Blog # 573 @ 28 February; Copyright 2020; www.educatemhc.com
Perspective. ‘Land lease communities, previously manufactured home communities, and earlier, ‘mobile home parks’, comprise the real estate component of manufactured housing.’
EducateMHC is the online national advocate, asset class historian, data researcher, education resource, and communication media, for all land lease communities in North America!
To input this blog &/or affiliate with EducateMHC, telephone the Official MHIndustry HOTLINE: (877) MFD-HSNG or 633-4764. Also email gfa7156@aol.com and visit www.educatemhc.com
Motto: ‘U Support US & WE Serve U!’ Goal? Promote HUD-Code manufactured housing & land lease communities as U.S. main source of affordable attainable housing! Attend an MHM class!
INTRODUCTION: There’s a LOT to digest in this blog posting! First, I’ll be asking you to embrace ‘findings’ documented 29 years ago by a presidential commission looking into exclusionary land use regulations – akin to what HUD is preparing to do today! And while you’re at it, don’t miss reading the March 2020 issue of The Allen Confidential, containing 18 specific regulatory barriers to affordable housing – again; identified 29 years ago! And Part II. A cost effective way to get your firm’s product & service message in front of 500+/- portfolio owners! Finally; hope you’re as excited as I am we’ll get to network with one another during the MHCongress! We’re already working on something very special to share with you there….gfa
I.
Here We Go Again, & Again….
HUD & Others Seek to Reinvent the Wheel of Exclusionary Land Use Regulations
What follows here, is quoted from the October 2019 issue of the Allen Letter. “During the past 50 years there have been at least five “presidential commissions and federal initiatives to eliminate local barriers to housing development”. The most comprehensive of these enterprises was the 1991 HUD-appointed commission to “investigate the nature and extent of regulatory barriers to affordable housing” – with final report released in early July 1991. Have you ever seen or read it? Well here’re some particularly pithy extracts from Anthony Downs’ (of The Brookings Institute) summary of those findings.
• “The main problem concerning regulatory barriers to housing affordability was not whether they existed, or how large they were, but how to overcome the great political obstacles to reducing them.” P.1097. Think NIMBY, LULU & BANANA.*1
• “Regulatory barriers raise housing costs much more than most people realize.” Some say 50%! Remedial strategy? “Emphasize state government pressure on local governments.” P.1098. Year 2020 has federal government pressuring local governments
• Several key perspectives: “Deal with big-city and suburban barriers to housing affordability”; “the problems low-income households have in paying for decent housing without spending more than 30 percent of their income for shelter”; and, “difficulty many households have in buying their first homes, regardless of income.” p.1099
• Here’s where ‘the rubber meets the road’; “Why local governments retain regulations that raise housing costs.” It’s “a common error in social policy analysis: a mistaken presumption of common goals.” P.1100. Again, think NIMBY,LULU, & BANANA*1
• “Local zoning codes (that exclude almost all moderate or high-density housing developments, including most multifamily housing)”, and “other specific regulations: building codes, subdivision codes, environmental regulations, the Endangered Species Act, historic preservation regulations, and labor regulations.” P.1101. And there’s more!
• A list of 18 ‘Specific regulatory barriers to affordability’- well known since 1991, will be published in toto, in the March 2020 issue of recently reconfigured newsletter: The Allen Confidential. You don’t want to miss this, as it presupposes results of “HUD’s impending study, designed to identify and assess local barriers to the siting and utilization of HUD-Code manufactured homes.” From MHARR Press Release dated 18 February 2020.
• Here’re three thought-worthy observations contained in the afore-referenced 1991 report: First, “…eliminating all regulatory barriers to housing affordability would not come close to ending the existing housing affordability problems of America’s low-income household. Those are caused more by poverty and low incomes than by high housing costs.” P.1105. Second, “…any requirements for minimum unit sizes of above, say 500 square feet per unit, or for maximum densities of below, say 35 units per acre, are the result of local government regulations, not of physical requirement for satisfactory living.” (Here think Tiny houses, park model RVs, & other types of Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs). P.1009. And third, “…current housing quality and density standards in many communities are set unrealistically high in relation to the true economic capabilities of millions of American households.” P.111 In other words, “…a crucial way to reduce the costs of building housing is to reduce the quality standards such housing is legally required to meet.” P.1112.
