MH Digest

The CEO said the house he stays in most often is a $45,000 house in South Texas. “I’m in love with the place and have done a lot with the place,” Musk said.
The U.S. faces a shortage of roughly 3.8 million housing units, which is causing a reassessment of housing options beyond single-family and multifamily homes. Manufactured homes stand out because of their lower production costs and quick assembly.

The Kentucky League of Cities (KLC) conference is occurring in Lexington. It brings cities across Kentucky together, connecting them with services and finding potential solutions to issues facing their respective municipality.
One of those issues is lack of affordable housing. At the conference, city stakeholders from across the Commonwealth could view a manufactured model home. Those homes could be completed within a matter of days, rather than months.
“You have the same person that does trim work every day; that’s their job. You have the same person that frames this wall; that’s their job — and so just the efficiency of the building,” Logan Hanes, KMHI.

Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran recently showed off her new L.A. manufactured home on TikTok. The open floor plan places the dining area next to the cozy living room. The white couch against the white walls creates a sleek but beachy look, while the round wood table ties the space in with the rest of the home. “I think I like this more than the New York City home,” Corcoran said.

Jackson, Mississippi – The average household income for a family of four in Jackson is $50,000 to $60,000 a year. Chloe Dotson, City Director of Planning and Development, said they want to build a home where the average family can be an owner.
“The customizable model home we are showing you today is roughly 1,300-square feet, three bedroom, two bath with an appliance package, a kitchen island and a front porch. The offsite build price is about $129,000,” said Dotson.

Findings suggest that manufactured housing is a viable alternative to site-built housing which, in the face of increased barriers to homeownership nationwide, could be more widely utilized. By addressing regulatory barriers, improving financing options, and increasing awareness about the cost advantages of manufactured homes, more homeownership opportunities can be created for low- and moderate-income households. The potential benefits of manufactured housing should not be overlooked, and concerted efforts should be made to leverage this promising solution to address the affordable housing crisis in our communities.

WBUR, In Massachusetts, housing advocates estimate developers need to build 100,000 more homes per year to keep up with demand. A low housing inventory has helped push the area’s rents and home prices to among the highest in the country, frustrating many residents. Real estate experts say the region must build more housing — and fast.

Part of the solution may come from factories. That is, manufacturing the modules that make up a building and then assembling them on construction sites. This can slash the time it takes to build new units.

Manufactured housing quietly provides deeply affordable starter homes at an average construction cost under $90,000, but is easily excluded by some communities. Manufactured housing remains a grievously underutilized, deeply affordable housing resource in Rust Belt cities with low land prices, and in rural areas in northeastern states.

Manufactured housing has long mattered most in low-income and rural areas with low land prices. In states with the most liberal regulatory treatment of manufactured housing, concentrated in the South and West, manufactured homes supply between 20 percent and 60 percent of all new single-family homes.

If your credit score is 580 or higher, you can finance as much as 96.5% of the home’s purchase price, so you’ll only need to put down 3.5%. How much you can borrow will depend on where you live — for instance, homebuyers in places like New York and San Francisco can borrow more because the cost of living is higher than in other areas.
One way to find approved FHA loan lenders is to go directly to the HUD lender list search tool. You can search for lenders by city, county, state, ZIP code and mortgage type. [Link]

FreddieMac – If you are buying a manufactured home to install on land that you already own, or are planning to purchase, it can be titled as real property once the home is affixed to the land. If you are renting a site in a manufactured home community or leasing on private land, you will likely need to title the home as personal property.

This isn’t a trailer in a trailer park. Instead, it’s a quality built home that is almost identical to traditional “site-built” housing, except it is built in a factory and transported to the lot where it will be placed on a foundation.
The average cost in July of last year of a new manufactured home in Georgia was $82,000 for a single-wide and only $158,700 for a brand new double-wide three-bedroom two-bath home. That is from a recent report of the Census Bureau’s Manufactured Housing Survey (MHS).