Blog Posting # 702. Copyright 19 August 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) 881-3815 and or visit www.educatemhc.com
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SHUT UP! Yep; that’s the sad conclusion to the past six months or so of squabbling about, whether or not, to launch a new national advocacy entity focused on all post-production sectors of the HUD-Code manufactured housing industry! We’ve certainly ‘heard enough’ about this need (some real, others less so) for improved representation and advocacy before legislators and regulators in Washington, DC. Said proposal emanating from an online MH newsletter, MHARR, and other interested parties. Well, since NO ONE was willing to step forward to press this issue, I publicly set a deadline of 15 August 2022 (Date of this year’s RV/MH Hall of Fame induction banquet in Elkhart, IN.) for these parties to PUT UP! or SHUT UP! After all, what better time and place to come together, in behalf of the entire MH industry, than when 500 businessmen and women (mostly corporate leaders) are gathered in the sole legacy location in the U.S. with room to handle several large meeting events simultaneously? But ‘it’ didn’t happen, not even a whisper of an attempt to do so. Hence, to those parties: ‘SHUT UP!’ Shut up, once & for all, til ready to bring organizing structure and effort to this perennial need!
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Speaking of this year’s RV/MH Hall of Fame ‘Class of 2022’, one member in particular, Eugene Landy, founder (1968) and chairman of the board at UMH Properties, delivered the following heartfelt message and challenge to the manufactured housing industry.
“How should I respond to this distinguished honor in such an important industry? I think the appropriate way to respond, is to say ‘I could do more!’ Now, to my wonderful team of people who actually do all the work today, they’re hearing they too have to do more – as we need more housing, and it is a critical matter.”
“The affordable housing crisis is real. The shortage of workforce housing is interfering with our national economy. The size of it is overwhelming, and our industry cannot solve it alone, but we can certainly participate! And the goal we should set, as an industry, is to build 500 new land lease communities a year with 200 homes apiece, or 100,000 additional homes in all! That means, as an industry, we must produce 200,000 homes a year and I think it can be done. It’s not going to be easy, but I believe manufacturers can get the material and manpower, and the demand is certainly there.”
“At UMH Properties, we have waiting lists everywhere, and we want to build more housing! That’s our ambition, that’s our goal, but it’s not the easiest task to accomplish. It’d be easy now, with waiting lists and good financial performance, to rest on our laurels, but we want to build our little company (Well, it’s not so little anymore, with 500 employees and 25,000 rental homesites nationwide), but we do want to build two or three thousand new sites per year. Today, that’s $100,000 to build a rental homesite, and $100,000 to put a new manufactured home on it. That’s millions of dollars per year we have to raise, but it’s something that has to be done!”
“You can’t have a society with no housing. You can’t have a society where employers can’t hire people. So this is something we all must work hard to do, and we’re doing it!”
“What a wonderful team we have at UMH Properties. Just today we toured local land lease communities we acquired five, ten, 20 years ago. When we buy a community, we make it a better community! And we try to be fair with everyone. ‘Good faith and fair dealing’ is our corporate motto; and we practice this with our customers, suppliers, and residents.”
“What a strange company we are, as we don’t try to charge the highest rent possible. Rather, we try to charge rent that’s lower than everybody else, and at the same time, produce a better product (home and community). And you want to know something? If you do that, you are going to be a tremendous business success! So, we’re working very hard now to build new communities, and at my age, it’s not easy – but it’s something we really have to do! So, the proper response to being honored, as an RV/MH Hall of Fame inductee, is to do more! Thank You for this honor!” (Lightly edited. GFA)
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Have you heard? Candace Holcomb, formerly with Newport Pacific Capital (35 Years) is now the VP of Operations, in the MH division, or the Watt Company in southern California.
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Speaking of southern California, I recently received an email message from a longtime friend in our business, informing me that, at the Lido Peninsula land lease community (26 homes/acre) in Newport Beach, CA., a new 1400 sq. ft. HUD-Code home (small footprint) sold for $1,275,000, with monthly rent at $5,747 on a CPI lease that ends in 2026.
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By now you’ve heard of the impending changes to DOE (Department of Energy) regs. But have you heard how, if and when implemented on 18 May 2023, they’ll likely add $7,000 to the price of every new HUD-Code manufactured home? We all have a ‘dog in this fight’, so contact the two national advocacy organizations, MHI & MHARR, for more information.