Even in the best of times, the level of responsibility on manufactured home community operators is a grand task. However, the global outbreak of coronavirus/COVID-19 adds to the equation considerably.
Help ensure the safety of residents with the following protective measures.
1. Communicate
Communication is critical during crises. Whether through email bulletins, park signage, or other means, keeping park residents up to date with can help ease uncertainty and fear.
Current guidelines, for example, recommend no gatherings of more than 10 people and that everyone maintains a distance of at least three feet. (Such guidelines may vary state-to-state; make sure you’re aware of your state’s recommendation.) Signs posted in or around clubhouses, pools, and play areas can help remind people of this recommendation.
2. Clean Common Areas
To the best of your abilities, ensure clean surfaces in all common areas. The following list covers disinfectants that are effective in killing the coronavirus: Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19)—Fighting Products
The Centers for Disease Control Control (CDC) shares guidelines about how to use such disinfectants to combat COVID-19: Clean & Disinfect
3. Leverage Available Resources
An increasing number of sites provide signs that encourage good hygiene and other safety practices.
This site offers downloadable elements for digital signs that work just as effectively when printed.
You may consider printing or otherwise distributing the informative document, “The President’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America 15 Days to Slow the Spread.” It is available as a download here.
If you need to communicate with park employees, here is a sample letter you can use to address the virus and related issues.
4. Look Out for Seniors and Others
COVID-19 does not discriminate between potential victims. However, experts consider anyone over the age of 60 as well as those with certain pre-existing conditions especially vulnerable.
In many communities, residents looking out for one another is a way of life. However, there may be some residents without friends, family members, or neighbors available to check on them. If you’re aware of any such residents, outreach as simple as a phone call can make a tremendous difference.
If possible, adding any essential items they need to your work-related shopping list will help them. Residents should shelter in place and away from settings where they can more easily become infected.
Most organizations today understand the importance of having a dedicated digital marketing program. Many companies realize the value that a well-optimized website and online presence have as a modern sales tool.
However, it is worth a reminder that the biggest advantage digital marketing can offer a business is measurement. The ability to track, monitor, and evaluate the performance of any effort is what allows you to eliminate as much guesswork in your operation as possible. From a marketing perspective, a large part of this is getting to know your customers on a deep level.
This means understanding what their needs are, where they spend their time, what topics resonate with them, and how they interact with your brand. To strategically invest your time and money in the right areas, you need to know what’s working, what’s not, and why.
This is where web analytics comes in.
What Are Web Analytics?
Web analytics can seem overwhelming for anyone who is unfamiliar with the terminology, metrics, or what to look for in the marketing results. The sheer amount of available information can feel like a sea of data points that you’re unsure about jumping into.
However, when you can make sense of it, the data will help you better understand your web traffic and gain deeper insights into what your customers care about.
Quick Tip:
When choosing an analytics tool for your business, go with Google Analytics. Google Analytics is the industry standard for web measurement platforms. It’s a highly capable and effective tool that’s free for all businesses. If you’re just starting out, it is an ideal solution to get up and running quickly. There are dozens of authoritative, free resources readily available to help you learn more about the platform at any level.
But before you spend too much time looking in your analytics account and drawing conclusions, it’s crucial that you begin with a correct understanding of what these numbers represent and how they differ from one another.
Let’s start by defining a handful of basic but fundamental metrics for measuring web traffic in Google Analytics.
Sessions
Users
Pageviews
Sessions
When looking at sessions, think total visits, not people.
Every time someone visits your website a session begins. It starts immediately when the first page loads and ends after there has been 30 minutes of inactivity.
If a user leaves your site, then returns again one hour later, a new session begins. One person can log multiple sessions on a website, so it is common for sessions to be significantly greater than users when looking at analytics.
Sessions are a useful metric for understanding how your website traffic is changing from month to month, or during key periods throughout the year. When you have marketing campaigns running at certain times, sessions can help you evaluate how these efforts are impacting traffic.
Users
When looking at users, think individual people, not visits.
Usersrefer to the number of new and returning visitors to a website. It’s best to think of users as individual people, but there are a few nuances to be aware of.