Once again, you will want a copy of the aforementioned list of 18 Specific regulatory barriers to affordability, soon to be featured in the March 2020 issue of The Allen Confidential. It’s as close to ‘the school solution’, as we’ll get – and it’s been around now for 29 years! Makes it an historic document, a template for planning and action, and provides HUD-Code manufactured housing and land lease communities, a ‘leg up’ in affirming our long respected place as this nation’s best factory-built, unsubsidized housing alternative to solve the perennial affordable housing crisis!
End Note. 1. NIMBY = ‘Not in My Back Yard’; LULU = ‘Locally Unwanted Land Use’’; and, BANANA = ‘Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone!’ All three are today being pressured and modified as: YIMBY = ‘Yes, in My Back Yard!’; LULU = ‘Locally Useful Land Use’; and, ‘Build Appealing New Apartments Near Affordable housing need areas!’
II.
How to Put Your Firm’s Message in Front of 500+/- Portfolio Owners/operators of Land Lease Communities in North America!
Wager most of you don’t know this unique service exists in year 2020!. Well it does, and here’s how this one-of-a-kind direct mail marketing program works to serve you and 500+/- portfolio owners/operators of land lease communities domiciled throughout North America.
First off; the 600 direct mail communiques you prepare, are sent, via EducateMHC, directly to the decision-makers of portfolio firms. We exercise this exclusive, highly confidential mailing list several times a year, and always use first class postage – so delivery accuracy is near 100%! Why 600 rather than 500 pieces? While there are 500+/- sole proprietor owners, partnerships, corporations, and three public REITs in this property portfolio data base, we include another 100+/- ‘players’ whose property count does not yet qualify them as a portfolio (e.g. minimum of five standalone land lease communities, and or 500+ rental homesites in one or more properties).
The typical, though not mandated communique you prepare, can be a letter on your firm’s letterhead, accompanied by a descriptive brochure; sometimes even a bounce-back postcard – encouraging recipients to respond, even if not ready to respond to your product or service offer or request for information.
Who uses this direct mail marketing program? A wide variety of land lease community-related firms:
• Lenders and loan brokers specializing in land lease community mortgage origination and or refinance
• Independent, third party chattel capital lenders
• Real estate brokers with land lease communities, or portfolios, listed for sale
• Would be land lease community investors seeking one or more properties to acquire*1
• Land lease community owners/operators interested in selling one or more properties in particular local housing markets
• Insurance companies
• Aftermarket suppliers of product and services for manufactured housing
• National advocates for manufactured housing and or land lease communities seeking to increase their membership
So, what’s next, if interested in availing yourself of this valuable marketing service? Contact Erin Smith, MHM, via Educatemhc@gmail.com. Then prepare 600 pieces of direct mail. Envelopes must be stuffed, sealed, and stamped with first class postage stamps – not postage meter impressions. Then ship the package, along with requisite payment, to EducateMHC @ 170 Commerce Dr., Franklin, IN. 46131.
End Note. *1. Some of the largest property portfolio firms in business today, got their start ‘decades ago’ by exercising this unique data base of 500+/- land lease community portfolio owners/operators domiciled in the U.S. and Canada.
III.
Special Advance Notice!
Apparently I’ll join many of you at the MHCongress in Las Vegas @ 6-8 April 2020. Why am I telling you this? Plans are for me to participate in a professional property management panel presentation – which I hope you’ll attend! But I also have something else in mind to share with you as we network throughout the event. Based on material created and used during plant tours and home sales seminars, held these past several years at the RV/MH Hall of Fame in Indiana, we’ve printed an ‘In-community, HUD-Code Housing Marketing & Sales Tool’, available nowhere else! Hint. It contains latest FMR (Fair Market Rent) methodology; Six Right Ps of Marketing; and, uses of AMI (Area Median Income) & AGI (Annual Gross Income) to affordably ‘size’ new homes and rental homesites desired by homebuyers/site lessees!
George Allen, CPM, MHM