Why the Future Belongs to Retailers Who Reach Conventional Homebuyers Earlier
Editor’s Note: John Ace Underwood is providing a series of articles to MHInsider on retail sales strategy that reach the site-built homebuyer. This is the first in a five-part series.
By John Ace Underwood
For decades, much of the factory-built housing industry has operated from a relatively straightforward business model: build a sales center, generate and pull in traffic, and sell homes to the people who show up.For many years, that model worked reasonably well. Buyers were more familiar with manufactured housing, competition looked different, and the industry relied heavily on visibility, location, and walk-in traffic.
But today’s housing market has changed dramatically.The reality is that many conventional single-family home buyers never seriously consider factory-built housing at all. Not because they evaluated it and rejected it. Not because they compared it side-by-side against site-built alternatives and decided against it. In many cases, they simply never meaningfully encounter it during their home-buying journey.
That distinction matters.
Most conventional buyers begin their search online, but not with factory-built retailers. They engage with builder websites, realtors, housing portals, social media, model homes, and local developments long before they ever speak with a salesperson. Their perception of homeownership is often shaped months before a purchase decision is ever made.
And while many of those buyers may drive past a manufactured housing retail center, very few ever drive onto one.
Yet many of those same buyers would likely be surprised by the quality, residential appearance, design flexibility, speed of construction, and overall value today’s factory-built homes offer.
In many ways, the industry does not have a product problem nearly as much as it has a positioning and discovery problem.
For years, factory-built housing has often been discovered almost accidentally. A family member owned one. A friend recommended one. Someone happened to drive by a retail center. A buyer stumbled across a model online while searching for something else.
Accidental Discovery is Not Long-Term Strategy
The next wave of success in factory-built housing will not come from waiting for more manufactured home buyers to walk onto a sales lot. It will come from reaching conventional single-family home buyers earlier in their decision-making process and introducing them to the value factory-built housing offers before they emotionally commit to a site-built solution.
That requires a very different way of thinking about the marketplace.
One of the industry’s biggest misconceptions is the belief that manufactured and modular housing are already fully competing against conventional site-built housing. In reality, in many markets, they are not truly competing at all because large numbers of potential buyers never seriously enter the factory-built housing conversation in the first place.
That represents both the challenge and the opportunity.
The United States continues to struggle with affordable housing shortages, rising construction costs, labor constraints, and increasing barriers to homeownership. At the same time, factory-built housing has never offered more quality, more flexibility, or stronger residential appeal than it does today.
Yet manufactured and modular housing still account for less than 10 percent of new single-family housing starts nationally.
That should not be interpreted as a lack of opportunity.
It should be interpreted as evidence that the industry has not yet fully positioned itself within the broader housing conversation.
Manufactured Housing Seen in New Light
Importantly, this change does not mean retailers need to abandon their traditional customer base or completely reinvent their businesses overnight. Nor does it mean manufactured housing retailers must become conventional home builders.
But it does mean they must begin learning how to market, position, and sell to conventional single-family home buyers who are currently shopping elsewhere.
This may prove to be one of the most important strategic shifts facing the industry over the next decade.
The retailers and community operators who grow moving forward will likely be those who become far more intentional about where buyers discover factory-built housing in the first place.
If the ideal future customer is not naturally visiting a sales center, the entire growth strategy cannot depend solely on increasing sales center traffic.
The industry must become visible where conventional buyers are already shopping and researching. That may involve stronger relationships with realtors, partnerships with developers, better online positioning, off-site model opportunities, land/home packages, builder-style marketing, or entirely different approaches to lead generation and customer engagement.
This is not about abandoning or even a fundamental change with manufactured housing itself. It is about expanding the audience exposed to it.
Realtors and Developers
One of the most overlooked opportunities in the industry today may be relationships with realtors and developers. Many real estate professionals still know very little about modern manufactured or modular housing. Many developers continue defaulting to conventional site-built solutions simply because factory-built options are not part of their normal conversations or planning processes.
Outdated perceptions continue to dominate much of the marketplace.
That creates tremendous opportunity for retailers willing to position themselves not simply as manufactured home retailers, but as housing solution providers participating in the broader single-family housing market.
The companies that thrive over the next decade will likely be those that stop waiting for buyers to find them and instead become active participants in how buyers discover, evaluate, and ultimately purchase homes.
This article is intended to introduce a larger conversation about where factory-built housing retail is headed and how independent retailers, community operators, and industry professionals can better position themselves for the future.
In my series of articles, we will explore why many of the industry’s best future customers never visit a sales center, how retailers can market more effectively to conventional home buyers, why realtors may represent one of the industry’s most underutilized growth channels, and how partnerships with developers could create entirely new opportunities for factory-built housing professionals.
The future opportunity for factory-built housing may be larger than it has ever been.
But the companies that benefit most will not be the ones waiting for more traffic.
They will be the ones willing to rethink how conventional single-family home buyers discover factory-built housing altogether.
John Ace Underwood is a recognized 35-plus-year veteran of the factory-built housing industry, specializing in sales leadership, organizational development, and growth strategies for retailers, communities, and manufacturers. His work focuses exclusively on helping retailers expand beyond traditional manufactured housing buyers and compete more effectively for conventional single-family home buyers.
MHInsider is the leader in manufactured housing news and is a product of MHVillage, the top marketplace for manufactured homes.