Any time a new person lands on your site, Google Analytics assigns them a unique ID that gets stored in a cookie in their web browser (like Google Chrome). When they return to your site using the same browser and device, they are recognized as a returning visitor.
It’s important to know that users are tracked separately on different devices. So if the same person visited your site on a desktop and smartphone, it is tallied as a new user.
Users are an optimal way to measure unique web traffic. However, like most things in digital marketing, a single metric only offers so much intel when analyzed by itself. Users are helpful for understanding how many people visited your site in a given time period, but it’s best to look at users alongside sessions, pageviews, and other engagement metrics to really get a sense of the biggest factors driving your traffic.
Pageviews
More straightforward than the above metrics, a pageview is counted every time a page on your website is viewed, as you may have guessed. If someone lands on the homepage, goes to the About page, Contact page, then back to Home, that’s four views. If they reloaded the About page five times, it’s counted as five pageviews. Pageviews are counted very generously in analytics and will always be much higher than both users and sessions.
Hits
To be honest, there won’t ever be much to infer with hits as a metric for traffic. Hits are irrelevant for measuring web traffic. Hits represent too many actions, often repetitive or misleading actions. Some marketers reach for the biggest number and showcase hits as a measure of site visits or users. This is a hasty and inflated representation of actual traffic. Equating hits to a metric like sessions is misguided and ill-advised. Hits always will be much greater in volume than users, sessions, or pageviews.
Hits may be a good measure of overall server usage, but it doesn’t tell you much about your audience.
Platform Comparisons:
Google Analytics vs Webalizer vs AWStats
If you have yet to adopt a traffic measurement tool, there are several platforms for your business to consider. As mentioned, Google Analytics is by far the most widely used tool today. We recommend it against a few others for key reasons.
Alternative analytics platforms like Webalizer and AWStats are known to overestimate traffic data and report inflated numbers. This is because these programs collect data differently than Google Analytics.
Webalizer and AWStats are “Server-side” analytics platforms, meaning they gather data from a website’s server logs to report traffic. Instead of only showing activity from actual human visitors, the data contained in these log files includes activity from both humans and bots. The server responds to human visitors, but also to automated requests made by bots. These requests can include anything like image files, graphics, audio files, and HTML pages.
This significantly skews the data and thus shows much higher numbers than the more refined results from Google Analytics.
Overall, platforms like Webalizer lack cookies to recognize real, unique visitors, so they use data from server logs to give it’s best guess at how many actual people visited the site. Server-side collection is an inferior way to measure website traffic, especially for any sites that receive a sizable volume.
Getting Onboard with Analytics
In this article, we really just scratch the surface of what is possible with web analytics. If all of this sounds new or vaguely familiar to you, it’s a topic worthy of further investigation. Strengthening your knowledge of analytics will provide new insights about customers, how they shop, and how they buy. Without a professional analytics program, you won’t truly have the information you need to adapt your marketing strategy. Sure, you can make changes to your website, run new campaigns, continue creating content, but if done blindly the success of your efforts will be limited.
Luis Vela, vice president of Q10 Lutz, attended the National Communities Council Fall Leadership Forum in Chicago, and took time with MHInsider to talk about his career in finance.
Luis Vela Looks Back on his 40-plus Years in the Manufactured Housing Industry
Luis Vela retired for 18 months.
“I had been running the midwest real estate office for PNC Bank. I was supposed to retire at 67 and worked until 72,” Vela said. “One day I realized it just wasn’t for me. People who retire need a big hobby, like rebuilding MGs or building something. And I don’t have that.
“I’m a deal junky,” he said.
Born on the Road
Maybe part of the reason Vela has business deals in his blood is that he was born on a business trip – in South America.
His father, Walter A. Vela, worked for Sunoco, then known as Sun Oil, in charge of marketing, and then with General Motors, in the capacity as director to the Latin American Free Trade Association (LAFTA).
“We went from Rio to San Paulo, to Buenos Aires to Lima, to Caracas and many other equatorial locales all prior to the age of 13,” Vela said. “We’d move every three to six months.”
Education, Army, and Wall Street
In the United States by high school, Vela was a Champion singles tennis player and played varsity tennis at Michigan State University for 1954 through ’58, where he earned his bachelor’s degree in general business and economics. Next, he went to graduate school at Columbia University in New York City where he earned a master’s degree in finance. He also was in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), and joined the U.S. Army as a 2nd lieutenant.
