Help For Low-Income Homebuyers: Obama Signs Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Bill; Oregon, and New Mexico Look to Utilize Fiscally Responsible Manufactured Housing

It’s Monday, August 8, 2016, and thanks to Pres. Obama, help for low-income homebuyers appears to be on the way; Oregon looks at manufactured housing to solve their affordability crisis, and New Mexico’s fiscally responsible residents look at manufactured housing to help fund their retirement years.

Those are some of your more interesting headlines from the past week – let’s exercise a little due diligence and inspect these stories further.

Obama Signs H.R. 3700  – As ManufacturedHomes.com reported on July 25th, 2016, the U.S. Congress had passed the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization bill  and submitted it to President Obama. As expected, Obama signed the bill into law on Friday. The significance of this legislation is that heretofore manufactured homes have remained the only non-subsidised form of housing in the nation. According to the National Mortgage News:

Currently, the average cost of a new manufactured home is $65,000, and with Pres. Obama’s signature officially on HR 3700, vouchers can now be used to help cover the cost of buying your next manufactured home, including taxes and insurance.

Portland, Oregon Considers Manufactured Homes as Solution To Affordable Housing Crisis – Charles Hales, the mayor, is upbeat after his return from last week’s conference of U.S. Mayors. Boasting, “Portland is a model of innovation and leadership.” Hales then acknowledged that Portland is “learning from other cities so that we can do things better.” Concerned with correcting urban blight and simultaneously preserving low-income housing, city officials are turning to the long maligned 400-plus vacant homes on Portland’s east side, identified as ‘Zombie Homes’ by the Portland Tribune. Hales also noted that a third of the nation’s mayors – from Boston to Durham, North Carolina to Dallas, and even in Utah’s Wasatch front, included a common component: the use of nonprofit organizations to take control (and sometimes ownership) of these properties for the benefit of low-income families in need of housing. Sounding the alarm for those fiscally challenged would-be homeowners in the Pacific Northwest, the Portland Tribune recently reported the hyperactive real estate market is driving many mobile home parks to the point of extinction. Interesting factoid: Approximately 3,200 households in the greater Portland area live in a mobile home or manufactured housing park – unfortunately, they generally don’t own the dirt their unit resides on. While a perplexing problem, here’s an idea: Portland could step in and make it easier for nonprofits or housing authorities to buy vulnerable parks. Example of fiscal responsibility: Rather than spending the projected $199,000 per unit on renovations/preservation, Terry McDonald, the executive director of St. Vincent de Paul, estimates it would cost approximately $40,000 to put a new mobile home in an existing park. A fraction of the $199,000 per unit the city projects it will spend to build or preserve apartments if voters approve a $258.4 million affordable housing bond measure on the November ballot. Fixing up abandoned homes and preserving manufactured housing may not be sexy, but as McDonald cautions. “If we ignore this reservoir of affordable housing we do so at the larger society’s peril.”

The Cyclical Nature of Homeownership In New Mexico – Retirees look to extract a champagne lifestyle from a beer budget: Lower costs, built-in amenities and the possibility of remaining– or for that matter, becoming – a homeowner have heightened the appeal of the manufactured homes.  At least according to Mark Duran, the longtime executive director of the New Mexico Manufactured Housing Association.Buyers are a diverse and nuanced group! From first-time home buyers dipping their toes in the home ownership waters to the sophisticated and seasoned retirees, many of whom are now cycling back to manufactured homes by cashing out the equity of a site-built home. Coming in second to only South Carolina, New Mexico sells more manufactured homes on a per capita basis than any other state. That said, why do so many people choose manufactured housing over traditional stick-built construction? With an average sales price of approximate $65,000, according to the manufactured housing Institute, cost is certainly a big factor. Currently, the median home price in Albuquerque starts at around $180,000, and increases dramatically based on the age of the home. Meanwhile, the price of a relatively new manufactured home can  cost as low as $30,000 to $40,000 for a single-section home. Representing significant savings, the average sales price of a manufactured home is still only about $65,000 in 2016, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute.