As the housing market prices more and more Americans, federal lawmakers are taking a closer look at manufactured housing as a more affordable supply alternative to a traditional self-built home.
Nevertheless, misconceptions about new housing developments – that they are dilapidated, ugly or unsafe – continue to plague a segment of the single-family home market. currently home to 7.2 million American households.
Lawmakers in both parties increasingly see manufactured housing as a crucial way to increase housing affordability. The Affordable HOMES Act, which the US House of Representatives passed last week is part of that vision.
The legislation, which is largely aimed at encouraging and streamlining the development of manufactured housing, would remove regulatory burdens. For example, it would give HUD exclusive authority over energy efficiency standards for manufactured homes and end overlapping oversight by the Department of Energy. Lawmakers argue that cutting such red tape could lower manufactured home prices by as much as $10,000 per unit.
The Manufactured Housing Institute reports that newly manufactured homes are selling for less than a third of the price of site-built homes. The relative affordability of such homes is clearly something that lawmakers in Washington have taken note of.
Gene Kim, Executive VP of CRE Strategies at Ascent Developer Solutions (AscentDS), shared The builder’s newspaper that manufactured housing can and should play an important role in increasing housing affordability. AscentDS, a private lending and institutional debt platform backed by Elliott Investment Management LP, recently serving single-family homes, homebuilders and multifamily developers announced an expansion to provide financing to industrial housing developers.
However, lingering misconceptions and long-standing stigmas about manufactured housing communities continue to weigh on the industry and sometimes make it difficult to gain local approval.
Misconceptions continue to hinder manufactured housing
There is still a large NIMBY effect on the homes produced. Although newly constructed communities are typically built to higher safety standards and increasingly offer high-quality housing, many people still associate these properties with older, higher-risk mobile home parks.
A recent briefing from the Comments from the National Association of Home Builders:
“Manufactured homes are a specific type of factory-built homes that meet the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards code. To qualify, a manufactured home must be a ‘movable dwelling, 8 feet or more wide and 40 feet or more long, built on a permanent chassis.'”
Local concerns include widely held assumptions that manufactured communities reduce neighboring property values and negatively impact an area’s aesthetics, crime rates and additional infrastructure costs. Kim from AscentDS said these views are often misleading.
“When people often talk about mobile home parks, they often think of a 1960s caravan park. But the communities being delivered today are of much higher quality. It’s almost necessary to have a separate asset class and asset theme category because the quality is so high, both in the community in general and the quality of the homes,” he explained.
Still, mainstream NIMBY activists can make it difficult to entitle manufactured housing, meaning newly manufactured communities tend to be on the larger side, Kim noted.
“If you can secure those rights, they will be for larger communities, north of two, three, four hundred locations.”
There is also a common misconception that manufactured homes do not increase in value as much as self-built homes. This can sometimes create a negative perception that deters some people from joining such communities.
Census data 2025 Manufactured Home Survey however, contradicts this view. Between 2000 and the second quarter of 2025, typical sales prices of manufactured homes and site-built homes rose at nearly the same pace.
Geographic distribution of manufactured homes
Manufactured housing makes up about 5.4% of the total housing stock nationally, according to a December Storage Cafe report. However, there are major differences depending on the state. New Mexico (15%), Mississippi (14%), West Virginia (13%), Alabama (12%) and Louisiana (12%) have the highest number of manufactured homes as a percentage of total housing stock.
All of these states have high rural poverty and rank in the bottom ten in median household income. This should come as no surprise, as manufactured homes are a crucial housing option for families living in certain rural areas or small towns. Almost 55% of manufactured homes are in rural areas, compared to less than 25% of single-family homes.
According to the NAHB:
“While most manufactured home residents (53%) live in rural areas, single-family residents are especially concentrated (67%) in urbanized areas – defined as areas with a population of 50,000 or more. By comparison, only 33% of manufactured home residents live in urbanized areas. Residents of both manufactured homes and single-family homes are less common in urban clusters – areas with populations between 2,500 and 50,000 – making up only 13% and 9% respectively.”
Sun Belt markets such as Texas, Florida and Arizona are currently major hotspots for manufactured housing, due to strong population growth and permissive zoning laws. Overall, the South continues to dominate the national housing market, as the region accounted for nearly 70% of new home sales in October.
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