Vela trained at Fort Campbell in Kentucky and transferred from the infantry to the Finance Corps in Indianapolis. It’s a place many of the enlisted call “the little Pentagon”.
Vela later was promoted to a 1st lieutenant.
“We wrote all the payroll for the Army. We also could write up to seven checks a month for each soldier… house payment, car payment, insurance payments,” Vela said.
He worked on Wall Street for IBM, and was on the team that brought magnetic ink coding to checking accounts in the banking and finance industries.
“That’s my claim to fame,” Vela said with a smile.
“It was a lot of fun to work in New York City. There’s just a tempo there that’s unlike any other place.”
Coast to Coast
Vela moved west, to Sonoma, Calif., and served as the chief financial officer for Hy-Lond Enterprises, with 34 extended care nursing facilities throughout California, Idaho, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.However, in 1972 he was badly injured in a horseback riding accident.
He looked at the best options for his own rehabilitation care, and for a good place to recover, and decided to go to Florida. While there, Vela began work with American Community Systems as vice president of real estate in the development of Colonies at Margate, in Margate, Fla. He also worked with Intercoastal Communities with Ned Allen and Richard Kearns, as executive vice president and CFO.
“That’s how I got my start in MH,” Vela said. “We had seven MH retirement communities.”
“He has taught me a lot in finance. He’s a legend. He was doing deals when this industry was selling 500,000 homes.” — Community owner and friend John Rogosich
During this time, Vela worked huge deals with the Sun Communities, Inc. REIT, in obtaining a Fannie Mae Credit Facility.
“We started with $50 million and got it up to $392 million outstanding,” he said.
“We also did a whole bunch of mobile home parks in Arizona during the 1980s, in Tucson, Mesa, Apache Junction,” Vela said. “At one point, Phoenix had 80,000 park models, and it seems all of them were being bought by people coming down from Canada. These park models all had a certain kind of look. A lot of people would extend their park model with a screened porch.
“It was a good look.”
Vela then took the position of senior vice president of acquisitions with Chateau Properties, Inc., a newly formed public REIT. From there, Vela went on what many call “a rocket ride”.
“In my time, we grew the portfolio from 14,500 to 75,000 homes,” Vela said. “We were just behind Sam Zell’s MHC REIT, now called Equity LifeStyle Properties, in going public.
During his time with Green Tree Financial, Vela worked on providing loans for new parks, including construction loans and mezzanine and bridge real estate community expansion loans while serving as vice president of national community financing.
“That was running $8 to $10 billion per year,” Vela said. “But then the economy tanked. We were in 2007, 2008 and were looking for a way to wade through.”
The answer, it seemed, was a merger with Conseco Inc., of Alpharetta, Ga.
Green Tree merged with Conseco, a publicly held insurance company based in Indiana and traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
“We thought if we could get each of these two large, public ‘middle-income customer’ organizations together that we would be successful and get to the other side,” he said. “It didn’t work.”
At the time, Green Tree became the fifth largest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history, right after Enron.
“Some of the finance and business books still blame us for the 2007 to 2009 sub-prime recession,” Vela said.
Q10 National Production (2018)
Loan origination – $4.6 billion
Servicing volume – $9.9 billion
Locations – eight member companies, with 14 offices in 12 states
At Home in Naples
Luis “Lou” Vela of Q10 Lutz.
Vela now resides in Naples, Fla., continues his work with Q10 Lutz Financial Services, and is a licensed mortgage and real estate broker in the state of Florida.
His son is Luis R. Vela is an orthopedic surgeon and serves as Oregon State University baseball’s team physician. He has a pair of daughters, Meg, in Denver, a graduate of the University of Denver, with a 19-year-old daughter and 18-year-old twin boys, and daughter Dodie, in Orlando, who went to Auburn University and works in the wellness field.
Vela’s wife Lynne is a former flight attendant who worked as an actor in TV commercials.
Q10 Capital, the parent company to Q10 Lutz, is among the nation’s largest servicer of commercial loans, totaling $4.6 billion in loans in 2018. Vela serves as vice president. Q10 does most of its volume in multi-family financing, with a presence in retail, office, industrial. The manufactured housing assets make up about 6% of Q10’s volume.
