“Homebuyers, hold onto your wallets. The gains in home prices are getting bigger as the supply of homes for sale gets leaner,” said CNBC.
“Sellers are slow to list this year and we aren’t seeing enough new construction homes to fill the gap,” said Redfin’s chief economist, Nela Richardson. “If we don’t see the new listings number turn around next month or a pickup in new housing starts, inventory will be a persistent drag on sales for the remainder of the year.”
Interest rates keep inching up. Since the 1980s, that rising rates historically signaled that more would be moving towards manufactured homes.
But that pattern of historic linkage hasn’t held up in more recent years, with manufactured home sales rising, but still well below their historic norms.
“The change towards multifamily could be the initial signs that affordability is starting to impact the mix of construction,” said Tendayi Kapfidze, chief economist at LendingTree. “Multifamily units are at lower price points and include significant rental units. Notably, single-family housing starts are particularly weak in the high-cost Northeast — that is also the most exposed region to the negative impacts of the tax plan.”
“A ‘perfect storm’ of market conditions is compounding an ongoing inventory crunch,” said Larry Foster, president of Long & Foster Real Estate. “Builders’ margins are squeezed by rising labor and materials prices, so they are not meeting demand for entry-level and move-up homes. Would-be sellers of existing homes — many of whom refinanced at low interest rates — are reluctant to list their homes because they aren’t finding the selection of properties they want to move into.”
With RV sales running at some 5 times the rate of new manufactured home shipments, the data represents potential opportunities, but failure by the industry to successfully tap into them. To rephrase, its opportunity in disguise for the savvy, goal and solution oriented professional.
Manufactured home marketers and sellers must dig deeper, as the reports linked in the related reports reflect. ## (News, analysis, and commentary.)
(Third party images are provided under fair use guidelines.)
Related Reports:
“Silver Bullet,” Manufactured Housing’s Monday Morning Sales Meeting
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