Blog Posting @ 758, Copyright 8 September 2023. EducateMHC
Parallel Perspectives. HUD-Code manufactured housing is federally-regulated, performance-based, affordable factory-built housing! And land lease communities (a.k.a. manufactured home communities & ‘mobile home parks’) comprise the investment real estate component of manufactured housing! EducateMHC is the online advocate, historian, trend tracker, and text resource for these two business models! To input this blog or connect with EducateMHC, telephone (317) 881-3815, email: gfa7156@aol.com, or visit www.educatemhc.com, to order
Community Management in the Manufactured Housing Industry. This is the sole professional community management text in print today! And SWAN SONG is a history of land lease communities, and official record of annual MH production totals since 1955; and my autobiography, From SmittyAlpha6 to MHMaven – describes combat adventures in Vietnam, and a 45 year business career in MH and community ownership/management.
George Allen, CPM®Emeritus, MHM®Master, Emeritus member of the Manufactured Housing Institute (‘MHI’), RV/MH Hall of Fame enshrinee, retired lieutenant colonel of U.S. Marines, and author/editor of 20 books re MH, communities, business & management wisdom, and prayer.
SECO, HERE WE COME!
Simply put; anyone who’s anybody among land lease community owners/operators, single properties or portfolios thereof, will be at the 12th SECO Conference in Atlanta, GA., next week!
I’ll be driving down from Indianapolis, IN., on Sunday (will miss the MLB game), to be in place to help commemorate the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S. THEN the education begins! Nowhere, at no other time this year, will land lease community folk be treated with greater variety and level of expertise, relative to timely and critical topics affecting this unique income-producing property type!
If not already registered, go to SECO.com and prepare to attend this topnotch manufactured housing industry event! See you there!
RETIREMENT ADVENTURES
Personal retirement has not gone as hoped or planned, but what ‘has happened’ has been, in a word, fulfilling.
GFA Management, Inc., dba PMN Publishing, no longer exists. No one stepped forward to pick up where I was leaving off. So I watched 40 years of creative effort fade into history. No more Networking Roundtables, no more annual ALLEN REPORTS, no more newsletters, no more ‘shopping’ of land lease communities, and on and on. But know what? If any of this turns out to be really needed in the future, someone will step up to the plate, figuratively speaking, and recreate those and other products and services for the real estate asset class.
Know what has happened though? No fewer than four major writing projects completed to date!
A year before 2021 retirement, I started penning my memoirs (i.e. short stories from youth, marriage to Carolyn, combat tour in Vietnam, and 50 years business career), then collected into my autobiography: ‘From SmittyAlpha6 to MHMaven’. As most folk already know, ‘Smitty Alpha 6’ refers to my radio call sign as a company commander in RVN; the MHMaven is an Allenism/abbreviation for ‘manufactured housing maven’. The autobiography debuted at the ‘last Networking Roundtable’ during August 2021 in Nashville, TN. It’s available for purchase via www.educatemhc.com
Next major writing project? Daughter Susan & son Adam subscribed to StoryWorth in behalf of Carolyn and me. This meant, for a year, StoryWorth sent us weekly questions to answer (if so desired, or draft our own question). These had to do with our respective childhoods, schooling, family relationships, courtship, three generations of progeny, and entrepreneurial pursuits. End result? A 400+ page case bound book, titled ‘George & Carolyn’, containing said stories. Copies printed and bound for our children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren. And know what? Learned tales about Carolyn’s life experience I did not know before!
During year 2022, I transcribed more than 400 handwritten letters I’d sent home to Carolyn from Vietnam in 1968 & 69. Whew! That was a lot of typing (i.e. two hours per workday for 13 months). Renewed a lot of lost memories, reunited with past Marine buddies, and it was a catharsis for pent-up emotions suppressed more than 50 years. Resulting work? A 700 page manuscript with only three copies made, one each for Susan, Adam, and Carolyn & me. So glad I did it!
In year 2023 my writing project took a different form. Not a book or lengthy manuscript, but a heavily researched article titled ‘RVs as Affordable Housing’. This was requested by an academic magazine published at a Midwest university. While I don’t usually see myself as a recreational vehicle aficionado, I do view RVs as a sister industry to manufactured housing, so felt comfortable with the assignment. And some of this year long research and writing occurred at the RV/MH Hall of Fame library in Elkhart, IN. Will let you know when the academic article is published.
So, what’s on tap for year 2024? Probably too early to tell, but I know what I’d like to write in the near or interim future; a ‘History of the RV/MH Hall of Fame’. Actually, the first two decades of that history, from 1972 thru 1993, was penned by the late Dr. Carlton Edwards, an RV/MH Hall of Fame enshrinee. His ‘work’ is published as Appendix B in the 1996 MH classic, ‘How to Find, Buy, Manage & Sell a Manufactured Home Community’, edited by yours truly. What I see doing, is picking up where Carl left off, and complete the history through year 2023. Will that happen? Probably a little too early to say for sure. What do you think?
AND THE SLIDE CONTINUES….
For once (again) all four reporting agencies agree with the Institute for building Technology & Safety’s (‘IBTS’) public reporting of 6,134 new HUD-Code manufactured homes ‘produced’ during July 2023.*1 That’s 28 percent fewer than last year during the same period; and even worse, it’s 28 percent fewer new homes produced year to date (‘YTD’)! And this is the third or fourth month in a raw where production has dropped below where it was a year ago.
That’s what’s happening. The question is WHY is it happening? Well, we’ve explored that question – and answers here, in weeks and months past; but so far, no relief – let alone turnaround – appears to be in sight! To me anyway, it seems the ‘powers that be’ (And lest you think otherwise, that’s the Big 3-C manufacturers: Cavco, Clayton, & Champion-Skyline) are either asleep at the proverbial switch, or simply don’t know how to take better advantage of the widely-acclaimed national affordable housing crisis! Hence, we’re still in this month-by-month production total slide (downwards).
Your ideas on this serious and timely matter? With SECO Conference coming up this next week, and MHI’s annual meeting soon thereafter, I’ll bet we get some independent thinking on this matter. Let me know via gfa7156@aol.com
End Note.
- HUD, MHI, MHARR, & EducateMHC.
George Allen, CPM, MHM