There are a pair of new opportunities available for potential home buyers, each offered by one of the government-sponsored enterprises, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The programs — CHOICEHome℠ and MH Advantage®, respectively — have many similarities and some differences.
We’re here to compare and contrast the new programs, so retailers and potential home buyers have a better understanding of how the programs work and which may be the best fit for the unique circumstances of a specific market and individual buyer.
What Do the GSE Programs do for Home Buyers?
Under the Duty-to-Serve mandate, handed down to Fannie and Freddie by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the enterprises are charged with opening up financing and boosting the availability of affordable housing options.
CHOICEHome and MH Advantage are results of that initiative, both specific to manufactured housing (among the many measures taken across the affordable housing landscape).
These programs, with a price point in the range of $200,000 to $250,000, are not designed for low-income borrowers. They’re meant to be an alternative for would-be site-built homebuyers daunted by existing or new-construction homes that cost $350,000 to $400,000 in many U.S. markets.
An MH Advantage-eligible home. Photo courtesy of Fannie Mae.
What Homes Are Eligible for the Programs?
The loans from each program apply to manufactured homes that become eligible given certain aesthetic, energy-efficient and installation requirements. Eligible homes, simply stated, have many of the key characteristics of site-built homes. This achieves two goals: It allows the eligible homes to fit easily into many, if not most, existing residential settings, beside their site-built counterparts. It also allows appraisers to use site-built homes as comparable sales, as needed, in determinations of value that lead to improved finance terms.
For those uninitiated with CHOICEHome and MH Advantage, these changes may mean little or nothing. However, those who work in housing and housing initiatives understand that opening up conventional financing to factory-built homes is a major victory in closing the gap on getting affordable options in places where middle-market buyers want to live.
Each program requires the buyer to finance the home, as well as the land where the home sits.
This means homes placed in a land-lease community do not qualify for the new financing terms. However, the same entities, Freddie and Fannie, are continuing to explore chattel financing, which does apply to homes as personal property that can be placed on leased land.
Are the Two Comparable in Flexible, Affordable Terms?
Both the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae programs provide flexible and affordable features to their lending programs. Each offers high loan-to-value ratios, up to 97%, and the manufactured home loan-level pricing adjustment doesn’t apply.
Appraisers can use the most appropriate comparable sale value available, including with site-built homes as necessary.
Who is Lending Using the New Freddie, Fannie Mechanisms?
Any Freddie Mac-approved lender is eligible to participate in the HOMEChoice program, as of May 1. Fannie Mae continues to build on its participating lenders’ list.
The favorable reception to manufactured homes and other housing solutions on exhibit during the inaugural Innovative Housing Showcase on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., means the showcase probably will become an annual event.
“I think we probably will be looking to do it again next year,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said during a June 3 one-on-one interview with MHInsider magazine. “We probably will have a lot more people who want to be exhibitors, but we’ll have to keep it under control.”
Manufactured Housing an ‘Almost Irresistible Solution’
The June 1-5 event coincided with and kicked off National Homeownership Month in Washington, D.C.
Secretary Carson, the nation’s top housing official, observed the occasion by touting the affordability, energy efficiency, technological innovation, resiliency and wealth-building capability of manufactured housing.
“You already look at the building costs, which are 30 to 40 percent less (than site-built construction), I mean this is almost an irresistible solution. You just have to get some of the regulatory barriers out of the way,” Carson said.
MHI worked with manufacturers and community owners across the country to provide the resources and access that allowed the homes to be delivered and set up on the northwest section of the National Mall.
Skyline Champion Corp., the largest publicly traded manufacturer of homes in the nation, had a pair of homes on the mall. Another large builder, Cavco Industries, worked with home retailer and community owner UMH Properties to show the third home.
As much as the Innovative Housing Showcase was a success, it was proposed in late spring and required quick work, a creative approach and diligent attention from MHI, the builders and community owners who participated.
“I was thrilled that there were so many people who were interested in this, particularly given the limited scope of advertising that was done,” Carson said.
“But that’s one of the reasons we wanted to be right here on the National Mall,” he said. “It’s its own kind of natural advertising. People are going to be walking through here all the time. Also, putting it right in view of the Capitol. Because we want the legislators to understand… we’re talking about advanced technology that really makes affordable housing a possibility. And we need to start thinking about things in a different way to solve some significant problems.”
