{"id":2074,"date":"2014-07-09T08:36:45","date_gmt":"2014-07-09T13:36:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.manufacturedhomepronews.com\/industryvoices\/?p=2074"},"modified":"2014-07-09T08:36:45","modified_gmt":"2014-07-09T13:36:45","slug":"moblehome-not-mobile-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.manufacturedhomepronews.com\/industryvoices\/moblehome-not-mobile-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Moblehome, not Mobile Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does it not roll off your lips? Moblehome. It has a certain rhythm and melody to it. You can say it as one syllable, and not sound like an idiot.<\/p>\n

Moblehome, as in a noble home, not a mobile home.<\/p>\n

At one time HUD code homes were the only manufactured homes. Not any more.<\/p>\n

Man-u-fac-tured-hous-ing, does not roll of your lips. In fact, it is quite laborious to say, with six syllables and no rhythm nor melody. It’s antiseptic. Moblehome is poetic.<\/p>\n

Mobile Home is 100% all-American.<\/p>\n

I know it’s crazy and against the grain, but I was in it long enough to spout off about it.<\/p>\n

Mobile Home should not be a four letter word anymore.<\/b><\/i><\/p>\n

I started in the mobile home finance business working for GECC in Dallas, in 1971, directly for Harry Gilmore, who worked for Fred Wiesenberger, who worked for Scott Conroy, my maternal uncle. Sometime prior to that, Uncle Scott had convinced General Electric to create a “Special Products” division of General Electric Credit Corporation, now GE Capital Corporation, for the sole purpose of offering wholesale and retail financing for mobile home retailers on a national basis.<\/p>\n

At the time there were few national lenders, all full recourse, and limited to 84 month retail installment contracts.<\/p>\n

I was a mobile home account manager handling about 1500 owners. I managed anything and everything to do with the financed home (primarily collections) from point of sale to completion of contract or repossession, by phone or in person at the residence.<\/p>\n

Anyone who was in the business in 1971 knows exactly what kinds of mobile homes were offered to the public. It was not pretty, and in some cases, downright scary.<\/p>\n

We all see, on a regular basis, unless you live completely in an urban environment, the vestiges and remnants of the sales heydays of the early 70’s.<\/p>\n

There are hundreds of thousands of trailer houses and mobile homes across this country, from coast-to-coast and border-to-border, still in use, well after their intended life span, all pre-HUD, half of them currently uninhabitable by today’s standards, a fourth of them uninhabitable upon leaving the factory, and a fourth of them, like Rollohome, built exceeding the HUD code before there was a HUD code.<\/p>\n

The HUD code created a new nomenclature, which has been described by Allen Wallis of<\/a><\/p>\n

the <\/a>Natural History Magazine<\/a> <\/i>as having four phases;<\/p>\n