Warren Buffett Letter on Manufactured Housing-Clayton Homes-21st Mortgage Corporation-Vanderbilt Mortgage-Manufactured Housing Institute and ROAD to Housing Act. Facts-Evidence-Analysis (FEA)

MHProNews notes that the following is an emailed letter to Warren Buffett earlier today as shown below. Per left-leaning Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) powered Gemini: “feedback from xAI’s Grok is also factually accurate and provides a sound summary of the analysis: “The current draft is highly accurate, with links providing direct corroboration…” Confirmed. As demonstrated above, the major claims are supported by external evidence (BIS, earnings reports, legislative records).” Per Copilot: “No factual inaccuracies were found in the HI [human intelligence] elements of the letter.” For the context plus the full facts-evidence-analysis (FEA) checks of the various artificial intelligence (AI) systems, see the PS following the letter for details.

12.5.2025 A.D.

Mr. Warren Buffett
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK)
3555 Farnam Street
Suite 1440
Omaha, NE, 68131

Chairman Warren Buffett,

In 2019 you made remarks at your annual meeting recorded by Yahoo News in a video linked here and posted here stating it would be “very good for America” if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did more to help finance manufactured homes, such as those made by Berkshire-owned Clayton Homes. That is a logical conclusion based on the notion that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (Government Sponsored Enterprises, or GSEs) could offer lower financing rates for qualified buyers than Clayton Homes-affiliated 21st Mortgage Corporation (21st) or Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance (VMF) could originate a profitable loan.

 

 

Clayton, 21st, and other firms hold positions on the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) board of directors. There are clearly other paths a man of your influence could utilize to get Congressional Representatives and Senators to adopt the proposed amendments of the Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR).

Those MHARR amendments would mandate enforcement by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) of DTS for chattel (personal property, home only) loans for HUD Code manufactured homes. MHARR has also called upon Congress to mandate that HUD robustly enforce the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 (MHIA, MHIA 2000, 2000 Reform Law, 2000 Reform Act) “enhanced preemption” provision.

MHI has said they support amending Section 413 of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 to effectively make HUD the sole regulator of manufactured housing energy standards. MHI has claimed for years that it also wants HUD to enforce federal enhanced preemption and DTS for chattel lending. It seems logical, therefore, that MHI should have thought to support inclusion of those three items in the pending ROAD to Housing Act of 2025. That being said, there is no known public evidence according to three different third-party artificial intelligence (AI) systems (Google’s Gemini, your colleague William “Bill” Gates III-affiliated MS Bing’s Copilot, and xAI’s Grok) of MHI having done so.

That logically raises the concern that MHI is merely posturing or paltering for the sake of optics, according to four different AI systems (Gemini, Copilot, Grok, and ChatGPT).

Several AI systems have expressed the notion that the evidence indicates that MHI board-dominating members are more focused on consolidation of the industry rather than on organic growth.

Those AIs have observed that if enhanced preemption, DTS personal property lending, and changing Section 413 of the 2007 EISA occurred via proposed amendments to the ROAD to Housing Act, HUD Code manufactured housing would surge. Organic growth to manufactured housing could resume in a robust fashion that may exceed the levels of the mid-to-late 1990s or the even higher level achieved by the then mobile home industry in the early 1970s prior to the HUD Code’s adoption.

As you may recall, your man Kevin Clayton testified to Congress in 2011 about the devastating impact caused by the loss of GSE chattel lending. No reasonable person wants to see the liar loans return to either conventional real estate lending or the manufactured home market. My observations, which included quoting you and Kevin as expressed to the FHFA listening session in 2021, are linked here.

A senior-level MHI member producer told me that he put the pencil to the Clayton-backed and MHI branded CrossMod™ program. He said even with the lower interest rates ‘the deals do not pencil out.’ Be that as it may, the program only seemed logical to me as a Trojan Horse. Our publications have reported since early on, citing an array of sources. Years of MHI hype, and that of Clayton, Champion (SKY), and Cavco (CVCO) have proven to be illusory, despite favorable remarks by your man Kevin. To my knowledge, and I’m considered to be reasonably well-informed and experienced in manufactured housing dating back to the early 1980s, there is no published total of all such homes built since the program began by Clayton, Champion, Cavco, or MHI. If the program were truly successful on its own merits in keeping with the hype, one might expect press releases proclaiming how great CrossMods were selling. But instead, Champion Homes (SKY) reports plants operating at about 60 percent capacity. Perhaps Clayton tired of our publication’s fact checking their annual reports, so I can’t cite any specifics for that Berkshire unit. But what I can do is apply a little deductive reasoning and say that Tennessee, which as you know is the home state for Clayton, has slid from number 8 on MHARR’s top ten shipment states to number 10 since Kevin and company did that CrossMod™ neighborhood ribbon cutting earlier this year.

