As housing prices increase dramatically for Americans, federal lawmakers are looking closely at manufactured homes as a more cost-effective alternative to the traditional log home.
Still, misconceptions about new manufactured housing communities — that they’re outdated, ugly, or unsafe — continue to chill part of the single-family, detached housing market that’s currently home to 7.2 million US homes.
Legislators in both parties increasingly see manufactured homes as an important way to improve housing affordability. The Affordable HOMES Act, which The US House of Representatives that we went through last week, we are part of that vision.
This law, which is mainly aimed at improving and facilitating the development of manufactured housing, will remove regulatory burdens. For example, it would give HUD sole authority over energy efficiency standards for manufactured homes and remove excessive oversight from the Department of Energy. Lawmakers say reducing such red tape could lower prices for manufactured homes by up to $10,000 per unit.
I Real Estate Agency reports that new manufactured homes are being sold for less than a third of the number of homes built in the area. The limited affordability of such homes is clearly something that Washington lawmakers have taken into account.
Gene Kim, Executive VP of CRE Strategies at Ascent Developer Solutions (AscentDS), said Builder’s Day that built houses can and should play a major role in improving housing availability. AscentDS, a private equity lending and institutional debt platform backed by Elliott Investment Management LP, serving single-family, homebuilders, and multifamily developers, recently announced an expansion to provide financing to manufactured home builders.
However, persistent misconceptions and long-standing stigmas about manufactured housing communities continue to plague the industry, and sometimes make obtaining zoning approval difficult.
Misconceptions continue to hamper the construction of houses
There is still a large NIMBY effect affecting manufactured housing. Although new manufactured communities are often built to high safety standards and continue to feature high-quality housing, many people still associate those buildings with old-fashioned, high-risk mobile home parks.
A recent brief from the National Association of Home Builders notes:
“A manufactured home is a type of factory-built home that adheres to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Building and Safety Standards code.” To qualify, a manufactured home must be a ‘movable dwelling, 8 feet or more in width and 40 feet or more in length, built on a permanent basis.’
Among the area’s concerns are the often-held notion that manufactured communities lower neighborhood property values and negatively impact neighborhood aesthetics, crime rates, and increased infrastructure costs. Kim of AscentDS said these ideas are often misguided.
“When people say mobile home parks, a lot of times, their mind jumps to the 1960s trailer park. But the communities that are being delivered today are of a much higher quality. It’s almost necessary to have a separate property category and a property theme category, because the quality is so high, both in the general community and the housing level,” he explained.
Still, typical NIMBY activists can make it difficult to provide affordable housing, meaning that new manufactured communities tend to be on the larger side, Kim noted.
“If you can get those rights, they will be for large communities, north of two, three, four hundred places.”
There is also a common misconception that prefabricated houses are not as valuable as log houses. This can sometimes create a negative impression that prevents some people from buying such communities.
Data from the Census’s 2025 Manufactured Housing Survey contradicts that view, however. Between 2000 and Q2 2025, average sales prices for manufactured homes and site-built homes appreciated at about the same rate.
Geographical distribution of manufactured housing
Manufactured homes make up about 5.4% of all homes nationally, according to the December Storage Cafe report. However, there is a big difference depending on the situation. New Mexico (15%), Mississippi (14%), West Virginia (13%), Alabama (12%), and Louisiana (12%) have the highest number of manufactured homes as a share of the total housing stock.
All of those states have high levels of rural poverty and rank in the bottom 10 for household income. This should not be surprising, as manufactured homes are an important housing option for families living in certain rural areas or small towns. About 55% of homes built are in rural areas, compared to less than 25% of single-family homes.
According to the NAHB:
“Although the majority of residents of manufactured homes (53%) live in rural areas, single-family residents are concentrated (67%) in urban areas – defined as areas with 50,000 or more people. 2,500 and 50,000 – including 13% and 9%, respectively.”
Sun Belt markets such as Texas, Florida, and Arizona are currently the largest areas of manufactured housing, due to strong population growth and permitted zoning. Overall, the South continues to dominate the national housing market, with the region accounting for nearly 70% of new homes sold in October.
