After working together for years in finance with an industry giant and getting their feet wet turning around a manufactured home community they acquired together, Ben Halliday and Jordan Bucy decided to blend their banking and real estate experience to start Zippy, a new community-focused chattel lender.
It took some time to find the right entry point. Initially, the two looked at a lot of deals they found interesting, but often didn’t pencil. Eventually the pair landed on a value-add community in Lubbock, Texas, though not without some hesitation.
Turns out the hesitation, at this point long passed, was somewhat founded.
“The community we bought was pretty run down, 20 years of deferred maintenance. The sewer and water were bad, half the sites had no water and a dozen of the homes of the 91 sites were actually viable homes,” Zippy CEO Ben Halliday said. “We spent our nights and weekends there for three years. We focused on property management during the week and then on the weekend we’d go on-site and get to work on redevelopment.”
“We’d stay at the community on the weekends, sleeping in one of the available houses for sale at the time, digging sewer lines and rehabbing homes. It was hard work, but it was even more rewarding,” Zippy COO and President Jordan Bucy said.
The pair eventually replaced the old infrastructure, landscaped and installed new amenities including a playground, dog park, and party pavilion. During this time, Halliday and Bucy brought in and sold new homes to fill up the original development. Beyond the joy in seeing new homeowners relish in their upgraded community, one of the proudest moments was when the City of Lubbock visited during a rezoning initiative to add 32 lots on adjacent land.
“Several council members and planning officials visited our community to inspect the progress, as part of their diligence,” Halliday said. “We were so proud to host them and thankful we ultimately got approval to add to our growing community. The mayor gave us a nod and thanked us ‘for bringing affordable housing to Lubbock’. That was immensely appreciated.”
Reflection on a Problem and Developing a Tech-Driven Solution
As Halliday and Bucy worked in the community, they developed a passion for manufactured housing. They were proud of the neighborhood that formed over the years, and proud of the homes so many families called home. But one big challenge kept nagging them.
“Since we were five hours away during the work week, we took advantage of modern property management tools and took our homeowners online for payments and maintenance requests, and it was well-received — no more paper checks!” Bucy said. “That’s when we knew our industry was ready for digital.”
They built a digital sales process using available technology selling a handful of homes a month, mainly as a result of social ads and the community’s website.
“It worked great, but it all broke down during financing,” Halliday said. “We wanted a process that was more modern, friendly and fast for us and the homebuyer. But it was 2017, and there were few options for community operators to offer customers a digital home buying experience.”
The Next Journey
It took a few years of trial and error, but Bucy and Halliday finished their project at The Lone Star community and began to contemplate what was next for them.
“Maybe our background as bankers led us here, or our continued obsession with the home buying experience — probably both — but we couldn’t get over the finance experience and the lack of tools and technology available,” Halliday said.
Faced with a decision between a planned new development, or a completely new venture in MH lending, the two landed on Zippy. Halliday admits the pair was more excited about developing a community from the ground up, but the Zippy co-founders kept discussing how they would hit their infill goals and deliver home ownership “the way it should be” and the financing experience always dominated the conversation.
Yet unnamed, the Zippy of their dreams would be a snappy, modern lending platform for today’s consumer, a web-based experience that is seamless and nearly immediate, backed by a team of industry veterans and experienced technologists.
“Let’s go fix this problem,” Halliday recalls saying to his now co-founder Bucy.
Bucy cemented the decision with what would be Zippy’s mantra, “Let’s do this.”
Great Tech + Amazing People = Happy Homeowners
So much of the industry was still paper-based at that time, and there was plenty of room for growth. When the pandemic hit, the housing sector went on a rocket ride and the fuel it needed was efficient finance technology.
“We wanted to create a digital front door for the homeownership journey for manufactured housing,” Bucy said. “This allows us to accept and work applications from anywhere in the world, 24-7. And that really opens things up.”
A top priority early on was the philosophy of partnering with a homebuyer in a way that delivers all the benefits of modern technology, paired with a dedicated home buying guide.
“We have a single person who works with the homebuyer all the way through the journey. We spent a lot of time envisioning and building a virtual close, where today our bilingual closers walk a buyer through their loan documents in a virtual closing room, ensuring they’re set up for success, from start to finish,” Bucy continued. “Of course, a hugely important stakeholder in MH ownership is the retailer. This part was the easiest to build, as we’d spent years dreaming up what we wish we had while selling homes.”
Zippy’s digital borrower portal keeps sellers updated on loan progress in real time, delivering new leads, loan status updates, document requests, closing updates, and digital marketing tools.
The Zippy Application Process
“The home buyer pulls out a smartphone and takes a photo of a QR code that pops up a form to gain residence at that specific community,” Halliday said. “It then lets us know there is someone who is interested in buying.”
The form has 10 fields. It is made to look simple from the user’s perspective, but contains a large amount of custom-built technology that runs sophisticated information about the location, community, and home, and then about the buyer.
“We can get a good offer to the buyer within seconds,” Bucy said.
The response to the original inquiry pops up in the app, and simultaneously goes to the applicant’s email. Then an individual they refer to as your designated ZippyGuide, a licensed mortgage loan originator, immediately places a call to the applicant to congratulate them on the beginning of their home buying journey, and asks them about their goals.
The customer is invited to a borrower portal, and can move forward independently uploading documents and making decisions only the consumer can make. Among other questions, it asks about the desired term for a loan, down payment amount, approximate home price, and whether the inquiry is for a single home or more than one. The closing can be done on a smartphone from any location and typically takes 15 minutes.
“The home buyer has all the information they need to make the right decision for themselves,” Bucy said. “We also recognize the challenges of the community owner and manager, so we have a custom-built portal that a community manager can load all of their info into and interact with us on the home buying journey so they know what’s happening throughout the process.”
The average residential transaction in the U.S. takes more than a month, Zippy currently averages half of that, and can close what they call “Go Go Go” loans in as little as five days, when everyone is aligned.
Fintech Draws Investor Interest
At press time, Zippy was available to customers in 12 states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Oregon, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, Texas, and Virginia. The plan is to double its presence during 2023, thanks to a strategic partnership with FirstBank.
“FirstBank has extensive experience in manufactured home lending and has invested in fintech partnerships that enable us to offer innovative solutions that meet the needs of our customers,” FirstBank Chief Innovations Officer Wade Peery said. “In today’s housing market, finding new paths to affordable homeownership is critical. This partnership will make buying a home possible for many new individuals and families.
Connecting with Community Owners, Residents
Halliday credits Bucy for identifying the manufactured housing industry opportunity, and Bucy credits Halliday with the inspiration to bring new technology to the space. The pair have continued to enjoy community ownership, building a great lending platform, and coming up with new ways to provide great places to live.
“We developed this really strong passion for the industry,” Bucy said.
“You see the value of well-built, modern, good-looking homes and the communities our industry is building today are truly stunning places to live,” he said. “These days it’s more home loans than playground building, but it still feels really good.”
Halliday said he and the Zippy team have loads of pride in the industry.
“We’re making a real impact on housing affordability,” Halliday said. “It will be our life’s work to help our industry deliver great homes to great people, and we’re so proud to do it.”
