Inflation. Afghanistan. Supply chains problems. Southern border. COVID19 vax mandates. Soaring housing costs. A series of apparent blunders and oversteps of authority are behind Joe Biden’s plunging approval. Which makes it odd at best that the National Housing Conference (NHC) President and CEO’s David M. Dworkin, who has spoken favorably about support for manufactured homes, recently said to fellow “housers” …

Let’s start with the lyrics to two different versions of the song, “Ain’t We Got Fun.” The earlier version is from Peggy Lee, later it was performed by Doris Day. How this relates to more affordable home ownership will be made clear on the far side of these two versions of the lyrics and related videos.  It is noteworthy that …

“It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you‘ve been playing all your life.” – Mickey Mantle per BrainyQuote and opening quote in hit Moneyball.   “I didn’t even want to meet Warren [Buffett] because I thought, ‘Hey this guy buys and sells things, and so he found imperfections in terms of markets, that’s not value added to society, that’s a zero-sum game that …

It is a troubling story that has a better-than-expected ending. But former nurse Laurie Myers had to appear in Knoxville, TN “General Sessions Court on Tuesday, Sept. 14,” where she was told to expect “to be officially evicted from Amherst Ridge.” Amherst Ridge is a land-lease manufactured home community that per an informed local source was once owned by Clayton …

Words may sound good but are at times proven to be devoid of meaningfully matching action. A new HUD PD&R report effectively confirmed and amplified several findings in an August 2021 research report and analysis on MHLivingNews entitled “Why So Few Affordable U.S. Homes? Federal & Other Research – Monopolies, Moats, Manufactured Housing – Impacts Renters, Current Manufactured Homeowners, Conventional …

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which is the primary regulatory of U.S. stock markets, announced a legal enforcement action against Cavco Industries over conduct involving former Cavco Chairman and CEO, Joseph Stegmayer, Daniel Urness, and the company. Cavco issued the following press release on 9.3.2021 which states their response to the complaint. The SEC Complaint – i.e. legal pleadings …

Properly understood, existing federal laws are routinely and broadly speaking on the side of residents and white hat independents who believe they are being victimized by “predatory” firms operating in the manufactured housing industry.  With that statement in mind, Berkshire Hathaway backed Apple’s recently announced settlement of $100 million dollars in a class action antitrust lawsuit filed against Apple by …

Congressional Representative Cindy Axne (IA-D) office made the following media release available to MHLivingNews. First-time visitors should note that  there are white-hat brands in manufactured housing as well as so-called black-hat or “predatory” brands too. More on that further below. The Rep. Axne press release will be followed by additional information, some MHLivingNews analysis, and a brief related commentary.   …

Why is there so little competition in the manufactured home lending market? While there are several interlocking factors, one of the simplest points to make is that the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not doing the robust lending in the manufactured home market as they are doing for conventional housing. What follows is a step-by-step explanation based …

Elon Musk is certainly an unconventional person in several respects. The well-known and periodically controversial co-founder/executive of Tesla, SpaceX, Boring and other high tech companies announced via Twitter last year that he planned to divest himself of several high end homes/mansions. In their place, he has reportedly moved into a Boxabl brand Casita model PreFab. A PreFab – or prefabricated …

The American Dream has to various degrees always included the ideal of home ownership. As conventional housing prices have long been out of reach for millions with more modest earnings and/or a smaller housing budget, the evolution from 1930s-1940s era trailer houses into larger mobile homes occurred during the 1950s into the early 1970s. While many of those post-trailer house …

Some decades ago, the first two manufactured home communities that I lived in where quite basic. There were the streets, homesites, utilities, and the manufactured homes themselves. For first-time readers, it may be useful for me to mention that I’ve owned and lived in several of the various types of housing available in America. There were conventional ‘site-built’ houses, apartments, …

Facts matter. The true meaning of words matters too. The relationship between cause-and-effect matters. As MHLivingNews and our MHProNews sister site has each previously reported, Peter Buffett, Warren Buffett’s own son, has exposed significant problems with the so-called “philanthro-feudalism” industry. Prior to Peter’s revelations, the award winning documentary Poverty Inc, outlined numbers of problems tied to so-called charity or poverty …

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) are among the nonprofits, media, and public officials who have called RHP Properties and other “consolidators” of land-lease manufactured home communities “predatory.” While such comments were once more commonly reserved to Democratic lawmakers, Republican officials have, in recent years, also become concerned that what is occurring in what for decades was “affordable housing” is …

Even though tens of millions of Americans understandably believe that “the system is rigged,” the case can be made that the system is more rigged than most realize. The response from the Office of General Counsel at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to this writer and MHLivingNews publisher L. A. “Tony” Kovach is an example of that which will …