Manufactured Housing: The Quality Affordable Home Ownership Alternative
By Jimmy Hegeduis for Manufactured Home News, Manufactured Housing News
The following includes excerpts from a recent report titled “The State of The Nation’s Housing 2023,” by the Joint Center For Housing Studies Of Harvard University
Housing costs remain high relative to pre-pandemic levels. Between the beginning of 2020 and early 2023 nominal home prices rose an astounding 37.5 percent, helping to push up the median sales price for existing site-built homes from $283,000 just before the pandemic to $375,400 in March 2023. In the face of higher home prices, first-time home buyers must save even more to afford the up-front and down payment costs needed to secure a mortgage and require ever-higher incomes for the ongoing payments.
In 2021, just 24 percent of new site-built homes – or 236,000 units – were under 1,800 square feet, compared with 37 percent of new completions in 1999, likewise, manufactured housing, offer an even more affordable option, totaled just 113,000 shipments in 2022, the highest number of homes shipped in a decade, although up from recent lows, manufactured home shipments regularly topped 200,000 units annually in the 1980’s and 1990’s. Manufactured homes, with an average sales price in 2022 of just $127,000, excluding land, provides a more affordable alternative to site-built housing.
Increased mortgage interest rates (6.5% to 7.0% today) have led to significantly higher monthly payments for potential home buyers, and demand has cooled in response. As long as interest rates remain elevated, home prices are unlikely to continue to slow.
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