Evergreen Issues & Evergreen Questions – & – 16 April 2019

Perspective. ‘Land lease communities, previously manufactured home communities, and earlier, ’mobile home parks’, comprise the real estate component of manufactured housing.’

This blog posting is sole national advocate, official ombudsman, historian, research reporter, education resource & online communication media for North American land lease communities

To input this blog, &/or affiliate with EducateMHC, formerly Community owners (7 Part) Business Alliance, or COBA7, use Official MHIndustry HOTLINE: (877) MFD-HSNG or 633-4764

Motto: ‘U Support US 7 WE Serve U!’ Online media goal? Inform, opine, transform & improve manufactured housing & land lease community performance! Visit www.educatemhc.com

INTRODUCTION: If you missed the Tunica MHSHow, you missed out on some superb education (e.g. Spencer Roane, MHM, holding forth on lease-option transactions); emergency preparedness training; and, most important of all, parallel introductions to Freddie Mac’s CHOICE &Fannie Mae’s ADVANTAGE housing finance guarantee programs! And if you read the Allen Legacy column on pp. 81 & 82 of MHINSIDER magazine, you were introduced to industry icon Dick Moore (selling our homes since 1958), and Elvis Presley, his first manufactured home in 1974. Dick and his wife Jean were with us at the Hollywood Casino, for dinner, Wednesday evening.

And if you have any doubt that real estate pros and affordable housing ‘housers’ aren’t paying attention to us today, be sure to read Part II that follows herein!

I.

An Open Letter to the FHFA
(‘Federal Housing Finance Agency’)
concerning
Freddie Mac’s CHOICE & Fannie Mae’s ADVANTAGE*1 Housing Finance Programs
for
Factory-built homes, with site-built housing features, fabricated per HUD-Code!

Blogger’s note to reader. What follows here is a taste of what will be ‘explored in detail’ within the May issue of the Allen Letter, available from EducateMHC via www.educatemhc.com

Therein will be full length narrative descriptions of the two ‘very similar but differently named’ New Type*2 of factory-built housing product. The feature story will begin with a ‘reminder’ of our sad history the last time we attempted to compete head-to-head with site-builders in the land & home package arena, using our brand of ‘big box = big bucks’ homes. Then there’ll be summary descriptions of Freddie Mac’s CHOICE & Fannie Mae’s ADVANTAGE programs, per very similar sets of six/seven features required of New Type factory-built homes, raising these questions:

‘Why confuse prospective home buying customers with two different GSE-specific terms for this New Type housing, when one umbrella term would/should suffice?’ (&) ‘Is this a territorial or charter or ‘some other’ issue not readily apparent to the eye?’

Furthermore, given the two GSE programs are designed for ‘land & home’ package application only, let’s not forget to also serve the fastest growing ‘traditional but renewed market’, that of new home placement on rental homesites within land lease communities, large and small, nationwide! Remember: Fewer than 12,000 new HUD-Code homes shipped directly into communities during 2009, but jumped to more than 28,000 by year end 2015, a 2.35 increase during just seven years!

Finally, there is, in this industry observer’s opinion, an important and historic Achilles ’ heel to this attempt to serve a middle growth market, bridging the $100-250 thousand gap between factory-built and site-built housing. If you’ve been around this business since the 1990s, you likely remember what happened that time around? And I’m not just talking about the housing finance liberties we took, that resulted in loss of easy access to chattel capital – a handicap that continues to this day, but another failed challenge as well! Think about it….

Well, that’s all there is for today’s blog posting, on this timely and evolving subject. Want to read more, be sure the Allen Letter comes across your desk in early May 2019.

End Notes.

1. Published moniker for the Fannie Mae program is MH Advantage. Since one of the recommendations for ‘improving & consolidating’ these two similar programs involves minimizing reference to manufactured housing or MH, said initials have been removed from this introductory piece.

2. New Type is the continuing generic moniker related to a new design of factory-built housing product birthed, via research and discussion, during the Manufactured Housing Institute’s (‘MHI’) annual meeting in October 2017 and continuing. Suggested ‘new names’ to date, will be covered in the aforementioned newsletter if not here.

II.

Where Will You Be on 16 April?

Real estate professionals have discovered factory-built housing, manufactured housing, and land lease communities – but not necessarily in that order. And said interest kinda culminates on 16 April 2019 as three distinctly different realty-related events occur the same day.

National Association of Realtors’ affiliate, the Appraisal Institute, along with Freddie Mac, will be hosting a class that day in Dallas – and several others following, introducing new and improved methodology for MAIs (‘Member, Appraisal Institute’) valuing HUD-Code manufactured housing in general, Freddie Mac’s CHOICE homes in particular! Other classes? 4/23 in Atlanta; 4/25 in Charlotte, NC; and 5/7 in Detroit, MI. A question that begs answering here is, why are Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae approaching this vital valuation matter separately, rather than as a joint effort? Visit ai.org for more information.

National Association of Realtors’ affiliate, the Institute of Real Estate Management (‘IREM’), that same day, hosts an hour long webinar introducing its’ Certified Property Manager (‘CPM’) members to HUD-Code manufactured housing and land lease communities. Cost? Only $99.00. Visit irem.org for more information. I’ll be teaching the webinar….gfa

National Housing conference, also on the 16th, hosts a daylong session in Washington, DC. Title of session? ‘Solutions for Housing Communication’. Visit nationalhousingconference.com for more information.

***

George Allen, CPM, MHM
EducateMHC
Box # 47024, Indianapolis, IN. 46247

(317) 346-7156

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