Blog Column # 282 Copyright 2014 2 February 2014
Perspective. ‘Land-lease-lifestyle communities, a.k.a. manufactured home communities & earlier, ‘mobile home parks’, is the real estate component of manufactured housing.’
Purpose of this blog. ‘It’s the national advocacy voice, statistical research reporter, & communication resource for LLLCommunities, of all sizes, throughout North America!’
Input this blog, & Affiliate with the Community Owners (7 Part) Business Alliance, a.k.a. COBA7, via the Official MHIndustry HOTLINE: (877) MFD-HSNG or 633-4764.
I.
How to Complain About the CFPB!
II.
Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee
III.
COBA7 Update. What to Expect in February…
IV.
Grayson Schwepfinger died on 21 December 2013
V.
Next Week? Maybe, MHConspiracy Theories 101 & 102!
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I.
How to Complain about the CFPB!
(That’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)
The House (U.S. Congress) Financial Services Committee wants to hold the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (‘CFPB’) accountable for the manner in which they’re enforcing financial regulations initiated by the Dodd-Frank legislation, and how they’re impacting consumers and business owners alike! From the committee’s Press Release:
“The committee’s web form gives individuals the choice of having their story shared publicly or kept confidential. The committee website also allows for individuals who’d rather phone and record their story, about the CFPB’s work, to dial (240) 490-2372 and leave a message.”
It’s worthwhile to simply phone the number and listen to the message. Sounds like businesses just might have ‘a friend in court’, so to speak, where this oversight committee is concerned.
I phoned the above number, however, to learn the committee’s web address, since it wasn’t included in the Press Release. Heard back, and the appropriate website address:
www.financialservices.house.gov/tellyourstory/ (I’ve visited it and it does work!)
SO, if these onerous CFPB regs already affect your ability to engage in Free Enterprise, where your manufactured housing customers are concerned, Tell Your Story Now!
II.
Manufactured Housing Consensus Committee
‘Department of HUD Invites Individuals to Serve on the MHCC’
(from the Federal Registry / Vol. 79, No. 12, page # 3220, dtd. 1/17/2014)
The MHCC is a Federal Advisory Committee that exists under auspices of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000. If you’d like to be considered for selection as a member of the MHCC, you’ll have to decide whether you qualify as a
1. Producers/Retailers of manufactured housing.
2. Users/Consumers, e.g. consumer organizations, leaders, homeowners, site lessees
3. General Interest & Public Officials
A sample application form containing information for consideration is available on the HUD Website: hud.gov, or contact the Office of Manufactured Housing Programs via (202) 708-6423. Your application may be accompanied by a cover letter, expressing your desire to serve on the MHCC, as well as your resume’. Your package will be retained, for consideration, for three years.
Nominations (including self-nominations) must be in writing and submitted to: Henry S. Czauski, Acting Deputy Administrator, Office of Manufactured Housing Programs, Department of HUD, 451 7th Street SW, Room # 9168, Washington,. DC 20410-8000
Thoughtfully read what follows in the next paragraph.
In my experience, there’s a stark and discouraging aspect of the MHCC member selection procedure. You’d best have significant political pull, and or strong manufactured housing industry influence in your favor and corner, if you’re ‘throwing your hat in this ring’, the Opportunity to Serve the Manufactured Housing Industry and Fellow Citizens. How do I know? Twice, during the past 20 years, I’ve been so-nominated, once with a U.S. Senator’s support – yet failed to be appointed to the Manufactured Housing Advisory Council to HUD during the 1990s, and the MHCC since year 2000. Each time, I was told in retrospect, my nomination application had been derailed due to, let’s nicely say, ‘industry prejudice’. So, as is oft said, ‘Forewarned is Forearmed’, if you decide to take this heady step.
III.
COBA7 Update. What to Expect in February…
The launch of Community Owners (7 Part) Business Alliance, or COBA7, during December and January, exceeded all expectations; as land-lease-lifestyle community owners/operators & portfolio ‘players’, as well as product & service vendors, even a few HUD-Code home manufacturers (Yes, that’s plural ‘several times over’), affiliated via their choice of Options I, II or III. And close to 100 copies of the 25th anniversary ALLEN REPORT (A.k.a. ‘Who’s Who Among LLLCommunity Portfolio Owners/operators Throughout North America!’) are now in the hands of COBA7 affiliates throughout the U.S. and Canada! Guess one could appropriately and proudly proclaim: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
Gotta tell you this too. Most COBA7 affiliates to date, have chosen Option II (That’s the Allen Letter subscription, copy of the 25th annual ALLEN REPORT, & 12 Signature Series Resource Documents, or SSRDs, all for $544.95). And on more than one occasion, registering affiliates have told or written us:
“This is the best $500.00 we’ll spend on LLLCommunity(ies) resources during 2014!”
So, if YOU haven’t yet affiliated, but desire to do so, simply phone the Official MHIndustry HOTLINE: (877) MFD-HSNG or 633-4764. Credit card orders Welcome!