In 2018, HUD announced a top-down review of manufactured housing rules. The Manufactured Housing Institute, the national association for all forms of factory-built housing, forwarded approximately 200 recommendations to HUD’s Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee (MHCC).
Carson said MHCC sent a revised list to HUD staff, and progress is being made.
“We’ve hired a number of more people in the manufactured housing arena, just so they can deal with it,” Carson said. “The way it’s been in recent years, we’ve had just enough people to tread water. And we need to advance the ball. We’ve made that a priority.”
HUD already has notified home installers, community owners and homeowners that it will not enforce previously enacted frost-free foundation rules, and in May rescinded the “Carport letters” that had required secondary approval and inspection for carport-ready homes, a popular feature among homebuyers.
“There’s a lot more that needs to be done,” Carson said. “Basically, we have a regulatory office (specifically for manufactured housing) now, and they’re going through all of the different segments of HUD and looking at the list that has been provided for manufactured housing. “There’s about 18 things, and we’re just ticking them off one by one,” he said. “So, it’s really only been within the last six months that we’ve really had the personnel that can get things done.”
A New Direction for Housing Programs?
HUD Sec. Ben Carson arrives to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on June 1 to make opening remarks for the Innovative Housing Showcase.
When asked about his objectives for HUD within the next couple of years, Secretary Carson said he envisions enormous change.
“What I want to see is our agency, HUD, turn into an agency that really focuses on how to get people out of dependency,” he said. “In the past, we’ve been more interested in how many people we shelter, how many we have in this program or that program. It really should be just the opposite… how many people get out of this program. How many people can you get to a point of self-sufficiency.”
One of the prime benefits of manufactured homes is that they represent attainable housing. A primary contributor to that attainability is the fact that manufactured housing is the largest form of non-subsidized affordable homeownership.
Carson cited research showing that the average net worth of a renter is $5,000, whereas the average net worth of a homeowner is $200,000.
“So that’s a 40-fold difference,” Carson said. “And it’s a major driver of self-sufficiency.
“We also need people to start recognizing that… and I’m talking principally about millennials, you don’t have to start out with a 4,000-square-foot, site-built home,” he said. “Now, in order to start building your equity, you can start out with something much smaller. But it doesn’t need to be small and horrible. It can be small and nice.”
New homebuyers should be encouraged by a 2018 pilot report within the quarterly Housing Price Index, issued by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, that indicates manufactured homes appreciate in value similarly to site-built homes, Carson said.
“So as soon as you buy that house, you can start accumulating some wealth,” he said.
The Promise of Manufactured Housing
More than 5,000 people, many who had never stepped foot in a manufactured home, or perhaps had misconceptions about homes built in a factory, toured the new manufactured homes on the National Mall during the event.
Steve Quick of Cavco Industries spent the first two days of the showcase in the home from UMH Properties. One word, Quick said, continued to ring out among the many exclamations of amazement he heard. That word was, “WOW”.
“It’s been very busy, and the response we’ve been getting has been exceptional,” Quick said. “This is a tremendous stage for us to be able to show what we can do.”
Secretary Carson agreed.
“I think anybody walking into some of these manufactured houses… first of all, they wouldn’t believe it was manufactured housing. They say, ‘Wow, this is beautiful.’
“That’s one of the real purposes, is to sort of burst misconceptions about what manufactured housing is and what it can be,” he said. “And, of course, there are multitudinous models available to people. There are smaller models and there are bigger models. And you can match the façade to almost any neighborhood.”
MHVillage Releases MHInsider Magazine ‘State of the Industry’ Edition for July/August
The inaugural issue of the MHInsider magazine “State of the Industry” edition has been mailed to homes and offices and is available in digital magazine format.
The MHInsider™ is the leading source for news and information in the manufactured housing industry.
The July/August magazine edition takes a special deep dive into the news, events and industry trends throughout manufactured housing. The latest magazine includes…
Q&As with manufactured housing industry leadership
A sit-down interview with HUD Sec. Ben Carson
The differences between CHOICEHome℠ and MH Advantage®
Advice from industry experts
What’s trending in fee-based management
A run-down on rent control
New industry infographics and much more
The MHInsider Magazine “State of the Industry” edition caters to professionals in manufacturing, sales, finance, community ownership/management, insurance and investment.
‘State of the Industry’ is 100 Pages of Manufactured Housing News
MHInsider Magazine’s “State of the Industry” edition is MHVillage’s largest edition to date. It contains industry coverage from California to Washington D.C., brought to manufactured housing professionals via a dozen writers and editors.