“We represent nearly all of the major insurance companies, large national and regional banks, and CMBS lenders,” Vela said. “Q10 Capital does about $55 billion annually in commercial loan originations.
“I’m not restricted to lending in one region, so that’s very good,” Vela said. “If I meet someone who needs help, no matter where they are based, I can help them.”
Coronavirus Precaution Causes Cancellation of Tunica Show
Board members for the South Central Manufactured Housing Institute met via conference call Friday afternoon and agreed to cancel the 2020 Tunica Show.
The SCMHI members said in a statement later that day the discussion was about continuing or not with the show, in light of the many public advisories associated with the spreading coronavirus.
“The board has decided that, out of an abundance of caution and in compliance with the public health recommendations being issued by the states of Mississippi and Alabama as well as our national government in Washington, D.C., this year’s Tunica Show will be canceled,” the statement said.
SCMHI board members expressed deep regrets about the need to cancel the show.
“The health and well-being of our participants and attendees must be our first priority,” the statement said. “We apologize for any inconvenience this decision may have caused, but ask for your understanding during this time as our nation’s leaders work to prevent the spread of this deadly virus.”
JLT Market Reports from Datacomp with updated information on rent and occupancy trends for manufactured home communities in Maryland, New Hampshire, and New York are available for order, including immediate download today.
JLT Market Reports provide detailed research and vital information on communities in 183 major housing markets throughout the United States. Along with the latest rent trends and occupancy statistics, the manufactured home community market reports include information on home types, amenities, community infrastructure, as well as management insight.
Datacomp is the nation’s top provider of manufactured housing data. JLT Market Reports are recognized as the industry standard for manufactured housing community market analysis.
March 2020 JLT manufactured housing market data includes information on 192 “All ages” and “55+” manufactured home communities in Maryland, New Hampshire, and New York.
Altogether, the reports include data representations for 35,661 homesites, including a new report for Orange and Ulster counties in New York.
State-by-State Trends from March 2020 JLT Rent & Occupancy Market Reports
Maryland adjusted rent for all-ages communities increased by 3.6% year-over-year
Occupancy in those communities from year-to-year rose to 99%
New Hampshire adjusted rent for 55+ communities increased by 2% year-over-year
Occupancy in those communities from year-to-year rose slightly by four homesites
New York adjusted rent for all-ages communities increased by 3% year-over-year
Occupancy in those communities from year-to-year rose slightly by eight homesites
“Among the manufactured home communities in the northeast region of the country published in our March reports, state-to-state trends for adjusted rent continue as we’ve seen them at about 3%,” Datacomp Co-President and Chief Business Development Officer Darren Krolewski said. “Additionally, most markets within the three-state report were stable with only a few down-trending in occupancy, most notably among 55+ communities.”
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 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 March 2020 rents and occupancy rates to March 2019, as well as a historical recap of rents and occupancy from 1996 to present date in most markets.
The March 2020 Maryland, New Hampshire, and New York JLT Reports for 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.
Over the past five years, the manufactured housing industry has been one of the hottest multi-family housing investments. An influx of community investors/owners has caused consolidation among operators in the country while increasing their market share. In 2015, the largest 50 operators owned and managed 500,000 sites while, in 2018, the largest 50 operators owned and managed 700,000 sites.
Times have changed.
I’ve seen this industry’s evolution firsthand from the vantage of virtually every job in the business. Today, as president of Blank Family Communities, a third-party property management company based in Michigan, and over a career that dates back 15 years. My family successfully owned and operated Franklin Communities for 35 years before selling their 2,500 site Michigan portfolio in August of 2018.
‘Boots on the Ground’
Steven Blank walks a property in Michigan.
I was taught and learned a “boots on the ground” approach to operating, and that it takes industry knowledge, people skills, accountability and follow-up to be profitable in the near- and long term.
I have operated with three of the top 10 largest operators in the country and have consulted, acquired and/or sold with another 50 operators. I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.
With industry consolidation comes new players with new ideas. After attending the Michigan Manufactured Housing Association (MMHA) expo in Novi, Mich., and speaking to several longstanding operators, I realized that there is a disconnect between new and traditional operators’ views on how to be successful.