And we’re just getting started! Here’s what to expect during the month of February and beyond…. At the Louisville MHShow (Think 48 homes on display, 25% of which were Community Series Homes, 86+/- exhibitors, & 1,500+ registrants by mid-show), COBA7…
• Signed up nearly a dozen LLLCommunity owners/operators willing to share their personal and corporate Lessons Learned as property managers. These experiences will be collected and published in a new book due out later this year. As a COBA7 affiliate, your contributions are especially sought and appreciated. Simply phone the HOTLINE for details.
• Heard from a couple dozen LLLCommunity owners/operators who insist on participating in the national FOCUS Group planned to convene during early April. Again, COBA7 affiliates should use the HOTLINE to ensure they’re on the ‘invite’ list.
• Talked with HUD-Code home manufacturers, especially those displaying Community Series Homes, or CSH Models, regarding the planned – but now likely postponed – MHInitiative® at the RV/MH Hall of Fame on 2/27/2014. Why? Everyone wants to know how to market and sell more new homes into LLLCommunities nationwide, but not while in the presence of their competitors. SO, if you’re reading this and are a HUD-Code home manufacturer, or Business Development Manager, and seriously interested in meeting with me on 27 February in Elkhart, at the RV/MH Hall of Fame, phone (317) 346-7156 ASAP.
• Solicited ideas for topics and speakers to be featured at COBA7’s 23rd annual International Networking Roundtable, 10-12 September 2014. this popular annual event is open to LLLCommunity owners/operators, product/service vendors, and HUD-Code home manufacturers selling into our properties. Again, use the HOTLINE to ensure your firm’s name is on the invitation list.
During February, the second of 12 Signature Series Resource Documents, or SSRDs, will be enclosed with Allen Letter professional journals going to COBA7 affiliates. The first SSRD was 25th anniversary edition of the annual ALLEN REPORT. This time, however, it’s the Official State of the MHIndustry & LLLCommunity Presentation Outline – in a format YOU can easily use to brief your peers, your employees, your bankers, your zoning review board, your community service organizations! No one else, anywhere in the manufactured housing industry, is going to provide you with a more comprehensive collection of timely MHIndustry & LLLCommunity statistics and trends! And in the February Allen Letter itself, there’ll be ‘the list of issues’ identified by LLLCommunity owners/operators responding to the ALLEN REPORT questionnaires last Fall. No real surprises, but certainly some insights into ‘What keeps owners/operators awake at night.’
And know this; we’ve already begun the Direct Mail Questionnaire research pursuant to preparing the 16th annual National Registry of Lenders, for distribution in March of 2014. Just this past week, 50 letters, with questionnaires, were mailed to lenders and brokers specializing in originating acquisition and refinance real estate – secured mortgages for land-lease-lifestyle communities throughout North America. If the need for LLLCommunity mortgage capital is in the near future for you, be sure to affiliate with COBA7, to receive the very first copies of this seminal SSRD. And, if you’re a LLLCommunity $ lender, to ensure you’re included in this year’s edition, phone GFA c/o (317) 346-7158.
The National Registry of Lenders also features a comprehensive list of independent chattel capital providers (i.e. The Big Five + 1 firms), as well as mortgage servicers. This latter information is researched and prepared by Rishel Consulting. To ensure your chattel source info in included in this year’s 16th annual edition, contact Ken Rishel, manufactured housing industry’s person of the year (2014), via (312) 878-2802.
IV.
Grayson Schwepfinger died on 21 December 2013
To his many friends and business colleagues in the HUD-Code manufactured housing industry he was known simply as ‘Schwep’. When inducted into the RV/MH Heritage Foundation’s prestigious Hall of Fame in 1979, he’d already been engaged as a freelance sales trainer, by many of our industry’s pioneers, for more than a decade. And he continued sharing his expertise and experience with ‘newbies to the business’, like this industry observer, right up until a couple years ago, when he was a presenter at the annual International Networking Roundtable for land-lease-lifestyle community owners/operators.
Not only will Grayson’s manufactured housing sales training legacy live on in the minds and practices of his many clients and son, but also through his copyrighted sales training literature in the stacks at the RV/MH Heritage Foundations’ Library in Elkhart, IN. For that matter, one of Schweps many guidelines, and in this case, a Rule of Thumb, is identified as such and published in the Book of Formulae, Rules of Thumb & Helpful Measures – for LLLCommunities & HUD-Code Manufactured Housing, Indianapolis, IN., 2012. On pages 11 & 12, the Schwep Rule of Thumb reads thusly:
‘A manufactured home loan monthly PITI (principal, interest, taxes & insurance) and site rent total together, must be 15 – 20% less in dollar amount, than the monthly rental rate amount for a (3BR2B) conventional apartment unit in the same local housing market’ – for the ‘home & homesite’ package to be competitive.
The 78 pages ‘book of numbers’ is available from PMN Publishing @ (317) 346-7156.
If you’d like to send personal or corporate condolences to Grayson’s longtime companion Marilyn Vogel, I’d be pleased to collect and forward them to her. Just mail same to GFA c/o Box # 47024, Indpls, IN. 46247. Grayson requested no obituary or memorial services in his memory.
V.
Next Week? Maybe, MHConspiracy Theories 101 & 102!
A hint. Affluence gerrymandering is simply the tip of this manufactured housing iceberg.
***
George Allen
Box # 47024, Indpls, IN. 46247
(317) 346-7156.