“Recession,” per Oxford Languages is defined as “a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.” By the last clause of that definition, the recession has already begun, as MHProNews has previously observed. Who says? Per the federal BEA website: “Gross Domestic Product (Third Estimate), GDP by Industry, and Corporate Profits (Revised), First Quarter 2022. Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2022, according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis” on 6.29.2022. The Atlanta Federal Reserve said: “The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2022 is -1.6 percent…” on 7.19.2022. By those metrics, the U.S. recession has ‘arrived.’ Are we in a housing recession? If so, how does such a recession impact the housing market? What impact or opportunities does that hold for manufactured housing? Those issues are explored herein below.
On 7.20.2022, Fortune said: “Simply put: We’ve moved into a housing recession.”
Deseret News said on 7.21.2022 that the: “Housing market enters recession.” Both news publication obviously stated their sources for making those remarks. While some are saying this ‘recession’ may be different than others in the past, a common result of a housing recession, said the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) —-, it historically means that housing prices will fall by about 5 percent. The debated question is, will this recession be different because of a housing shortage?
Sources as diverse as CNBC and Al Jazeera (7.13.2022) have said: “Home price appreciation is expected to remain in the double digits at least until the end of 2022, experts said.”
In the face of these concerns, observations and economic headwinds the manufactured housing industry has managed to continue to grow. The data in the report under the graphic below details the latest facts by state, region, and nationally for HUD Code manufactured home production and shipments. While real estate and conventional new housing sales are being ‘cancelled’ at a record clip in recent years, manufactured housing has continued to rise.
That growth in manufactured home production and shipments is occurring despite the claim that retail traffic by manufactured home street ‘dealers’ is reportedly down in #1 Texas.
While that continued growth in production and shipments is good for HUD Code manufactured home producers, there is evidence that the headwinds impact manufactured housing independent retailers and ‘mom and pop’ owned communities.
Prominent Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) member Cavco Industries (CVCO) CEO William “Bill” Boor was arguably correct when he said that manufactured housing has an opportunity to ‘catch up’ with conventional builders.
Programming notes: There are fresh reports from a large MHI insider operation and from those who question MHI based on evidence. Plus other unique takes on key industry topics are pending.
Speaking of hot takes, to see what your peers in the manufactured home industry and consumers/residents are the most interested in, check out today’s postscript. It is eye opening.
With no further adieu here are the headlines for the week that was from 7.17 to 7.24.2022.
What’s New on MHLivingNews
What’s New in July from Washington, D.C. from MHARR
What’s New on the Masthead
What’s New from Tim Connor, CSP, on the Words of Wisdom
What’s New on the Daily Business News on MHProNews
Saturday 7.23.2022
Friday 7.22.2022
Thursday 7.21.2022
Wednesday 7.20.2022
Tuesday 7.19.2022
Monday 7.18.2022
Sunday 7.17.2022
Postscript What Topics Are Attracting Manufactured Home Industry Pros
To the headline topics today, what are the issues that manufactured housing industry professionals are focused on? The facts presented below reveal the answers.
Of course, there are those who want to know which REIT or manufactured home community operator bought which ‘parks.’ In years gone by, MHProNews spent more time on articles like that when the pace of acquisitions was considerably slower than it has been more recently. When this or that industry trade platform or blog shares articles about ‘deals’ made, it should be stressed that they aren’t keeping up with the actual velocity of deals that are occurring. The broader picture is reflected in reports found on MHProNews like those linked below. Because our publications do not bother to kiss the ample derrieres of the powers that be and their front-people in MHVille, we don’t just publish their claims, we unpack them with additional facts, analysis, and commentary. Because we cross reference information and insights from a range of sources, our reports are often better and more useful than the base data.
To the point of consolidation, there are also periodic acquisitions of retailers, production centers and other manufactured home industry firms, plus the occasional opening of a new plant or a newly developed land-lease community. Those later categories of new communities, production centers, and retail locations merit mention but the rate is so low that it ought to be a source for embarrassment to the manufactured home industry. For years, the pace of new conventional housing single-family or multifamily sales has far outperformed manufactured homes, despite their far higher costs.
That said, the following are the leading reports for the month-to-date as of July 23.2022. Before diving in, some background is useful.
Every full month year-to-date in 2022 has been over a million pageviews monthly, per third-party Webalizer facts that is obtained and generated from server-embedded data-gathering (so, it should be the most accurate). Note only MHProNews/MHLivingNews in manufactured housing industry publishing is known to periodically provide such hard-data backed information, while others may brag about being ‘the best’ they routinely hide their actual data which might contradict their boasts. MHI used to publish their pageviews in their media kit, which if that data held true today MHProNews would dwarf by a factor of four. When MHProNews surpassed MHI’s pageviews, they stopped publishing that data. Coincidence?
MHProNews has a dozen cPanels, and this report is from the largest of those Webalizer reports. “Usage Statistics for manufacturedhomepronews.com – Summary by Month Generated 23-Jul-2022 07:13 CDT” that is “Generated by Webalizer Version 2.23.” So, the actual totals of all cPanel data for our website are significantly LARGER than that million-plus pageviews.
MHProNews has a dozen cPanels, and this report is from the largest of those Webalizer reports. “Usage Statistics for manufacturedhomepronews.com – Summary by Month Generated 23-Jul-2022 07:13 CDT” that is “Generated by Webalizer Version 2.23.” Note that pageviews per visitor month to date in July, per Webalizer, are 11.58. A typical news site has about 3.3 page views per visit. So, MHProNews’ reader engagement is more than 3x the rate for typical mainstream news sources. The June 2022 data had 10.79 page views per visit, that engagement-with-articles per visit number fluctuates modestly month-by-month. As a comparison, CNN – one of the largest news websites in the country per SimilarWeb (#3 U.S. news website) and #95 globally among all websites on 7.23.2022 reports only 2 page views per visitor on average and just over 3 minutes for a typical visit (3.02 minutes). Restated, MHProNews visitors spend more time and read more articles than some of the biggest brands in the legacy news media. Clearly, readers here find content that keeps them coming back and reading. Industry professionals vote with their time, browsers, devices, and clicks to read several articles.
Some of these topics may be surprising for their high levels of engagement by industry professionals. But these are the top (most accessed, most read) articles month to date as shown below. In other words, these are the magnets that on site and online searches or MHProNews headlines caused professionals and researchers to click and read the most.
MHLivingNews has two cPanels, and the larger of the two reported the following at the date and time shown: “Usage Statistics for manufacturedhomelivingnews.com Summary by Month Generated 23-Jul-2022 07:14 CDT.’ So, this is much, but not all of the data results. Note that MHLivingNews – while busy – only has a fraction of the number of articles found on MHProNews. Note that ‘the proprietary’ articles omitted below can be broadly understood as promoting a specific product, service, brand, sponsored content, etc. Some of these have been among the most read on MHLivingNews months or years on end. Note too that as with MHProNews, thousands of articles and items (e.g.: graphics) are accessed during the course of a given month.
About 1 out of 4 articles are ‘promotional’ and another above are also from a sponsored source. This is a topic that will be revisited, but it has significance for those who wonder about how best to promote manufactured housing and/or a specific manufactured home connected financing, product, service, brand, etc.
Again, our thanks to free email subscribers and all readers like you, our tipsters/sources, sponsors and God for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) (See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.
For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position, and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.
Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
Related References:
The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.
