{"id":1187,"date":"2012-08-07T21:25:58","date_gmt":"2012-08-08T02:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manufacturedhomepronews.com\/industryvoices\/?p=1187"},"modified":"2012-08-07T21:33:47","modified_gmt":"2012-08-08T02:33:47","slug":"what-manufactured-housing-competes-against","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manufacturedhomepronews.com\/industryvoices\/what-manufactured-housing-competes-against\/","title":{"rendered":"What Manufactured Housing Competes Against"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"l;ance-inderman-mhpronews\"<\/a>I think we need to take a serious look at what our industry is competing with in the housing marketplace and the regulation that each of our housing competitors are facing.<\/p>\n

We worry way to much about what one of the 3-C's of manufactured home building are doing than we should. As a percentage of new homes sold, we just keep loosing ground.<\/p>\n

The site builders are pushing us further and further into the rural abyss. I have a partner that builds homes with me in Lubbock and we are able to build a brick home with porches and 6\/12 roof pitches for around $40 a square foot including material and 100% subcontract labor.<\/p>\n

I have another friend that builds about 125 new homes a year with annual sales of about $35,000,000 and a little over 10% net bottom line. He does this with 9 employees, no multi-million dollar building, total work in process and finished goods of about $1,500,000. He has no licensing requirements. His company and his salespeople have no continuing education requirements. He does not offer paid vacations to his employees or laborers. He is not faced with massive unemployment taxes if he does not have a house to build tomorrow. Government mandated health insurance does not affect him. Basically he has almost no regulation and very little overhead. He builds a quality product and is very successful.<\/p>\n

I drove down the beach between Beaumont and Galveston and pass one RV park after the other with all types of RV's up to buses that cost over a million dollars.<\/p>\n

I saw manufactured homes that were at least 12 feet in the air to protect a $40K double wide from flooding. The construction cost to complete these jobs has to be close to exceeding the cost of the home itself. This does not appear to be a very efficient way to supply housing to me. It looks to me that the RV industry is getting a big piece of our pie and the site builders are getting an ever increasing bite as well.<\/p>\n

We have to become more efficient at what we do from the factory to the finished product.<\/p>\n

I think the factories do a fabulous job building 16×76's, its the most efficient 3 bed 2 bath housing I have ever seen. But by the time we: <\/p>\n