The Texas Manufactured Housing Association met this week in Frisco, Texas, near Dallas, with a full day of programming for manufactured housing professionals on Monday. The luncheon speaker, Dr. John. S. Baen, a real estate professor at North Texas University, provided a spirited pep talk on the quality and value of manufactured housing.
“I believe in what you’re doing. This is the future. You’re looking at it,” he said.
Baen said city officials have very limited knowledge about manufactured housing and that it’s the industry’s job to educate them.
The professor also acknowledged the presence and pain of material costs and supply shortages, as well as the labor pains many industries are feeling.
“I don’t know when it’s going to get better, but it has to… we need to build better product and better advertising to promote our homes.”
Baen used a series of informational and often comical slides to impress upon the TMHA attendees that Texas stands to gain mightily if it can provide enough housing for all of the people drawn to the state.
“Let’s keep this in perspective,” he said. “A lot of people are escaping here.
“Millions of people have come across the Rio Grande. They could have chosen New Mexico, Arizona, California… but they know where Texas is,” he said.
He said while the birth and death rates balance each other out, the only way to increase population is through immigration and migration. Californians, in particular, are moving to Texas, and it’s not just individuals and families. Texas is drawing big business that will provide jobs, jobs for workers who will need housing.
“More people is more housing for you and me… Remember, you own the competition on price. Our houses are a 17th the cost of theirs,” Baen said of manufactured homes.
