The Manufactured Housing Institute’s Winter Meeting was held earlier this week in Austin, Texas.  The following is a brief summary of the topics discussed and information shared.

Everyone is doing their best to remain positive about the long-term prospects for our industry, but right now new home sales are undeniably slow and there wasn’t a great deal of positive news to announce.  Manufacturer’s new-home orders are sluggish and many are reporting temporary layoffs at plants due to lack of orders.  Specially, in the Pacific Northwest a range of manufacturers have missed production days in recent weeks and statistics point to a decrease of 30-40% or greater in activity.  This is surprising, given the relatively strong economy and high price of site built housing.  Nevertheless, business is challenging.  At the Louisville show in January (the industry’s largest) activity and attendance was dismal.  Most attendee’s said it was the worst ever and those comments had an interesting affect on another discussion – opening the show to the public.  Both Louisville and Kansas City are industry-only shows and many question the logic behind investing all the money and manpower it takes to put on a show like that and not sharing it with the public.  In the Pacific Northwest the Salem, OR manufactured home show each March has one industry-only day and four public days.  2006 attendance increased significantly over 2005.  On the other hand, we are the best kept secret in housing, so why make it easy for consumers to see our product?  So let’s just keep those doors locked and those buyers out.  How dare we even consider letting them in --- this is our business, not there’s!  (Editors note: Sarcasm can be both an effective literary tool and an endearing personality trait – Dave Barry). 

There is much good news to report on chattel financing (financing of homes in “parks” or land-lease communities).  Although Green Tree Servicing recently announced their exit from the lending side of the business, CU Factory Built Lending, 21st Mortgage, Origen Financial, Triad Financial, US Bank and Vanderbilt Mortgage remain committed and interest rates are reasonable, many in the 7-8% range.  Independent chattel mortgage brokers like HomeChoice Mortgage in Olympia, Washington and Financial Services Unlimited in Portland, Oregon report brisk business, both in purchase and refinancing (including cash-out).  If you are searching for a source to access most or all of the lenders above, contact one of these companies.

The National Communities Council met twice at the MHI Winter Meeting and covered a wide range of topics, including the Community Attributes System (CAS) --- with 2900 total MH communities now registered (1483 owned by someone who owns just one community) it is off to a good start but more community owners need to participate in this important resource/database.  Lenders are asking that all communities are registered on the CAS and Commonwealth supports this movement. For more information on the Community Attributes System go to  http://www.mhicas.org/  Also, MHVillage.com is helping to establish a nationwide database of manufactured homes for sale or sold and will play a key role in establishing a historical database of home resale activity.  Without a strong resale market it is nearly impossible to grow a fertile new home market. There is a flurry of legislation from coast to coast aimed directly at the manufactured housing business.  It would take page upon page to explain it all here, so contact MHI or your state association if you want to help (and believe me, they can use your help!).  Click here to read just a few samples of what’s going on:

The most exciting part of the MHI Winter Meeting was witnessing the wave of change that is beginning to take place.  Not only does everyone agree that we need an image makeover and a national image enhancement campaign, but new MHI Chairman Barry McCabe is working swiftly to right-size and streamline the MHI Board and its divisions so that the Institute can react faster to change and respond quicker to or needs.  I have complete faith that Barry is the perfect leader to implement quick and meaningful change.  Having said that, in other meetings it was disappointing to hear so much of the same old stuff --- how we got here, what went wrong, blah, blah, blah.  Enough!  We need a real commitment to change --- FAST.  We need specifics, not hopeful reassurances.  Many of us have stepped to the plate and volunteered to be part of the solution.  There is little disagreement that we need help --- deciding in what order to tackle the challenges could be the tough and potentially painful part.  And getting everyone in the industry to commit to a sweeping, almost cultural change will not be easy, but it must be done.  MHI’s search committee is working to attract the best possible person to replace Chris Stinebert as President, but Barry isn’t waiting for that selection to get the ball rolling.  He’s off and running --- its going to be an interesting year.

At our 2007 Manufactured Housing Industry Summit, held in Portland on January 25th, Randy Rowe, George Allen and Gub Mix made terrific presentations.  All were cautiously optimistic and all were straightforward in their remarks.  But it was Gub who ended the event by challenging us to change --- from stem to stern.  As he said, our consumers didn’t want to buy a construction process, they wanted to buy a home.  Make the process transparent, seamless and respectful and consumers will respond.  As Ray Kroc said:  “Take care of the customer and the business will take care of itself.”

Greg Harmon - President
Commonwealth Real Estate Services
E-mail: greg@cwres.com
Telephone 503.244.2300 Ext. 101