George Allen / EducateMHC Blog Mobile Home & Land Lease Community Advocate & Expert

January 25, 2022

‘GREAT RESET’ REVISITED

Filed under: Uncategorized — George Allen @ 1:54 pm

Blog Posting # 674 @ 28 January 2022: EducateMHC

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, realty asset class historian, trend spotter, education resource & textbook supplier for land lease communities throughout North America!

To input this blog and or connect with EducateMHC, telephone (317) 888-3815, email gfa7156@aol.com and/or visit www.educatemhc.com Previous phone #3 no longer connected.

Motto: ‘U Support US & WE Serve U!’ Goal: to promote HUD-Code manufactured housing and land lease communities as U.S. # 1 source of affordable attainable housing! Be MHM certified!
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INTRODUCTION: The Great Reset, it seems, is on just about everyone’s mind these days – even the folk in manufactured housing, based on the encouraging email responses received to date. And ladies, get familiar with WAMH – you’ll likely want to participate in this latest advocacy in behalf of manufactured housing and land lease communities. And POTPOURRI is back with more wise and pithy information and advice. GFA

I.

‘GREAT RESET’ REVISITED

It’s easy to tell when I ‘hit a nerve’ with a blog posting. The email messages and phone calls pour into me. Such was the reaction to last week’s posting titled: ‘A Great Reset For Manufactured Housing & Community Portfolios?’ Equal number of responses from the housing manufacturing side of the industry and community portfolios.

“This Great Reset will take time. I’d emphasize rural housing, retirement cabins, RVs for low cost family and transient labor, making manufactured homes coded – e.g. UBC or whatever, to ease acceptance by a well-established and respected NAHB.”

“I read your blog. This is one of your best. (&) Redouble one’s efforts to have all in-community homes looking great, and homeowner/site lessees (my term, GFA) fully engaged in promoting the land lease community lifestyle. “I would never have asked DC for help George. Geesh!”

Further thoughts on the subject. While the final tally won’t be effected for another week (i.e. Think 1 February 2022), we’ll certainly, as an industry, eclipse the 100,000 shipments of new HUD-Code homes, unseen since year 2006 and its’ tanking figure of 117,510+/-.*1 Hmm. Wonder if we’ll meet or better the 2005 figure of 146,644 – or 146,744 – depending on who one asks? In any event, as I’ve pointed out before, it’s unlikely we’ll ‘ever’ return to the acme year records of 372,943+/- in 1998 (Ah, the year of the Developer Series homes) and 579,940 in 1973. Wonder what blame corporate ‘consolidation’ plays, if any, in this compression of national market presence? And likewise, where community portfolios are concerned; will continued ‘consolidation’ (i.e. absorption of smaller property portfolios into larger ones), have minimal or profound effect on sole proprietorship development of raw land into full scale land lease communities? So there’s still a lot out there to think about relative to a Great Reset for manufactured housing and land lease communities.

End Note.

1. Why the +/- clarification of some annual MH shipment totals? In those instances, according to comprehensive listings (i.e. from 1955 to present day) in the text SWAN SONG, there are, and continue to be, different annual new HUD-Code housing shipment totals researched by the Institute of Building Safety & Technology (‘IBST’) and reported by HUD and MHARR, compared to similar-but-different totals posted by the Manufactured Housing Institute (‘MHI’) and its’ member companies. To order a copy of said text, visit www.educatemhc.com


II.

HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

We’ve been here before! The current issue of MHINSIDER magazine, in a feature article penned by publisher Patrick Revere, ‘New Organization to Advance Women in Manufactured Housing’ introduces readers to Women Advancing Manufactured Housing or WAMH. He introduces Maria Horton, MHM, of Newport Pacific Family of Companies, and Justine Natalie of Dynamic MH Solutions as two of five organizers of this effort to advocate for manufactured housing and land lease communities. Three additional organizers include Sherrie Clevenger from CoreLogic, Maryuri Barberan, MHM, from Pentagon Properties, and Kim Schultz-Rainford from Innovative Housing Solutions. Plans for WAMH took shape during a roundtable discussion at the recent SECO conference.

