A Review of Barriers to Greater Use of Manufactured Housing for Entry-Level Homeownership

Ranking counties by the share of the housing stock that is manufactured housing, these homes make up 28 percent of the housing stock in counties in the highest quintile, 11 percent of the stock in the middle quintile, and just 2 percent of homes in counties in the lowest quintile. [...] The establishment of the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards (the HUD Code) by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in 1976 was intended to create standards for the design and construction of these homes to address concerns about the safety and durability of the earlier “mobile” homes. [...] In addition to market factors, the nature of the manufactured housing supply chain also influences the availability and appeal of 25 manufactured housing in areas where consumers are both less likely to own land on which to site a manufactured home and less inclined to want to take on the role of having to site these homes. [...] When the differences in financing costs are applied to the estimates of the cost of construction for manufactured housing versus site-built homes reported in Herbert, Reed, and Shen (2023), the raw cost advantage of manufactured housing over site-built housing is shown to be swamped by the differences in financing terms. [...] As the first step of our county categorization, we determine the prevalence of manufactured housing in a county by comparing the number of manufactured homes in a county relative to the number of single-family homes.