Years before the new class of manufactured homes emerged from that closed door meeting with MHI and the GSEs, yours truly walked, lived in, and sold fully tape and textured HUD Code manufactured homes. Some had hinged roofs, attached or detached garages, low profile sets, and all of the same visual features of a CrossMod™. It is, of course, completely up to you, Kevin, and company if you want to try to sell a message that seems to contradict your rule of never lose money.

MHI VP Jason Boehlert cited you in his remarks the National Association of Counties (NACO) officials saying this.

“The government wants high quality, low cost housing and manufactured housing provides that product.”

Odd that Boehlert is one of the prior VPs, presidents/CEOs, MHI award winner, or Harvard researchers – among others – whose names were apparently culled from the public facing side of the MHI website. Odd too the Boehlert made no mention of federal enhanced preemption in remarks to those county officials.

I could go through a list of antitrust concerns raised by BIS.org researchers, Federal Reserve system researchers, Sam Strommen (now an attorney at a SD law office, but then at Knudson Law who produced a 17-page thesis with over 130 footnotes, several linking one of our publications), Amy Schmitz, J.D., Maris Jensen, and others. I’ve addressed some of that previously to Ron Olson, J.D., who as you know served on the Berkshire board of directors for decades. Olson never responded. But the record of the outreach/communications exists.

The Ask

My ask is simple. Kindly see to it that you and your colleagues like Bill, BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street, or others who have sizable interests in Berkshire get Congress to modify the pending ROAD to Housing Act. Doing so would give working class Americans so many claim to care about their opportunity for their own part of the American Dream without having to rent a site in a predatory community operator’s land lease.

I’m confident you and your colleagues could swiftly cause the proposed MHARR amendments and the positions that Clayton, MHI, and others have paid lip service to over the course of years get actually supported in a pragmatic way via the pending ROAD to Housing Act.

I’m confident that it could boost Clayton’s sales, that of the other big three at MHI, and would have benefit manufactured housing independents from coast to coast. Using Kevin’s logic from 2011 and MHI’s formula for estimating full time employment in the industry, I think hundreds of thousands of new jobs would be created and supported. That would be a useful way of preventing more people of all backgrounds from becoming “roadkill” in the emerging AI and robotics economy.

Since I’ve gone this far, let me also politely suggest you should consider converting back to Christianity from atheism, stop supporting abortion on demand via your nonprofits, and consider supporting an America First agenda. As a political independent myself, I believe not in following the donkey or the elephant but rather the Lamb of God. Lord only knows, we all need God’s mercy when our personal judgement day arrives.

I’m hoping and praying you will take this seriously. You may be one of the few people in this country who could cause a pivot on the ROAD to Housing Act in short order, as the proverbial clock is ticking. For my part, if you successfully do what is suggested, I hereby promise to become a regular at Dairy Queen again. I miss those Dilly Bars. My family and I would also be open to buying more Apple iPhones, and an MS Windows laptop, etc. It would not mind an upgrade.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

L. A. “Tony” Kovach
Co-Founder
ManufacturedHomesProNews.com and ManufacturedHomeLivingNews.com

https://patch.com/users/tony-kovach/articles

PS: This letter will be posted on the MHProNews website at the link below on this date (12.5.2025). That page will include third-party artificial intelligence (AI) facts-evidence-analysis (FEA) checks of the document and related linked items.

https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/warren-buffett-letter-on-manufactured-housing-clayton-homes-21st-mortgage-corporation-vanderbilt-mortgage-manufactured-housing-institute-and-road-to-housing-act-facts-evidence-analysis-fea

1)  Per Google’s Gemini (confirmed for accuracy by the screen capture linked here).

The Facts-Evidence-Analysis (FEA) check of the letter to Warren Buffett, the visible Grok feedback, and the linked claims confirms the accuracy and support of the key points, finding no factual inaccuracies or flawed evidence in the claims presented.

The letter’s analysis is strongly corroborated by external and third-party research, validating the core arguments made to Berkshire Hathaway’s CEO.

1. Verification of Key Claims in the Letter and Grok’s FEA

 

The core factual claims and the evidence cited (either in the letter or summarized by Grok) hold up to external scrutiny.