Publisher Darren Krolewski, co-president of MHVillage/Datacomp, points to industry progress made evident through enhanced marketing efforts, increased engagement with federal housing officials and new lending programs that increase options for middle-market buyers.
“Needless to say, these are only a few things to be excited about as an industry,” Krolewski states. “In this, our first State of the Industry edition of The MHInsider, we focus on the progress of manufactured housing as some of the leaders in our industry share their thoughts on what we’ve accomplished and what to expect for the remainder of 2019 and beyond.”
The Federal Housing Finance Agency released a 128-page report on the progress that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made in addressing affordable housing concerns. Each of the entities exceeded goals for the purchase and securitization of land-home loans, the report states.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae have been in conservatorship since 2008, far longer than anticipated at the time. Each of the entities is planning to exit government oversight, which also is a stated goal of both the FHFA and the White House.
The share of 2018 loans purchased by the Enterprises for low- to moderate-income borrowers in the manufactured housing market was higher than in previous years.
In addition to increasing the number of land-home loans, Fannie and Freddie each independently engaged with industry stakeholders to inform the development of pilot criteria and standards for chattel financing programs that will increase support of loans to home-only borrowers.
The organizations used three-year historical averages for loan purchases to inform the 2018 goals. Below is a comparison of Enterprise baselines, goals and actual loan purchases.
FHFA Director Mark Calabria speaks during the Innovative Housing Showcase in Washington, D.C., in June.
Fannie Mae – Land-Home Loans
Three-year average baseline: 8,072
Year 1 Goal: 8,750 loans
Year 1 Purchases: 12,604
Freddie Mac – Land-Home Loans
Three-year average baseline: 2,985
Year 1 Goal: 3,075 loans
Year 1 Purchases: 3,601
The numbers show that Fannie Mae finished 2018 44% ahead of its goal, and Freddie Mac completed the year 17% above its goal.
“As both Enterprises entered 2018, they had insufficient capital reserves to absorb losses due to the deficit at the end of 2017,” the reports states. “However, during 2018, the Enterprises generated sufficient income to allow each Enterprise to re-establish the agreed-upon $3 billion Capital Reserve Amount.”
FHFA Director Comments on Secondary Loan Markets
FHFA Director Mark Calabria commented on his then-pending recommendations to Congress during the Innovative Housing Showcase on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. in June.
“One of the things I will be asking Congress to do is to authorize me to issue additional charters so that if we can have more than just Fannie and Freddie, we can have other competitors come to the marketplace that’ll push Fannie and Freddie to be leaner and meaner and more aggressive and more innovative, but also to bring new thinking,” Calabria said.
“How do we make sure it’s not just Fannie and Freddie, but how do we get banks more involved? How do we get insurance companies more involved? How do we get other types of lenders more involved? It really has to be a variety of different processes that bring this, so that at the end of the day lenders who are successful are successful because they have great management, they have great execution, and they have great innovation,” he said. “Not because they’ve got rules and regulations stacked in their favor.”
From The Manufactured Housing Institute
The Manufactured Housing Institute, which represents all aspects of the factory-built housing industries nationwide, issued a “Housing Alert” following the publication of the report, which has been delivered to Congress with suggestions for ending government sponsorship and generally strengthening the Enterprises.
“As Congress considers reforms to the housing finance system, MHI will continue its advocacy efforts to ensure that manufactured housing is included in discussions and deliberations,” MHI state in its alert. “In February, MHI joined in an industry letter in support of housing finance reform, with MHI successfully adding language to the letter singling out manufactured housing as an important component of any government-sponsored financing effort. MHI also offered recommendations about housing finance reform to the Senate Banking Committee for retaining a Duty to Serve or some other directive for any government-sponsored enterprises to serve manufactured housing.”
Earlier this year, Oregon’s governor signed a bill into law imposing rent control across the entire state. The law, which went into effect the day it was signed (Feb. 28), is the first statewide rent control measure in the country. But it might not be the last.
Lawmakers in several states are aggressively trying to push rent control bills through their legislatures. If they succeed, it could have serious consequences for the manufactured housing communities in their states.
Though Oregon is the only U.S. state capping rents with a single, statewide standard, it’s not the only state that imposes rent control. According to the National Multifamily Housing Council, 17 states do not preempt their municipalities from enacting local rent control policies. However, in only four of those states are municipal governments actively capping rents. Those states are California, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. In fact, during June, the New York state government passed a rent control bill that included rent caps and eviction protections for residents of manufactured homes. The remaining states prohibit or preempt rent control.
