According to realtors.com, buying a traditional site-built home over the past year has been a bit like competing in “The Hunger Games.” First-time buyers faced off against investors and fellow purchasers wielding all-cash offers well over the asking price for a dwindling number of properties to choose from.
As home prices soared to previously unimaginable heights, fewer have been able to gain a toehold into home ownership, according to the National Association of Realtors 2022 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. In fact, only about a quarter of all home sales (26%) were attributed to first-time buyers – the lowest percentage in the report’s 41-year history, a big drop from the previous year, when this group represented about a third (34%) of all purchasers.
The housing market isn’t just challenging even for seasoned buyers grappling with a record dearth of homes for sale, heated bidding wars, and the pressure to waive crucial contingencies just to have a seller consider an offer. Rising inflation, higher rents, and increasing mortgage interest rates also cut into buyer budgets, all of which makes it difficult to save for a down payment.
First-Time Homebuyers As Well As Seasoned Buyers Are Turning To Manufactured Housing
Meanwhile, there are more and more first-time as well as seasoned buyers who are turning to quality affordable manufactured housing.
Manufactured home production, and sales are continuing to set records with month over month and year over year shipment increases, including the pandemic years of 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Manufactured home sales reports contrast dramatically compared with sales of traditional site- built single family housing. The reasons are chronicled below:
- Manufactured home sales are subjected to the same inflationary pressures, material costs, and mortgage rates as site-built homes. However, those pressures pale significantly in the pricing of a new manufactured home, as these economic factors are minimized due to the cost savings of factory built construction.
- Today’s new modern manufactured home is a sound investment, at least equal, and often superior, in every respect to a traditional site-built home, with a cost about 50% less.
- Check these cost comparisons between a traditional pre-owned site-buil home and a new manufactured home with comparable size and features:
Average national price of a site-built home — $435,000
Average price of a new manufactured home $124,900*
(U.S. Census Bureau)
* Without land costs
- Multiple manufactured home financing programs are available, whether the manufactured home is placed on private property or within a land-lease community. Down payment requirements are required based upon the sales price of either a site-built home or manufactured home, as a result the down payment requirement on a manufactured home would likely be about one-half that of a site-built home.
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