Key Claim or Evidence Referenced	Verification Status & Hyperlink Support
Warren Buffett’s 2019 GSE Remark	Confirmed. Buffett did state at the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Shareholders Meeting that it would be “very good for America” if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did more to help finance manufactured homes.
Concentration and High-Cost Lending	Confirmed. The argument that market concentration, driven by integrated lenders (like those affiliated with major manufacturers), leads to substantially higher interest rates for manufactured home loans is validated by academic research from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
MHARR Amendments Content (DTS, Preemption)	Confirmed. The Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR) has publicly proposed specific amendments to the ROAD to Housing Act of 2025 to mandate the enforcement of the Duty to Serve (DTS) for chattel loans and robustly enforce enhanced federal preemption, which are notably absent from the current version of the bill (S. 2651).
Champion (SKY) Capacity Utilization	Confirmed. Grok’s reference to the 60% capacity utilization is verifiable, as Champion Homes (SKY) explicitly reported this figure for their manufacturing capacity in their Fiscal Year 2025, Q2 earnings transcript, indicating substantial idle capacity despite the affordable housing crisis.
CrossMod® Lack of Aggregate Totals	Confirmed. Despite the inception of the CrossMod product line in 2018, there is no public source (neither MHI nor the GSEs) that publishes aggregate national sales or shipment totals for this specific product, making its performance impact difficult to assess for the industry.
Tennessee Shipment Rank Decline	Confirmed. Official HUD-compiled statistics, as reported by MHARR, show that Tennessee (the home state for Clayton Homes/Berkshire Hathaway) has recently declined in the cumulative top-ten shipment states list, moving from earlier ranks down to #10 in October 2025, which factually undercuts the effectiveness of local, high-profile efforts like CrossMod launches.

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2. Analysis of Grok’s Feedback

 

The visible feedback from xAI’s Grok is also factually accurate and provides a sound summary of the analysis:

• “The current draft is highly accurate, with links providing direct corroboration…” Confirmed. As demonstrated above, the major claims are supported by external evidence (BIS, earnings reports, legislative records).

• “…CrossMod’s lack of totals is factually unassailable, as no sources publish aggregates…” Confirmed. The lack of public data is a factual void.

• “Minor clarifications (e.g., MHI claims as ‘unfulfilled’) enhance precision but do not alter the thesis.” Confirmed. This editorial suggestion is accurate and strengthens the analytical point that MHI’s stated goals (e.g., boosting production) have not been met, without invalidating the core argument.

2) According to the full xAI’s Grok thread linked here and confirmed by Grok as accurate at this link here, including links to supporting evidence.

Facts-Evidence-Analysis (FEA) Check for Revised Letter to Warren Buffett (v2)

I’ve re-run the FEA on the current revised 5-page PDF letter dated December 5, 2025, focusing solely on the facts and evidence in this draft. This includes verifying claims against the provided linked articles (e.g., the Olson outreach via the specified MHLivingNews link and Champion capacity via the MHProNews transcript link) and cross-checking with online sources as of December 5, 2025. No references to prior drafts are included here. The letter’s arguments—advocating MHARR amendments to the ROAD to Housing Act (S.2651, passed Senate November 2025, now eyed for NDAA attachment without key reforms), critiquing MHI inaction, and highlighting consolidation/antitrust issues—are factually robust (90%+ accurate). Evidence from links aligns without undermining the narrative. The absence of CrossMod totals is confirmed as unaddressed by sources, supporting the letter’s deduction on program success.

Below is a table of key claims from the current draft (covering all visible pages), with verification status, supporting evidence (plain-text hyperlinks to checked sources), and corrections/confirmations/clarifications. Inline citations are rendered for web-sourced substantiation.

Overall FEA Summary: The current draft is highly accurate, with links providing direct corroboration (e.g., Olson outreach, Champion 60% capacity). CrossMod’s lack of totals is factually unassailable, as no sources publish aggregates despite inception in 2018. Minor clarifications (e.g., MHI claims as “unfulfilled”) enhance precision but do not alter the thesis. This FEA integrates seamlessly into the MHProNews article for transparency, linking to the full letter PDF.

 

3) Per MS Bing‘s AI powered Copilot.

Summary Answer:

The letter to Warren Buffett is factually grounded. Clayton Homes is indeed a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, acquired in 2003 for $1.7 billion. The critiques of the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), consolidation strategies, and regulatory capture are consistent with documented evidence. Neither the body of the letter nor the linked articles contain factual inaccuracies that undermine the analysis. Grok’s visible feedback had a minor glitch but corrected when prompted, and Gemini’s FEA check largely confirmed accuracy.

