demand for more data and transparency is inevitable.
There are certainly companies out there, like Datacomp with its market data including JLT Market Reports, its sister company of MHVillage, which produces the MHInsider magazine and this blog, that are recognized as leading and credible sources of proprietary data on the industry. Expect to see the demand for independent third-party research to increase.
In addition, we’ll also see continued consolidation and acquisitions and not just by REITs and institutional investors. Be on the lookout for regional consolidation as professional management starts to implement technological and operational efficiencies and community improvements across assets.
Ten years ago, I was looking for opportunity. Now, 10 years and hundreds of seller-focused sales later, I can say I found it. I can’t wait to see what the next 10 years brings the industry.
U.S. Home Prices Continue to Rise, But at Reduced Rate
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 19.5% annual gain in September, down from 19.8% in the previous month. The 10-City Composite annual increase came in at 17.8%, down from 18.6% in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a 19.1% year-over-year gain, down from 19.6% in the previous month.
“If I had to choose only one word to describe September 2021’s housing price data, the word would be ‘deceleration’,” S&P DJI Managing Director Craig J. Lazzara said. “Housing prices continued to show remarkable strength in September, though the pace of price increases declined slightly.”
Despite the slower rate of growth in home prices, increases continue including strong growth in select markets.
Phoenix, Tampa, and Miami reported the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 cities in September. Phoenix led the way with a 33.1% year-over-year price increase, followed by Tampa with a 27.7% increase and Miami with a 25.2% increase. Six of the 20 cities reported higher price increases in the year ending September 2021 versus the year ending August 2021.
After seasonal adjustment, the U.S. National Index posted a month-over-month increase of 1.2%, and the 10-City and 20-City Composites both posted increases of 0.8% and 1.0%, respectively. In September, 19 of the 20 cities reported increases before seasonal adjustments while all 20 cities reported increases after seasonal adjustments.
“We have previously suggested that the strength in the U.S. housing market is being driven by households’ reaction to the COVID pandemic, as potential buyers move from urban apartments to suburban homes,” Lazzara said. “More data will be required to understand whether this demand surge represents simply an acceleration of purchases that would have occurred over the next several years, or reflects a secular change in locational preferences. September’s report is consistent with either explanation.”
Three Days for Manufactured Housing Professionals at Soaring Eagle in Mid Michigan
Soaring Eagle Casino and Resort is the venue for the 2026 Michigan Manufactured...
