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

March 31, 2022

NEW HOME FOR ‘INNOVATIONS IN

Filed under: Uncategorized — George Allen @ 1:33 pm

MH (the ‘I’M HOME’) NETWORK’

Blog Posting # 683. Copyright @ 1 April 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!

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INTRODUCTION: The times they are a-changing, or so it certainly seems. Prosperity Now has bowed away from its activist interest in manufactured housing, in deference to the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. And look who’s going to be administering that part of the program! Also, a stunning, but o’ so practical suggestion from within the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies! Frankly, I found it hard to believe the first time I read the suggestion. Go for it! GFA

I.

NEW HOME FOR ‘INNOVATIONS IN
MH (the ‘I’M HOME’) NETWORK’

Learned a couple weeks ago the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy is now supervising the Innovations in Manufactured Homes (‘I’m Home’) Network. Since 2005, this initiative, launched to address the housing affordability crisis here in the U.S., was administered by the activist group Prosperity Now. Simply, the initiative “promotes manufactured housing as a source of wealth-building home ownership and stable rental housing.”

And now this week we learn Jim Gray, formerly with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (‘FHFA’) – where he headed up the Duty to Serve effort fielded by the two GSEs, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, is now the point of contact at the Lincoln Institute, where the ‘I’m Home’ program is concerned. Reach him via (202) 722-7543.

What can we expect, relative to the institute’s interest in housing affordability where HUD-Code manufactured housing and land lease communities are concerned? Guess we’ll have to wait and see. Personally, I’m encouraged to see the Lincoln Institute become involved. Hopefully this will mean that manufactured housing will be looked upon as ‘more than low income housing’ and land lease communities as the desirable lifestyle they are!

II.

AN INSPIRED SUGGESTION

Don Layton of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, in the 3/26/2022 issue of that organization’s HOUSING PERSPECTIVES newsletter boldly suggests, “The four government mortgage agencies (i.e. GSEs’ Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae, also FHFA, and the VA) should produce a unified report on mission activities.”

Layton then lays the groundwork for his suggestion, by first informing us of how there’s almost $12 trillion outstanding of traditional first mortgages on single-family homes, about 70 percent of which is financed by these agencies! Then he reminds readers how all four agencies attempt to increase the supply of affordable housing in the U.S. via 1) manufactured housing, and 2) preservation of existing affordable housing.

After describing how the four agencies, which should be working together, have created a reality that is considerably messier than need be or desirable, he drops this bombshell of a suggestion:

“…my modest suggestion: the four agencies should work together to produce, at first annually but then quarterly, a single, unified and comprehensive report on their SECONDARY-MARKET MISSION ACTIVITIES to illustrate how well the government has utilized taxpayer support to reach the goal of successfully IMPROVING HOMEOWNERSHIP, especially for underserved groups of families. This could produce comprehensive and timely reporting about how much taxpayer-supported financing is received by specific racial groups, by rural families in low-income geographies, by LMI families, and so on.” (EMPHASIS ADDED. gfa)

Whoa! This is precisely what those of us in the manufactured housing industry, and among owners/operators of land lease communities (needing home-only loans) have been hollering for for years! Yes, we need better, easier access to chattel capital for our home-only loans on-site in communities, but we also need ready and regular access, with GSEs help, to the secondary market – where we’d sell off our mature housing loans and renew our supply of chattel capital for more transactions. And for sure this would open up chattel loan sourcing beyond the singular firm presently enjoying, I’m told, an estimated 70 percent of market share.

Like this thinking? Reach out to Don Layton via jchs@harvard.edu

George Allen, CPM, MHM
EducateMHC

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