Why Rent Control?
The push for rent control is a reaction to the nation’s affordable housing crisis, which has two core causes. First, there’s the decline in production that started during the Great Recession. Second, the prevalence of student-loan debt burdens most first-time homebuyers today, according to Frank Bowman, executive director of the Illinois Manufactured Housing Association.
Municipal governments compound the problem with exclusionary housing policies, Bowman said. In order to prop up existing property values, they often restrict new housing — including manufactured housing. Also, local governments tend to develop office parks and retail spaces without housing needed by the workers those new businesses attract.
According to Bowman, the appeal of rent control is that it sounds like a simple solution. “If you think your rent is too high, just pass a law capping it.”
But the consequences of rent control are complicated. An abundance of national studies — from both sides of the political spectrum — make clear that rent control does more harm than good.
For starters, it limits the supply of affordable housing. Residents of rent-controlled housing tend to stay where they are, keeping that housing off the market. To make up for lost profits, owners of rent-controlled housing tend to raise rents on their non-rent-controlled housing. Or they turn rent-controlled housing into condos. Would-be renters end up competing for a shrinking market. And a shrinking market tends to raise prices.
“Economically, rent control makes no sense,” Sheila Dey, executive director of Western Manufactured Housing Communities Association, said. “But the problem is political. Economic arguments don’t work with a city council that has angry residents in front of them.”
Oregon May Be A Test Case
Oregon’s new law applies to apartments, manufactured housing communities, and other income-producing properties statewide. It caps rent increases at an annual rate of 7%, plus the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Since Oregon’s CPI is 3.3% in 2019, that makes for a rent ceiling of 10.3% for the year — a “very generous” limit, considering the average annual rent increase for the state’s manufactured housing lots is around 3.5, said Chuck Carpenter, executive director of Manufactured Housing Communities of Oregon.
But Carpenter believes the generosity is deceptive. It will be easy for future state governments to lower the rent limit — and he sees no reason why they wouldn’t.
The Oregon Legislature battled over rent control for two decades. But a recently elected Democratic supermajority pushed the new bill through both chambers “like a freight train”. And that was the hard part. Now that the bill is law, lowering the cap should be easy, Carpenter said.
“We will all regret the day they passed this bill,” Carpenter said. “It’s clearly a signal that this state is very hostile to property rights and landlords.”
Apartments Lead the State Conversation
There are roughly 1,200 manufactured housing communities in Oregon, containing about 60,000 lots. However, the push for rent control was driven by drastic rent increases in urban apartments. Droves of people are moving to Oregon’s larger cities, particularly Portland, contributing to the affordable housing crisis, Carpenter said.
Rent control proponents seem to think the new law will lead to the growth of more housing in the state, but Carpenter disagrees.
“In the long run, this will have a chilling effect on investors wanting to provide rental housing,” he said.
Carpenter thinks Oregon will become a test case. He knows other states are contemplating rent control measures of their own, and are watching his state closely. Manufactured housing groups in those states have no choice but to fight back, he said.
“My advice for other states is to keep fighting, keep educating legislators,” he said. “I hope other states do not adopt these policies. It’s a huge mistake.”
Photo courtesy of UMH Properties.
Illinois Rent Control, Chicago and Elsewhere
Like the rest of the country, Illinois is in the grips of the affordable housing crisis. The most consequential effects are being felt in Chicago, where rents are skyrocketing and neighborhoods are gentrifying, forcing many long-term residents to move.
In response, Chicago residents have pushed legislators to rescind a statewide ban on rent control and establish regional boards to cap rents. That effort was defeated in the Illinois Legislature in March. Bowman said a coalition of realtor, apartment owner and property owner associations, including IMHA, made “great headway”. The coalition was able to educate state legislators about the ill effects of rent control. But Chicago’s presence looms large in the state legislature. And rent control proponents will likely try again, Bowman said.
To Bowman, the obvious solution to the state’s affordable housing crisis is a greater supply of affordable housing. The greater the supply, the greater the chance that rents come down. Manufactured homes can be a crucial part of that solution, but they struggle with an image problem. Bowman attended a city council meeting earlier this year where business leaders said their workers need houses in the $100,000 to $150,000 range.
“We’re all over that. That’s our niche,” he said. “But that city excludes factory-built housing.”