At the same time, our industry is being moved forward by state and national associations that have everyone’s best interests at heart. That’s a very good thing as the fights we are all are facing need to be faced together.
I have operated and seen methodologies, strategies and approaches to our industry on both sides of the old-new equation and I firmly believe that bridging the gap between the two needs to occur.
The Old Way
Ronald and Steven Blank talk details of the property during a visit to a manufactured home community.
How many times have you heard, “There’s no need to reinvent the wheel?” That comment is a long-time staple of our industry, which has had relatively the same business model for the past 50 years: Having a community that is filled with resident-owned homes and residents who pay monthly site rents in exchange for community maintenance, and operating the land on which the home sites reside. The maintenance on the land traditionally is low compared to the revenue that is brought in, so the community, if well if occupied, is a great investment and source of cash flow.
This scenario is becoming less and less common as it is no longer easy to sell manufactured homes, post-recession. Moreover, many MH loans, in the Midwest and other major pockets across the country, require community owner recourse. The recession also created the need for communities to pivot their business model to also include rental homes. The impact of this business model shift cannot be understated.
It changed the landscape of the industry.
In the past, bringing in and selling a new home was simple. There was little liability to the community owner. With recourse loans and rental homes, the community owner is never free of liability as they have a financial stake in the success and/or failure of the residents.
The days of passively collecting rent from manufactured home communities at scale are over – unless you already have a stabilized portfolio.
This shift has made the refined operation of communities much more critical and labor-intensive. The result is that there are a dramatically reduced number of communities that can be operated efficiently with a passive management style.
Today’s Value-Add Approach
Value-add is the most common buzz word I hear in the industry today. I believe the term has lost some of its merit. Because manufactured housing communities lost occupancy and revenues during the recession, many communities currently being purchased still have vacancies, deferred maintenance needs and in some cases are below market rent. Ideally, when purchasing such a community, an operator will infill the community with new homes, sell some and rent the rest. They will revitalize the community by completing deferred maintenance, and, once value is added and the resident base is happy, the rents are raised, sometimes incrementally, to market value. In this situation, you now have a stabilized asset that will yield positive cash flow – if the operating system can sustain the new changes.
Focus on the the Operation
The biggest difference between the new companies and the traditional players is their operating structure and the stability of their portfolios – meaning, many communities acquired and owned by traditional operators paid significantly less aggressive capitalization rates. New players need to be more efficient with their value-add and operations, as the profit margins on communities purchased today will be lower due to the high capitalization rates that have become the norm.
Along with acquisition advantages, old school operators documented operating systems and continually trained and supported corporate and field staff, all of whom contributed to these companies enjoying sub 5% delinquency and high occupancy numbers. Newer companies, on the other hand, focus far too much on the acquisition and not enough on the operation. That’s simply not a great recipe for long-term success.
As an industry, we are facing more attention and scrutiny than ever. As such, it is important that all of us make sure that we are operating our communities profitably and efficiently while providing value to our residents. That way, we can remain the most viable form of affordable housing in America and continue to gain popularity across wider demographics.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson will speak at MHI's annual Congress & Expo in April.
U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to Keynote April 8 in Las Vegas
For the third consecutive year, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson will be the keynote speaker at the annual Congress and Expo organized by the Manufactured Housing Institute.
Carson, an outspoken proponent of manufactured housing since taking the cabinet leadership position three years ago, will make his remarks at MGM Grand at 9:45 a.m. on April 8, MHI announced.
“We’re extremely honored that Secretary Carson will be joining us for a third consecutive Congress and Expo. It’s been very exciting to see the progress HUD has made toward reducing regulatory barriers and elevating manufactured housing within the department under his administration,” MHI CEO Lesli Gooch said. “Secretary Carson has been a champion for our industry and has demonstrated a commitment to supporting initiatives that create more affordable housing.
“Whether he’s touring the country visiting manufacturing facilities on a bus or joining us for Congress and Expo, Secretary Carson has taken every opportunity to interact with and better understand our industry,” Gooch said. “We appreciate his efforts, involvement, and recognition of the potential solution manufactured housing presents to creating more quality, affordable housing opportunities across the country.”