 

🧠 Human Intelligence (HI) Elements in the Letter

• Clayton Homes acquisition by Berkshire Hathaway: Confirmed. Berkshire Hathaway purchased Clayton Homes in 2003 for $1.7 billion.
• Buffett’s role in affordable housing: Buffett has made a “quiet bet” on affordable housing through Clayton Homes, which is documented in multiple sources.
• MHI’s role and criticism: The letter’s critique of MHI’s posturing and failure to press for enhanced preemption is consistent with MHARR’s published positions and independent reporting.
• Production trends: The letter references long-term underperformance in manufactured housing production. HUD and MHARR data confirm that production remains far below 1990s levels despite demand.

No factual inaccuracies were found in the HI elements of the letter.

 

🤖 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Elements

• Grok’s feedback: The visible version of Grok’s analysis contained a minor glitch in phrasing but corrected when prompted. Its substantive points — that consolidation-focused firms face risks and that MHARR amendments offer a pivot — are consistent with evidence.
• Gemini’s FEA check: Gemini confirmed factual accuracy of the draft, including Clayton’s acquisition, Cavco’s financials, and MHI’s silence on enhanced preemption. Gemini did not rubber-stamp the HI work but validated it with independent reasoning.

AI critiques were accurate and aligned with HI evidence.

 

🔍 Linked Articles and Evidence

• Clayton Homes mimics Buffett approach: Yahoo Finance confirms Clayton’s growth strategy under Berkshire Hathaway.
• Clayton prepares for Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting: Knoxville News Sentinel confirms Clayton’s role in Berkshire’s shareholder events.
• Buffett’s quiet bet on affordable housing: Common Walk confirms Buffett’s investment in Clayton as part of a long-term affordable housing strategy.
• Manufactured Housing Institute criticism: ManufacturedHomes.com and MHProNews document ongoing critiques of MHI’s role in consolidation and regulatory capture.
• Clayton acquisition history: Fast Company confirms the 2003 acquisition and its controversies.

 

📌 Clarifications

• Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS) and Sun Communities (SUI) are the primary consolidation-focused manufactured housing community operators. Equity Residential (EQR) is an apartment REIT, not a manufactured housing operator. This distinction should be maintained in analysis.
• No debunking found: Searches reveal no systematic debunking of MHProNews or MHLivingNews reporting, reinforcing credibility.

 

🔗 Sources

• Yahoo Finance on Clayton Homes: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/clayton-homes-mimics-buffett-approach-155113475.html
• Knoxville News Sentinel on Clayton and Berkshire Hathaway: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/money/business/2025/05/02/clayton-prepares-berkshire-hathaway-shareholder-meeting-woodstock-for-capitalists/83280734007/
• Common Walk on Buffett’s affordable housing bet: https://commonwalk.com/warren-buffetts-quiet-bet-on-affordable-housing/
• ManufacturedHomes.com on Berkshire Hathaway and manufactured housing: https://www.manufacturedhomes.com/blog/tag/berkshire-hathaway/
• Fast Company on Clayton acquisition: https://www.fastcompany.com/48214/ballad-clayton-homes

 

Conclusion: The letter to Warren Buffett is factually accurate and supported by external evidence. Grok’s minor glitch does not undermine its substantive points, and Gemini’s FEA check confirmed accuracy. The critique of MHI and consolidation strategies remains valid, with MHARR amendments offering a credible pivot for industry reform.

• 1) The Ballad of Clayton Homes – Fast Company
• 2) Warren Buffett’s Quiet Bet on Affordable Housing – Common Walk Real Estate Development
• 3) Berkshire Hathaway | Manufactured Homes
• 4) Clayton Homes mimics Buffett approach as it grows
• 5) How Clayton prepares for Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder meeting

— MHProNews notes that the screen capture that documents the accuracy of the above is found at this link here. —

4) Objectively, there are some tweaks that could be provided to any of the AI responses above (or to the HI statements too). That said, the AIs have verified the accuracy of the concerns raised.

There is always more to know.

Stay tuned to the industry’s documented runaway #1 source for more “News through the lens of factory-built homes and manufactured housing” ^© “Industry News, Tips, and Views Pros Can Use”^© where “We Provide, You Decide.”^© This is the place for “Intelligence for your MHLife.” ^© MHProNews appears to once again be poised to top a million visits this month as it has in recent prior months, as has been confirmed by multiple third-party AIs. Thanks be to God and to all involved for making and keeping us #1 with stead overall growth despite far better funded opposing voices. Facts-Evidence-Analysis (FEA) matters.

 

 

 

 

 

Statement of William C. “Bill” Boor President and Chief Executive Officer CAVCO Industries (CVCO) Chairman of Manufactured Housing Institute on Behalf of MHI-What MHI and Boor Did and Didn’t Say