Washington State to Heat Up in 2020
Statewide rent control in Oregon is a “disaster” for the housing business, said Craig Hillis, executive director of Manufactured Housing Communities of Washington. And because Oregon is right next door, there’s a good chance rent control will rear its head in neighboring Washington state.
The state of Washington currently preempts rent control, but Hillis expects a vigorous statewide debate on the topic in 2020. In the past year alone, the Washington Legislature has considered 106 housing-related bills. The impetus of all the activity is the affordable housing crisis, Hillis said.
The top impediment to affordable housing in Washington is the Growth Management Act, a statewide zoning regulation that strictly limits development. Competition for usable land is fierce, and manufactured housing, which doesn’t generate as much income as apartments or condominiums, is at a disadvantage, Hillis said.
“The Growth Management Act is a 20-year-old provision,” Hillis said. “It needs to be updated.”
What’s Happening in New Jersey
Rent control used to be a hot topic in New Jersey, but the controversy has waned over the years. Fewer municipalities cap rents compared to a decade ago, said Jane Chady, executive director of the New Jersey Manufactured Housing Association.
Chady couldn’t explain the decline but expressed her own opinion about rent control.
“If you study rent control long enough, you learn it doesn’t work,” she said.
Chady doesn’t think what happened in Oregon could happen in New Jersey — at least not to the state’s manufactured housing industry, which is dominated by communities.
“We’re an extremely tenant-friendly state,” she said. “Our rents are low compared to apartment houses. Nobody’s looking at manufactured housing here and targeting it for rent control.”
New Jersey isn’t immune to the affordable housing crisis, of course. It’s an extremely expensive state to live in, but its municipalities are obligated by law to emphasize affordable housing in their zoning regulations. The state also is considering a workforce housing bill to address the affordable housing crisis, Chady said.
“If we can get a little bit of zoning relief through this workforce housing bill, it’ll be a better solution than rent control,” she said.
Colorado Rent Control
An attempt to repeal the statewide rent-control prohibition and allow local jurisdictions to adopt their own ordinances died in the Colorado Legislature April 30.
Tawny Peyton is the executive director of the Rocky Mountain Home Association (Colorado’s state association) and the Utah Housing Alliance.
She said the latest push for rent control started before the 2018 midterm elections. Candidates for public office heard about the need for affordable housing on the campaign trail, and decided rent control was the best solution.
Peyton said the attempt was defeated with help from the state’s realtor, apartment, lender and manufactured housing industries.
But she expects another push for rent control next year.
To combat that and other attempts, she said the industry needs to be more proactive. It needs to focus more on communication and education rather than reacting to every bill. The public and lawmakers need to know that, in the long run, rent control does more harm than good, she said. They need to learn alternative ways to solve the affordable housing crisis, like relaxing zoning rules and boosting lending in the industry.
And there’s the perennial need to improve the manufactured housing industry’s image. The effort goes on to rid people of the stereotypes they hold about mobile homes.
In the other state she serves, Utah, Peyton said a push for rent control was possible, but so far state officials are looking at other ways to solve the affordable housing crisis.
California and Its Patchwork of Mandates
Statewide rent control like Oregon’s is bad for the industry. But at least it hits everywhere and everyone the same way, said Thomas Casparian, an attorney and partner with the Cozen O’Connor law firm.
Without the imposition of uniform rent control, you get a patchwork of different policies (or none at all) in every city and county. That’s the situation in California, Casparian said.
Patchwork rent control can distort the manufactured housing market in various ways. Local caps can limit annual lot rent increases to a paltry amount, which can drive the value of the homes sitting on the lots to “ludicrous” heights. Communities in rent-controlled municipalities are selling new manufactured homes for $400,000 and more, said R.C. “Dick” Bessire, president of Bessire & Casenhiser, a property management company. Bessire said he knows of an old beachfront mobile home in Oxnard that’s selling for $700,000 — because its lot rent is so low.
The State’s Focus on Manufactured Housing Controls
According to Dey, WMHCA’s director, 110 of California’s cities and counties apply rent control to manufactured housing communities within their borders. This is compared to only seven municipalities that apply rent control to apartments. Rent control in those 110 municipalities runs the gamut from full vacancy control (capping rents even after a tenant moves out of a home) to full vacancy de-control (allowing the landlord to set rents for new tenants at market value).
California’s Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act limits local governments’ ability to enact rent control. But the act doesn’t apply to manufactured home communities. This makes the state’s manufactured housing industry particularly vulnerable because it can’t make a common cause with other rental industries, Casparian said.