What’s the precedent to WAMH? Well, way back in the mid-1990s, around the time MHI’s National Communities Council (‘NCC’) division took shape, a group of female owners/operators of (then) manufactured home communities agreed to meet at annual Manufactured Housing Congress events in Las Vegas, to network and work together to advance the role of women in the manufactured housing industry. The name of that group was Manufactured Housing Executive Women, or MHEW for short. Two contemporary RV/MH Hall of Fame inductees, Christine Lindsey, MHM, of UMH Properties, and Dee Pizer, MHM, of Zeman MHC, were among that august group. While all started off well and enthusiastically, in a few years, interest in the group waned, and it eventually stopped meeting.

This time around, given the proven leadership abilities of the five organizers, expect to see WAMH grow and take a place among organizations dedicated to advancing women executives throughout the manufactured housing industry. If interested in getting in touch with these women, let me know via gfa7156@aol.com


III.

SOME MORE POTPOURRI

Here’s a Short Course in Human Relations, dating all the way back to the year 1978 or before.

The 6 most important words: ‘I admit I made a mistake’

The 5 most important words: ‘You did a good job’

The 4 most important words: ‘’What is your opinion?’

The 3 most important words: ‘Will you please?’

The 2 most important words: ‘Thank you!’

The 1 most important word: ‘We’

The least important word: ‘I’

Those of you who’ve read my autobiography, From SmittyAlpha6 to MHMaven, now know that besides being a USMC combat engineer officer, while in Vietnam during 1968 & 69, I was trained in Okinawa, to be an Atomic Demolition Munitions (‘ADM’) technician. It paid an extra $100.00 per month. And I was expected, when so ordered, to mate up with my ADM (the size of a soccer ball and strapped to my chest) to be transported by low flying helo, into North Vietnam, near Hanoi. There I’d emplace the ADM, set the timer and ready the firing device before attempting to return alone to South Vietnam. I recently came across more information about the previously secret ‘back pack nuke’, powerful enough to “destroy a dam…drop a mountainside down on an invading army, vaporize essential command and control installations, wipe out a large formation of tanks….” Nuclear weapon protocols at the time required two technicians present when utilizing ADMs, but the Marine Corps opted for just one man. There are two photographs in the aforementioned texts showing just how destructive ADMs could be.

You from Michigan? Well nearly a quarter century ago the Michigan Department of Labor, Safety Education, and Training created and widely distributed a set of 2 ½” X 4 ½” business card-like paper instructions relative to SKILL in LEADING, SKILL in PLANNING, SKILL in INSTRUCTION, and several additional topics. I came across the cards early on in my management career and have shared their wisdom widely. For example, here are the four steps recommended ‘How to Handle a Problem’:
Get the Facts. Be sure to have the whole story.
Weigh and Decide. Don’t jump to conclusions.
Take Action. Don’t pass the buck.
Check Results. Did your action help operations?

In this instance I used this Michigan wisdom to create and copyright the first of five Management Wisdom cards (1979) – since distributed in every MHM class. My parallel?
Select a Problem, a Task – Consider it a challenge, an opportunity.
Define it, Document it.
Study & Question Every Detail
Research & Organize Data
Refine & Digest Data
Produce & Rework Ideas
Implement & Monitor
Follow-up & Recap Results.
If you’d like a free copy of this Management Wisdom card, let me know via gfa7156@aol.com

Are you interested in learning ‘How to Eat Crawdads’? Maybe I’ll have nerve to share with you in days to come. For now, here’re the first and last paragraphs:
“Use only live, healthy crawdads. Boil until they turn red and float to the top, usually about eight minutes after the water returns to a roiling boil. The rule of thumb is a gallon of water to two pounds of crawdads.” (&)
“The only adult drink permitted with boiled crawdads is beer. Kids can drink soda. Leave the wine in the cellar.”
Oh yes, there’s more….



George Allen, CPM, MHM
EducateMHC

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