More Information on HUD Secretary Ben Carson
HUD Secretary Ben Carson.
Carson is the 17th HUD Secretary with his swearing-in on March 2, 2017. For nearly 30 years, Carson served as director of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, a position he assumed when he was 33 years old.
He has received dozens of honors and awards in recognition of his achievements including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. He also is a recipient of the Spingarn Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the NAACP.
The Manufactured Housing Institute works to create an increasingly cooperative and productive regulatory environment for manufactured housing, working closely with Carson, HUD and other agencies and offices in Washington.
The 2020 Congress & Expo runs April 6-8 and is open for attendance by manufactured and modular housing professionals.
‘YIMBY Act’, ‘Small Dollar Mortgages’ Support Move to Senate
The U.S. House of Representatives on March 2 voted unanimously to pass the “Yes In My Backyard Act,” as well the “Improving FHA Support for Small Dollar Mortgages Act of 2020”.
The Manufactured Housing Institute has worked side-by-side with a non-partisan group of lawmakers as well as nearly 20 affordable housing advocacy and consumer protection organizations to urge action on the affordable housing bills.
“The YIMBY Act is bipartisan legislation, introduced by Reps. Heck (D-WA), Hollingsworth (R-IN), Clay (D-MO), Foxx (R-NC), Quigley (D-IL), and Herrera Beutler (R-WA), that is intended to eliminate local land use policies preventing the development of affordable housing,” MHI stated in a housing alert distributed the day following the vote.
H.R. Bill 4351 calls for “allowing manufactured homes in areas zoned primarily for single-family residential homes”. The YIMBY Act creates a reporting requirement under the existing Consolidated Plan Reporting that would require localities that receive Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to report the extent to which they are implementing specific pro-affordability and anti-discriminatory housing policies.
‘Small Dollar Mortgages’
H.R. 5931, the “Improving FHA Support for Small Dollar Mortgages Act of 2020” requires the Federal Housing Administration to review its policies and identify barriers to supporting mortgages under $70,000, as well as report to Congress within a year regarding a removal plan for any barriers.
During Committee discussion, Rep. Al Lawson, D—Fla., requested clarification that the legislation also would be applicable to manufactured home loans. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D—Mo., who authored the bill, confirmed that manufactured home loans would be included in the review. Rep. Steve Stivers, R—Ohio, added that the legislation would be a positive step forward for manufactured housing financing.
Who would have ever thought five years ago that manufacturers would be able to affordably offer ceramic tile, stainless steel farm sinks, and large, walk-in showers in their homes?
It’s increasingly common for manufactured home professionals to have a photo album on their phones of amazing homes they’ve seen, or been a part of bringing to market. My regular rounds provide a nice album of merchandised interiors for Clayton Homes. A sweep through five or six images can change even the most jaded opinions of our homes.
Why Not Find A Way?
Patriot Homes had heard about my work from some of the leading site builders and invited me to work on their homes. As an introduction, the plan was to attend The Tunica Show and walk every home, come back with suggestions on products that could aid the designs. The purchasing agent at the time had other plans. The reason?
Because “We don’t do things that way in our industry”. The plan came together after getting to know each other, and with some give and take on both sides, we provided some innovative but still cost-effective looks for consumers who are influenced by HGTV and the home decor magazines. Add to that, our project gained the attention of Home Depot, which designed some product lines just for us.
The Louisville Show
The Louisville Manufactured Housing Show.
Among the greatest places to get inspired is the professional seminars at manufactured housing trade shows. It’s a great place to hear the valuable success stories, and to learn from some great experiences.
Last year it was a real treat to speak at the Louisville Show and to see the evidence of how far we have come as an industry.
Typically at shows we get to see the best of the best, but it’s an industry show and not a consumer show. So, how do we share who we are now? How do we share with potential customers who think we are still the mobile home of the 1970s?
More than 90% of consumers now start their home search online, and if homes aren’t professionally staged and photographed, it will be harder to convince that consumer to come to see the place in person. Many of the major manufacturers provide photography to help you sell homes. But what if the customer falls in love with the home they see online ad? If they come to your community or retail center and see something with no skirting, dated furniture, and no electrical power, they are going to feel deceived. So for practicality, and for progressive business practices, we are tasked with creating masterfully staged home that can be photographed and made availabe for tours.