Last November, California voters rejected a ballot initiative seeking to repeal Costa-Hawkins and expand rent control across the state. There might be more rent control legislation introduced in the near future, Dey said.
“There’s going to be a real fight,” Bessire said. “The governor is promising statewide rent control.”
California’s manufactured housing community owners might prefer statewide rent control to the current patchwork approach, however — if the statewide law ties rent increases to CPI and includes vacancy decontrol, Bessire said.
Register for Educational Workshops, Networking, Factory, and Home Tours
MHI’s National Communities Council (NCC) is expanding its reach with the NCC Western Summit, scheduled for Aug. 14-16 at the Wild Horse Pass Hotel & Casino in Chandler, Ariz., near Phoenix.
This new event in the western United States will feature education, networking, and exhibitors geared to community managers and smaller owner/operators. Join others within the manufactured housing industry for three days of community insights, educational workshops, ongoing engagement, and a local plant tour. Hear leaders in the industry discuss the state of the market, resident relations, effective marketing and much more.
What the Western Summit Has to Offer
Mark Bowersox is MHI’s executive vice president for industry relations.
“The NCC Western Summit is a new event designed with small community operators and community managers in mind,” Bowersox said. “It begins with a tour of a manufactured home production facility where attendees will see homes in every phase of construction. From there, it’s a day and a half-filled with training sessions on measuring customer satisfaction, maximizing positive customer experiences and fair housing.
“Our speakers will also share big-picture issues such as the state of the industry and MHI’s showcase of manufactured homes on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.,” Bowersox said. “Of course, there will be plenty of networking opportunities to talk with peers or meet with exhibitors and sponsors. There’s no other event of this caliber in that part of the country.”
The Western Summit’s educational workshops have been curated and created with manufactured home community managers and operators in mind. They will address the resident experience, customer satisfaction, fair housing and much more.
The factory tour will be held Aug. 14 at Skyline Champion’s Chandler, Ariz., production facility. Attendees will get a description of the plant’s construction process. They will see manufactured homes in every stage of production, and watch them go from a bare chassis to a fully built home. At the end of the tour, attendees will walk through a completed home.
Register for MHI’s NCC Western Summit in Chandler, Ariz.
The Western Summit will have limited spots for attendees and potential exhibitors. Early bird registration ends July 23 — cost is $229 for MHI members and $329 for non-members. Regular registration rates are $299 for MHI members, $399 for non-members. Hotel rooms cost $99 per night, plus tax, through July 23.
A new Clayton Homes model built during 2018 in Maynardville, Tenn., is shown during The Louisville Show in January 2019.
18 Clayton Homebuilding Facilities Get ENERGY STAR® Certified Homes Market Leader Awards
Clayton Home Building Group, one of America’s largest off-site and on-site home builders, has been recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a 2019 ENERGY STAR Certified Homes Market Leader for its outstanding commitment to energy-efficient new homes through the ENERGY STAR program in 2018 at 18 of the company’s home-building facilities dedicated to constructing off-site built homes.
The Market Leadership Award recognizes the facilities’ continued commitment to providing homebuyers with ENERGY STAR certified homes nationwide.
Clayton Home Building Group
Clayton’s home-building facilities recognized in the manufactured housing category include:
Appalachia
Buckeye
Maynardville
Nashville
Oxford
Perris
Rutledge
Savannah
Sulphur Springs
Waycross
Albany
Giles
Hermiston
Richfield
Rockwell
TRU Belton I
TRU Halls
TRU White Pine
“We are truly honored to have 18 of our home-building facilities receive this award,” said Clayton Home Building Group Vice President of Engineering and Design Mark Ezzo. “Our goal is to continue to find ways to help our homebuyers save money by utilizing energy-efficient building practices and materials that can reduce the cost of utilities, while also helping the environment.”
In 2018, over 3,000 Clayton off-site built homes were ENERGY STAR certified. ENERGY STAR aligns well with one of Clayton’s guiding principles, that of “we will leave the world and company a better place“. The certified homes include location-specific requirements for construction and installation.
Energy Star Home Features Include:
Airtight ducts
Efficient heating and cooling equipment
Increased insulation
Efficient hot water heaters
Low emission windows
A new Clayton home at The Louisville Show in January 2019, built during 2018 at the Maynardville, Tenn., facility.
