Julian Castro & Doug Ryan

In recent news two fairly exciting things have happened for the manufactured housing industry.  Manufactured housing has begun to escape its dated reputation for being poor in quality, dangerous, and vulnerable to predatory lending practices.  Through the hard work of manufacturers in the development of new production methods, materials, and technology the industry has taken great strides to compare with and now exceed the quality and visual appeal of their site-built counterpart.  At the same time retailers, affordable housing advocates, and consumers have worked to educate politicians, lenders, and other potential home owners of the new realities in manufactured housing.

Recently the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Julian Castro, gave a speech praising the manufactured housing industry not just for offering a more affordable alternative to site-built homes, but for creating safe and energy efficient homes as well. Clearly manufacturers have made enormous strides in the quality of their product if they have gone from being shunned by the general public to being the center of praise and great admiration by a man whose job is to help Americans have access to quality and affordable housing.

In conjunction with Julian Castro, Doug Ryan, a man who has been at the forefront of lending reform with the Federal Housing Finance Agency is trying to make changes that would affect roughly 35% or manufactured housing consumers.  Currently manufactured home buyers who are putting homes on land they own are able to take advantage of conventional mortgage specifications because they are able to borrow money for the homes as real estate while most people who are borrowing to purchase a home that will be in a community or other form of leased land must classify the loan as chattel or personal property.  Doug is proposing to make lending changes that would allow for better lending treatment for leased land buyers by creating incentives for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to become involved in leased land lending.

Without getting into too much detail about the extreme financial differences between chattel loans and real estate loans, it is appropriate to state that those difference can be a deciding factor as to whether a person decides to buy or not.  When we see Doug Ryan making strides to increase borrowing opportunities for a group of people that make up 35% of our consumers, it gives all of us a reason to be excited.

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