Manufactured Housing News

The United States is currently facing a persistent shortage of affordable housing, which has spread from densely packed cities to many metropolitan areas across the country.

Despite the recent improvements in housing output, the housing affordability crisis continues to deepen, driving up home prices and rental rates faster than wages.

According to NLIHC, most renters spend 30% or more of their income on rent. This basically means that many Americans aren't able to comfortably pay rent or buy a home, and still have enough money to cover all of their monthly expenses.

Building traditional homes takes longer and costs more, and zoning rules still limit what types of homes can be built in some areas. These factors worsen the housing crisis, making it more urgent to find solutions that expand affordable housing options for more people.

Why Manufactured Homes Are the Best Solution to the Housing Affordability Crisis

Built in factory-controlled environments according to a strict set of building guidelines, today's manufactured homes are completely different, particularly in terms of quality, safety, and aesthetics, from the trailer homes built a few decades ago. Our research indicates that manufactured housing delivers a viable solution to the affordable housing crisis for the following reasons.

Affordability

Affordability remains one of the most distinctive advantages of factory-built housing. But the good news is that the cost advantages of today's manufactured homes don't stem from inferior quality standards.

Manufactured homes cost less mainly because builders buy materials in bulk, use efficient factory production, and follow standardized designs.

Furthermore, most manufactured homes can be built in about half the time of traditional construction. Due to all these factors, a manufactured home is easier, faster, and more cost-effective to build compared to a similar traditionally built home.

Consistent Quality

Unlike traditional on-site construction, manufactured homes are built in factories where skilled workers use precise machines and tools to ensure consistent quality.

What's more, every step of the building process takes place under the supervision of a licensed engineer to guarantee the quality and safety of each home's sub-assemblies. As a result, manufactured homes are often built to higher construction standards than site-built homes.

Safety

Manufactured homes built under the HUD Code are just as safe as traditional homes—and sometimes even safer. Factory construction keeps materials dry and protected under controlled conditions, unlike site-built homes where materials are exposed to weather.

Bad weather—like freezing temperatures, rain, or extreme heat—can cause delays and quality problems during or after construction.

Flexibility

To build a durable, safe, and high-quality traditional home, builders need to follow a series of steps in a specific order. This basically means that they can't skip some steps to speed up the process. With a manufactured home, the manufacturer is able to build all the sub-assemblies and components off-site, at the same time, while the builder is preparing the site and laying the foundation.

What's more, most manufacturers have multiple production lines, meaning they can work on different projects simultaneously. Once all the subassemblies of a factory-built home are manufactured and transported to the site, the installer can put the home together in a matter of days.

Because manufacturers and installers continue to standardize different processes and develop new technologies that allow them to build manufactured homes faster and more efficiently, the cost of producing factory-built homes is expected to drop even more in the future.

In addition, the faster a manufactured home is put on the market, the sooner it will bring returns. All these will lead to significant cost savings, which will be passed on to manufactured homebuyers.

Another important aspect is that many local governments are already implementing more lenient zoning and land-use regulations. As the new regulations will no longer prevent the installation of factory-built homes where they're needed most, manufactured housing is the only solution that lends itself best to the affordable housing crisis.