Blog Posting # 756, Copyright 25 August 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 years 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 enshrine, retired lieutenant colonel of U.S. marines, and author/editor of 20 books re MH, communities, business & management wisdom, and prayer.
WHO GOES?
I attend the annual RV/MH Hall of Fame induction banquet every year, and always come away with at least a tale or two to tell – here and elsewhere. This time around? Thought you’d enjoy reading a list of some of the manufactured housing-related ‘players’ who attended this year – on 21 August 2023.
In no particular order. Joe Stegmayer, past chairman of MHI and CEO of Cavco Industries ,in AZ; Mike Sullivan, CPM®, head of Newport Pacific family of companies in CA; Spencer Roane, MHM® of Pentagon Properties in GA; Mark Bowersox of MHI, along with a couple other staffers; Paula Reeves, president of CIS Financial Services in AL; Sam Landy and his team from UMH Properties in NJ; Ron Breymier, IMHA/RVIC in IN; Tim DeWitt, now retired in MI; Amy Bliss from WI; Eric Oaks of GreenState Credit Union in IL; Leo Poggione, Chairman, MHI Board of Directors, from NV; Dick & Becky Ernst from TX, and the MHInsider team from MI. These are attendees I know well; plus several hundred more were in attendance!
Who was inducted in this Class of 2023, from the manufactured housing industry? Darlene Stahla-Gardner, owner of Henry Stahla Mobile Homes (independent – street – MHRetailer) and four times past president of the NMHA. Marc Lifset, a longtime attorney with McGlinchey Stafford in NY, and perennial legal resource for MHI and others. Paula Reeves, president of CIS Financial Services since 1991, and member of Alabama MH Association Hall of Fame. Donald Sharp, long time financier of manufactured homes. Ronald Breymier, executive director for Indiana Manufactured Housing Association/Recreation Vehicle Indiana Council since 2015. Longtime lobbyist for the MH Industry.
Now here’s a little known statistic about RV/MH Hall of Fame enshrinees. To date there are 449 honored individuals. Care to guess the percentage of those members who’re deceased? Answer: At least 45 percent! Took time to count those folk, only to find that not all of them are so designated in the Hall of Fame roster distributed at the banquet. And this 45 percent should not really come as a surprise. The Hall of Fame has been inducting industry pioneers and leaders since 1972, and since one must have a minimum of 20 years service in RV or MH circles to be eligible, most inductees were middle-aged when honored.
Interested in applying for induction into the prestigious RV/MH Hall of Fame, or recommending a deserving colleague? Then go to www.RV/MH Hall of Fame and print off the application and instructions on how to navigate this process.
National MHFacTOURy Summit 2023
This event has been occurring annually since 2016 (except for year 2020), the days following aforementioned RV/MH Hall of Fame Induction Banquet. Originally facilitated to teach land lease community owners/operators how to prepare their properties for on-site sales, how to ‘spec’ new MHs, buy new MHs, sell them on-site and finance transactions. Now that these specialized skills are commonplace among portfolio folk, the summit focus has changed somewhat.
This time around, Congressman Rudy Yakym presented a keynote address to the audience of 75. Then, Leo Poggione, chairman of MHI’s Board of Directors, and Craftsman Homes in NV., reviewed the advocacy work the institute is performing in our behalf in Washington, DC., relative to combatting aggressive, unnecessary energy standards by DOE, and enhancing placement of new manufactured homes within and outside land lease communities. Nathan Smith, CIO of REIT Flagship Communities gave perhaps the most riveting talk, relative to strategic decision making as a land lease community owner/operator. This was followed by a Lenders Panel featuring Eric Oaks of GreenState Credit Union, Luke Foster of Park Lane Financial Solutions, and Barry Noffsinger of Credit Human. Additional presentations were effected by Darren Krolewski from MHVillage, and Mike Niebauer of Rent Manager. The day ended with a manufacturers’ panel comprised of Jeff Tanner from Fairmont Homes, Jay Ciokajlo from Campion Home Builders, Shawn Carnahan from Adventure Homes, and Jasen Miller of Clayton homes. Don’t you wish you’d been in attendance?