But Why Luxury Brands?
You would think spending time researching luxury brands and how they do business would be a waste of time, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Many of the trends and products that consumers want start at the luxury side of the business, then filter down to affordable design. Progressive manufactured home builders have recognized this. You’ll see some of their team members walking shows like the International Builders Show, The Kitchen and Bath Show and the High Point Furniture Market. They are learning about new trends that connect with consumers now – many at price points way above what our customers expect to spend. But they take these ideas home.
They do some research on how to get this look for less, then incorporate it into their homes.
Something that many luxury brands are good at is listening. They don’t tell their customers “we can’t do that,” they say let’s figure out how we can make your dreams come true.
Luxury wine and lifestyle brand The Boisset Collection traveled to cities coast to coast and hosted “The Alchemy Series”. Photo courtesy of Lisa Stewart Photography.
The Fruit That Makes The Wine
Jean-Charles Boisset is the perfect example of this. When he was 11 years old his schoolteacher grandparents brought him on vacation to the United States from France, and as someone who grew up in wine country, he fell in love with Napa Valley – especially the Buena Vista Winery. He said right then that someday he was going to own that winery. After coming back to the U.S. for college, he did buy it and restored it to its original grandeur. The Boisset Collection is now 27 wineries in the U.S. and France and has expanded into a luxury lifestyle brand. After listening to his customers, he discovered their frustrations with buying at home the wines they discovered when they traveled, and how many stores wouldn’t even try to help them get what they wanted. They tried to sell the customer something else.
Sound familiar?
If you think our industry has a lot of rules and regulations, you should research the wine and spirits world!
But, not one to take no for an answer, Boisset kept asking questions, kept researching, and discovered a way to sell directly to consumers through “ambassadors”. These were and are friends and neighbors in the community who could assist on wine journeys and get the best value for customer tastes. Customers can go online and buy wine from the wineries and it’s delivered right to their home, cutting out the middle man, and also making sure that the wine has been stored correctly. A brilliant move for everyone, but few people are as brave as Boisset. He alone completely changed an industry.
The Value of Listening
Think about what listening more to our customers could do for our industry as well.
LG Appliances is one of the most highly respected appliance and electronics companies in the world. Based in Korea, the company understood other markets but were having trouble understanding, and selling to the luxury buyer in the U.S. Wisely, they hired a well-known and respected leader in the luxury appliance world here, and started Signature Kitchen Suite. One of the first things they did was to build and open their Experience and Design Center in Napa. When asked why Napa, the answer was that “it’s the destination for the culinary world and close to Silicon Valley, the hub for the tech world.” Since they build smart technology appliances for their Technicurean® customers (a word they came up with and trademarked), the location made sense. They design appliances that have never would have been available in the consumer market. And now LG is the company that keeps the pace for others trying to reach those heights. Customers are invited to the EDC to be hands-on with the LG and SKS appliances. It helps them understand all of the technology and features the brand offers.
When is the last time you asked customers or potential customers for an open dialogue on what they want? What’s important to you? Or are we price selling or value selling? Do we just assume our customers are on a particular budget? Do we educate them first and see what upgrade or home can be something they want and will pay to have?
One impressive interaction recently came from Bryan Rogers, regional vice president for Clayton Homes. We had a day with the sales team in Desoto, Texas. Rogers was inside the homes, showing the teams all of the special features each offered. He covered how to show the homes to potential customers. We all learned a lot listening that day, and as the merchandiser of these homes, it helped me understand the features I needed to highlight with my designs.
What To Do Next?
I’m going to break the rules (again) and offer some suggestions – And I would love to hear your ideas as well.
1. Press Tours and a guided consumer tour of our homes at shows
It’s understandable that we want to avoid having non-industry people in our homes at trade shows where pricing is shown and conversation can go in a lot of different directions. But what about doing a pre-show or something after hours at a specified time that allows media, bloggers, influencers, and potential homeowners to take guided tours through our beautiful homes? Tour them like Bryan with the Desoto sales team, showing them what makes our homes such a great value. Let them take a lot of photos that they could show to friends and share on social media. Pricing could be removed, and we could show them what we want them to see.
