Manufactured Homes: What’s in a Name?

Recently I attended the annual convention of the California Manufactured Housing Institute (C.M.H.I) at the Pechanga Hotel and Resort in Temecula, Ca.

I look forward to attending every year, as it gives me an opportunity to mingle with the “old guard” (like myself) of the industry while getting to know the younger “upstarts” in the business – those who will lead the next generation of the manufactured housing industry.

There was a refreshing air of optimism by attendees about the re-emerging California manufactured housing climate – one that has not been prevalent in the past few years. This anticipation exists in the industry across the nation for those that have survived the housing crisis of the past 5-6 years.

With everyone in a good mood I decided to covertly conduct an informal survey to determine what terminology is being used in describing our product.

In 1980 the federal government officially changed the name of our homes from “mobile home” to “manufactured home” in all government records to officially describe our product. Since then, industry leaders have been actively encouraging industry members to use ‘manufactured homes’ to better describe the homes we’ve been selling.

Over the years, our home has been referred to as a “trailer”, a “mobile home”, a “motor home”, a “trailer house”, a “coach”, or some other name that’s neither accurate nor contemporary, much less complimentary.

In Europe and Australia factory built homes are called “caravans”.

I have recently observed an ad in a newspaper listing for sale a double wide “coach”. The ad was placed by a dealer of re-sale homes.

There have been instances where a customer touring a model display has asked “Where is the engine?”

Anyway, back to my informal, unscientific survey of the industry convention attendees, cleverly disguised as “trailer talk” (oops!).

The older generation of convention attendees most often used the “mobile home” terminology in referring the home and the industry, whereas the younger generation more often used manufactured homes and manufactured housing as the industry they represent. No one used “trailer” or any of the other aforementioned connotations.

What does this all mean?

Isn’t it obvious? : A home by any other name is still a home.