The second day of this annual summit was spent touring five local HUD-Code manufacturing facilities.
Some Elkhart (IN) Miscellany…
Here are a few personal observations from the several days I spent in Elkhart, IN., at the RV/MH Hall of Fame, prior to and during the induction banquet, and afterwards:
Appropriate trade terminology continues to be a bugaboo (‘a fanciful object of terror) throughout the manufactured housing industry. How so? We should be routinely referring to our factory-built housing product as manufactured housing, or simply ‘housing’. Not ‘mobile homes’ or worse. And, what used to be ‘mobile home parks’, then manufactured home (not ‘housing’) communities, is increasingly referred to as being land lease communities – or simply ‘communities’. There were even MHI-produced Power Point visuals that mixed some of those terms. We really do need to concentrate and do better to this end – to improve our image, etc…
History appears to be repeating itself! Again, how so? It’s becoming a renewed issue as to whether the HUD-Code manufactured housing industry would be better off, or not, having the option of removing the steel (wheeled) chassis from under our homes proper upon delivery. Consensus, at the aforementioned summit, seemed to be this would be a market-opening improvement for new manufactured homes delivered into housing subdivisions and onto scattered building sites conveyed fee simple…facilitating easier and cheaper real estate mortgage financing. And continuing to keep the chassis under said homes would continue to be ideal for those delivered directly into land lease communities. Your thoughts on this matter? Gfa7156@aol.com
And finally; where have all the property portfolio executives gone? They’re not in attendance at most manufactured housing events these days. Oh sure, a few attend from time to time for networking, etc., but not much else. For example, one could count on one hand (figuratively speaking) the number of senior execs present at the RV/MH Hall of Fame banquet. This is the gala event of the year, yet the heads of MHI and MHARR were ‘no shows’ (Mark Bowersox was present from MHI), nor were the present leaders of the Big 3-C HUD-Code manufacturers; and certainly ‘very few’ of the 500 land lease community portfolio owners/operators in the U.S. today. Which, by extension, accentuates the fact that virtually no one from Canada was present at the events in Elkhart this past week.
BOOK REVIEWS – OLD & NEW…
As I shared with you earlier, I’ve continued my new practice of reading a new book (usually a novel), then an ‘oldie but goodie’ from years past.
Well, this week I picked up and read Miles Nelson’s newest Cape May (NJ) mystery, titled ‘Death Rents a Beach House’. It was a ‘good read’, fast paced, with good character development and intriguing plots. A special attraction for me was how the author wrote my younger brother Mark Allen into and throughout this murder mystery novel. For example: “…(Sheriff) Saxby was making his way towards the outside fire pit with a glass of Cape May Cabernet when he almost bumped into this friend Mark Allen, a local radio host and well known man-about-town.” Soon thereafter, Mark provides a key clue to solving a couple recent murders in Cape May. This is Nelson’s fifth novel. Mark interviewed him on his Friday noon radio program the week Carolyn and I were in town to visit, and we met him late in the day at a party. The book is easily available via amazon.com
Then I pulled out my copy of ‘Shite’s Unoriginal Miscellany’, by A. Parody, for a reread. Don’t miss this: A. Parody? Parody = “a humorous imitation of an author’s or artist’s style, a burlesque, and to ‘imitate in a derisive manner’.” Here’re a few of the gems I mined from these pages:
Portmanteau words = ‘a word made by combining parts or other words’, e.g. brunch (breakfast & lunch). Also emoticon = emotion & icon; faction = fact & fiction; hassle = haggle & tussle; palimony = partner & alimony; workaholic = work & addict; and there’re plenty more. P.45
Palindromes = “a word whose letters read the same backward as forward, e.g. level.
Ready for these? Here goes: nun, did, hah (exclamatory), bib, mom (US), pip, gag, tit (ornithol), Lil (proper name), ere. P. 112
And there’s much more to Shiteseries books like this, as they bring together “a mass of arcane, vital, or merely fascinating information.” Also available via amazon.com
George Allen, CPM, MHM