Blog Posting # 862; Copyright 10 October 2025. EducateMHC
Know this! HUD-Code manufactured housing (‘MH’) is federally-regulated, performance-based, affordable-attainable, factory-built housing (a.k.a. one of four types of offsite construction: manufactured, modular, panelized housing &Park Model RVs), routinely paired with traditional stick-built housing (a.k.a. onsite construction). Land lease communities (a.k.a. manufactured home communities & ‘mobile home parks’) are the commercial real estate (‘CRE’) component of MH. And along with various types of housing finance (e.g. chattel or ‘home only’ loans, and real estate mortgages), constitute the post-production segment of the MH industry.
EducateMHC is an official MH historian, trade term trend tracker, as well as perennial MH information source! Contact EducateMHC via (317) 881-3815; email gfa7156@aol.com, and www.educatemhc.com, to purchase Community Management in the Manufactured Housing Industry (This book belongs in every land lease community nationwide!), and SWAN SONG – History of land lease communities & official record of annual MH production totals since 1955.
And my autobiography, from SmittyAlpha6 to MHMaven, describes personal combat adventures in Vietnam as a USMC lieutenant, a 45 year entrepreneur business career in MH & community ownership, as well as freelance consulting and authoring of 20 nonfiction texts.
George Allen is the sole emeritus member of the Manufactured Housing Institute (‘MHI’), a founding board member of MHI’s National Communities Council (‘NCC’) division, RV/MH Hall of Fame enshrinee, Allen Legacy columnist & editor at large for the popular MHInsider magazine.
TOTAL U.S. HOUSING COMPLETIONS DURING AUGUST 2025
George Allen’s Estimated Total of New Onsite & Offsite Construction Homes Together!
This TOTAL U.S. HOUSING COMPLETIONS REPORT for August 2025 combines online data from the U.S. Census Bureau monthly report of estimated annual onsite construction (i.e. 1,608,000 units divided by 12 months = 134,000 units @ August), then combine this monthly total with 11,776 offsite construction completions for the same month. The offsite construction total is comprised of 1) HUD-Code manufactured housing production data (@ 8,696 units) per Institute for Building Technology & Safety (‘IBTS’)*1; 2) modular & panelized housing units estimated to be 2% of the onsite construction completions total (@ 134,000 X .02% = 2,680 units); and, 3) RV Industry of America (‘RVIA’) reporting 400 Park Model RVs produced.*2 So together, 134,000 onsite construction units plus 11,776 offsite construction units = 145,776 onsite & offsite construction completions together!
So, what’s going on here? Why the partial reporting of U.S. housing completions (.e. only onsite construction units) each month by the U.S. Census Bureau? I have no informed response. But it appears to me that since onsite construction totals are akin to stick-built housing alone (except for the occasional permanently-sited HUD-Code manufactured home); this is helpful information to traditional builders. Then there’s the happenstance that offsite construction data posting (i.e. IBTS & RVIA monthly reports) occurs a month later than the U.S. Census Bureau online posting.
Consequence of this partial reporting? Just using August 2025 housing completion totals (134,000 onsite construction & 11,776 offsite construction), total housing completions of 145,776 units is underreporting by 11,776 units – that’s 141,312 units when annualized, i.e. ‘more than a one month total of onsite construction’ units! So, U.S. Census Bureau appears to be underreporting total U.S. housing permits, starts & completions by 10,000+/- units per month and 100,000+ units per year! How long is this travesty to continue before correcting?
U.S. affordable housing crisis. Just how bad is it really? At the levels reported by the U.S. Census Bureau? OR, should offsite construction units be added to onsite construction unit totals to provide a more accurate data picture for housing planners and professionals?*3 The answer should be obvious to housing practitioners!
As we’ve said before, this ‘Total U.S. Housing Completions Report’ is a work in progress. Let us know what you think of this ghosting interplay between onsite and offsite housing completion statistics: gfa7156@aol.com
End Notes.
- Housing data source reporting is not without its’ challenges. Take the IBTS as an example. For August 2025 it reported 8696 new HUD-Code homes as being shipped, including 26 Destination Pending units (i.e. unshipped at time of reporting). Well, the Manufactured Housing Institute (‘MHI’) reports to its’ members 8,688 new HUD-Code homes shipped, eight units fewer than what IBTS reported to them. This is because MHI, after deducting the 26 Destination Pending units from IBTS’ total, adds back the number of Destination Pending units deducted the previous month (July). As long as this confusing practice continues, the MH industry will never realize universally accurate reporting of HUD-Code housing shipments!
- Park Model RVs. The question sometimes arises, ‘Why include Park Model RVs’ as part of offsite construction? Two reasons. First, an increasing number of Park Model RVs (i.e. 400 square feet or less in size) are used as permanent and seasonal dwellings across the U.S., e.g. entire Park Model RV villages in the state of Florida and elsewhere. Second, including Park Model RVs serves as a ‘place holder’ for accessory dwelling units (‘ADUs’), yet another increasingly popular form of housing (i.e. Think ‘tiny houses’).
- Yet another issue lurks in this reporting of ‘Total U.S. Housing Completions’. Has to do with ‘manufactured housing as percentage of single-family home starts’. MHI in its’ Monthly Economic Report dated 3 October 2025, covering August 2025, claims: “Manufactured housing accounted for 10.0% of single-family home starts in August 2025.” However, given the accuracy of numbers reported in the previous paragraphs, it appears the correct answer to this question is not 10 percent, but 6 ½%. How so? MHI-reported 8688 HUD-Code MHs divided by 134,000 onsite construction units equals 6 ½%
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George Allen