Clayton’s mission is to provide quality, energy-efficient homes and appliances for families across the nation. The company’s 40 home-building facilities continue to push the boundaries on attainable housing for all income brackets using the best off-site construction methods. Every Clayton home-building facility is ISO 14001 registered for green construction practices, and together in 2018 they diverted over 21,000 tons of waste from landfills through recycling and waste management.
Each year, the ENERGY STAR Residential New Construction program presents Market Leader Awards to outstanding partners who have made important contributions to energy-efficient construction and environmental protection by building or verifying a significant number of ENERGY STAR certified homes and apartments, or by sponsoring a local program that supports these activities during the previous year.
More than 98,000 ENERGY STAR certified single-family homes and multifamily units were built in 2018; nearly 2 million homes since 1995.
JLT Market Reports Available for Immediate Download
Datacomp has published its July 2019 manufactured home community rent and occupancy reports for Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey, and Wyoming.
JLT Market Reports provide detailed research and information on communities in nearly 180 major 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 publishes 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.
July 2019 manufactured housing market data published in JLT Market Reports for Colorado, Delaware, New Jersey, and Wyoming include information on 241 “All Ages” and “55+” manufactured home communities.
Altogether, the reports on the four states’ manufactured home communities include data representations for 63,279 homesites.
“The four states represented in the July 2019 publication of the JLT Market Reports are recording growth in occupancy and average adjusted rent across the board, except for one small dip in occupancy rate in the Wyoming market,” Datacomp Co-President and Chief Business Development Officer Darren Krolewski said.
More About 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 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 include management insights that rank communities by number of homesites, occupancy rates and highest to lowest rents. Established reports show trends in each market with a comparison of July 2019 rents and occupancy rates to July 2018, as well as a historical recap of rents and occupancy from 1996 to present date in most markets. Some reports include information on rent control and next increase, if applicable.
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.
James Dougherty, developer and owner of The Bluff on Manistee Lake in Michigan, provides a presentation during the 2018 Networking Roundtable on measures that go into opening a new community.
Networking Roundtable Returns to The Alexander in Downtown Indianapolis
The 28th Annual Networking Roundtable for manufactured housing professionals will take place at The Alexander in Indianapolis, Ind., Sept. 8-10.
The Networking Roundtable is the ideal gathering for industry professionals to receive a hands-on, timely education on every aspect of operating or property management for a manufactured housing land-lease community.
Programming for the gathering includes presentations, panels and discussions with some of the leading professionals in the business. A keynote address from U.S. Senator Todd Young, from Indiana, will get business underway the opening morning of the Roundtable.
“Senator Young being in Indianapolis to speak to our industry is yet another clear sign of the elevation of manufactured housing in D.C. as a solution toward solving the affordable housing crisis in our country,” event organizer Erin Smith said. “We appreciate the Senator’s willingness to appear at the 28th Networking Roundtable, as well as his continued support for our industry and the Indiana workforce that is so vital to what we do.”
Jose Villareal, left, and Ben Navarro, of Fannie Mae, and Griffin Cotter, from Freddie Mac, field questions from Roundtable attendees.
Networking Roundtable Preliminary Schedule
Attendees of the 2018 Networking Roundtable in Indianapolis take in a presentation from Joe Stegmayer, an industry veteran and executive for Cavco Industries.
Education and professional networking at the Roundtable will feature topical talks on community management, finance, sales, technology, and community acquisition. Speakers include Dave Reynold of Impact MHC, Michael Callaghan of Four Leaf Properties, Paul Bradley of ROC USA and event founder George Allen of EducateMHC.
In addition to the two days of official programming, Allen will greet early arrivers for an open conversation and networking reception on Sunday, Sept. 8. EducateMHC also will host a Manufactured Housing Manager certification class on Sept. 11. Registration for the MHM class is separate from event registration.
A full schedule for the 28th Networking Roundtable will be announced in mid-summer.
For the third consecutive year, the Networking Roundtable will be held at The Alexander in downtown Indianapolis. The Alexander offers premium conference space, as well as ideal accommodations for manufactured housing professionals traveling to the event.
Manufactured Home Community Upgrades Benefit the Industry as a Whole
One of the most difficult issues facing the manufactured housing industry today is the presence of many older, unattractive land-lease communities on the nation’s landscape.
Upgrading and improving these communities is important for several reasons. From an industry perspective, the negative impact these communities have on efforts to rezone land for future projects is legendary.