2. We expect the customer to always come to us – why don’t we go to the consumer?
Jean-Charles Boisset is doing this by hosting the “Alchemy of the Senses” tour. He has gone coast to coast renting luxurious estates that happen to be for sale, and brought his team of chefs, designers, sommeliers, and marketing people with him to create an experience of a lifetime. People tend to remember tasting experiences more than visual ones, and an event like this proves that point. Teaming with retailers and communities in an area where the consumer lives, and creating a unique sensory experience where they could see, touch and understand our homes sounds like an “out there idea”, but it would set us apart. Food actually cooking in our kitchens, people tasting and chatting in our dining rooms, playing and cajoling in our family rooms, gathering in our flex or outdoor spaces.
3. Get social
Yes, the mention has been made, but social media is more important than ever because this is truly where your customers are spending their time. Creating a Pinterest account and sharing unique design details in your home, or recipes that can be cooked in your kitchens, or lifestyle shots and ideas really can make people rethink their perceptions about manufactured housing.
4. Sell it, Don’t Save It
Shari McLellan and her team atClayton Homes of Victoria have figured out that it makes a lot more sense to sell her lot models furnished than to move everything into storage and try to reuse it later. This gives them the advantage of saying “yes!” to that customer who wants a home that looks as good as the model – they can own the model home and everything in it. And, The homes on their lot are always fresh and up to date.
When you are attending and touring our industry shows, or some of the shows for other industries, don’t forget to take many, many photos. Pick up the literature. Ask the questions. All of them. Challenge yourself to take home at least one great idea every day.
Spencer Roane of Pentagon Properties explains how to finance new homes during a 2019 talk in Tunica.
The Tunica Show, March 24-26 in Tunica, Miss., will offer attendees a series of highly educational speaker panels and seminars to kick off the three-day trade show.
Tunica 2020 will include four opening day seminars designed to keep manufactured housing professionals current on news and trends. Speakers include leaders in state and national advocacy, as well as seasoned sales professionals, marketing experts, and leading manufacturers. The Tunica 2020 educational seminars are relevant to all attendees and particularly suited for professional manufactured home retailers.
Business Building at The Tunica Show
Tuesday, March 24
8 – 8:45 a.m. — State of the Industry
Presenters Doris Hydrick, of Alabama, Jennifer Hall, of Mississippi, Dr. Lesli Gooch, from MHI, and Sam Huffman, representing multiple states, will have a discussion on trends, opportunities, and challenges in today’s manufactured housing market.
8:45 – 9 a.m. — 2020 Hot Manufacturer Trends
Representatives from some of the nation’s leading home manufacturers will cover hot new trends, new homes for generational customers, finding the right mix of model types, selecting custom features that sell, and partnering with your manufacturers.
9:30 – 10:15 a.m. — The Essentials of Internet Marketing Success
Darren Krolewski, co-president and chief business development officer for MHVillage and Datacomp, leads attendees through strategies and tactics that will create more business success online, including conversations on website best practices, digital advertising insights, and direction on social media strategy and automation tools.
10:15 – 11 a.m. — Producing the Ultimate Open House
Industry sales professional Ken Corbin provides an eight-week plan on what to do and not to do in planning and messaging to create an open house that will garner dozens of applications and deposits in just three days.
Register for Tunica 2020 Today
The Tunica Show is ideally timed for the spring selling season. It is a great place for networking with an estimated 2,400 manufactured housing professionals in attendance. Registration for Tunica 2020 is open now!
Tour all of the latest model homes, view the design, materials, technology trends, and catch expertly programmed industry seminars and panels.
Attendees will appreciate a more central location in 2020 compared with previous years. All model homes will be adjacent The Hollywood Hotel and Casino. More than 25 manufacturers will have fully outfitted homes ready to tour.
Additionally, better than 100 service and supply exhibitors are confirmed for The Tunica Show, including six first-time exhibitors. The 2020 Tunica Show is an essential element for the retailer, builder-developers, owners and operators of manufactured home communities.
Book Your Room at Hollywood Casino and Resort
Registered attendees of The Tunica Show canstay onsite at The Hollywood, and at a discounted event rate. When contacting the hotel, use the room block code HOME20 for special pricing.
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...
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