Back in junior high, I had a fun summer job painting manufactured homes across eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas.
Of course, a young teen can’t be trusted to paint a whole house. In reality, a relative had contracts with Jim Walters Homes to barnstorm the region and paint homes. My menial job was to paint the faux shutters and clean paintbrushes.
Nonetheless, in those formative years, I grew to appreciate manufactured homes. It was refreshing to see so many people, many of them retirees and veterans, find affordable homes in rural areas.
So, it was good to see the continuing upward trend in the Texas Manufactured Housing Survey’s numbers. According to TMHA’s report, the industry experienced a steady increase in new orders and sales volume in September.
The Texas A&M Real Estate Center and the TMHA have partnered to produce a monthly survey of business conditions and expectations surrounding the manufactured housing industry.
Manufactured-home shipments generally decline in September, but the TMHS indicates that plant production has expanded, says Rob Ripperda, TMHA’s vice president of operations.
“That’s good news and means plants are ramping up as we move into October, typically their most productive month,” he says.
The industry had its challenges. Supply-chain disruptions and labor-supply contractions have prevented full-capacity production, resulting in an increase in backlogs. In addition, the prices of raw materials have been on the rise. The cost of lumber has spiked since March and could continue to increase as forest fires along the West Coast impact supply.
Ripperda says quoted deliveries are extending well into the first quarter of next year, so materials shortages are the “most pressing concern on factory manager’s minds, but it hasn’t slowed them down yet.”
Manufactured housing has a big presence in Texas. According to Statista, Texas has the nation’s most manufactured housing units with 108,282 in April. Florida was a distant second with 38,792 and Louisiana third with 37,868. Manufactured housing also includes mobile home units. Texas also is home to 20 manufactured home production plants, the most in the U.S.
Manufactured housing is a home unit constructed primarily or entirely off-site at factories and then transported to a home site. The homes are built as single- or multi-section under a federal building code administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Mobile homes are manufactured homes built before June 15, 1976. The cost of construction per square foot is typically less than a traditional home that is constructed on-site.
“The manufactured housing industry is providing a product that is increasingly attractive to many homebuyers, especially those looking to migrate outside of urban areas,” says Dr. Harold Hunt, Real Estate Center research economist.