The “trailer park” image of some of these older communities often is the biggest argument against proposed modern community developments. From an investor perspective, many of the older developments are losing value because of their inability to accommodate newer, larger homes. And the negative image created by the aging asset is damaging for everyone.
How Do We Go About a Community Makeover?
Level I Renewals
So, how do we go about making a change for the better in these older communities?
The first step in the process is deciding the extent of the makeover. The activity could be as simple as a cosmetic enhancement of the existing facility. Or it could be as complex as a complete retrofit. This would require the removal of the existing homes and a planned redo of the community and infrastructure, which would accommodate newer, larger homes. This initial decision will determine the course of the actions to follow.
For decades, our firm has prepared upgrade documents for many projects, large and small, across the country. All of the projects have begun with a thorough assessment of the community. The first step in the process is the accumulation of the most complete maps and information on the community possible. In many cases, this involves digging deep into office closets, calls to the design engineer or planner or trips to the municipal or state agency to acquire archived copies of the approved construction plans. Conversations with managers and maintenance personnel further complete the base plans.
Often, drawings are unavailable. However, aerial photographs from government sources can be used to create base maps. Thorough site inspection and verification will complete the process.
Northville Crossings, a Sun Community in Michigan.
A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
Walk the site with a camera and notepad in hand. Photographs have a way of focusing our vision on negative images we have grown to accept. They can save additional trips to the site to refresh our memory of forgotten details. Maps, pictures and notes provide a valuable resource in times of community crisis and a foundation for the work to follow. They also become a base against which to measure progress.
It is unlikely that the community image would decline through time without the images of the homes and home-sites declining. Therefore, it is helpful to consider the need for community renewal on two levels:
Items of owner/management responsibility
Items of resident responsibility
With this in mind, create an upgrade plan with an emphasis on short-term goals to produce immediate visual results, and long-term goals to achieve the desired end result. In this way, management’s example of immediate visual improvement can be justification for required resident home and site improvements.
You must lead by example if you are to be successful in this effort.
Level II Renewals
Now that we’ve discussed Level I renewals, let’s move into something a little more involved: Level II renewals.
Level II candidates are older communities than most Level I renewals, and, as a result, have a higher percentage of older homes. Many have serious age-related difficulties with the homes and homesite improvements. Some of the older homes may be owned by the community and rented. In addition, many Level II communities have vacant sites to lease.
As a result, a Level I renewal is a required first step in the upgrade process. Upgrades to the housing stock and homesites are so important to the process. And resident cooperation and acceptance of the program are essential. Just as research was important to the upgrade process for the community-owned items, it also is important to do proper research to upgrade the home stock and homesites.
The first step in the process is to inventory the homesites and determine, in accordance with local and state regulations, the maximum-size homes that can be accommodated on the existing home sites. In making that determination, information regarding regulations for separation and lot coverage is important. Many states allow older communities to apply the requirements in force when the community was new. This can make a big difference in the size of home that can be placed on a given lot, as well the amount of change that might be necessitated.
The next step in the research process is to inventory the age, size, and condition of each home in the community; which homes are renter-occupied, if any, and which homesites are vacant. This information can be placed on a spreadsheet and color-coded on a plan.
Level II Upgrades Require a Longer Schedule
Unlike the Level I upgrade, which can take place in a relatively short time, upgrading the home stock most often takes longer. Planning for the home stock upgrade takes considerable effort and creativity. One method of accomplishing this task is to review the research information in order to determine which homes can remain in the community in their present location, which homes might be acceptable if moved to a new location, which homes should be removed from the community, and which homesites are vacant.
The goal of this process is to begin, one section of the community at a time, to improve the home stock. The most visible location should be the first upgrade. This is a way to produce an early improvement and stimulate interest in the process. It might be determined that the priority is an area near the entrance that has several vacant sites. Some newer homes might remain, and two or three homes could be moved or relocated.
First, arrangements to relocate homes would be made to assist residents in the least desirable homes. Or they could move up to a newer home. At the same time, new or acceptable replacement homes would be placed on vacant sites in the area near the front. Those homes are made for sale.
Special incentives are provided to encourage existing residents to “move up”, and to entice new residents to move into the community. A marketing effort keying in on the Level I portion of the community renewal program and the home sale incentives could be initiated. This process, over time, would result in the phased upgrade of the whole community home stock. Such efforts could be part of a much-publicized, total-community “Grand Reopening”; or part of a quiet, metered effort over time.
