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I tried to upload this yesterday afternoon, but the phone number looks like it was entered incorrectly. So, to be sute you get it, i am submitting it again . . .

My first experience with a "factory built home" was way back in 1962 when my wife, and our newly born twin sons moved into a cramped, used 8' x 40', 320 sf "trailer house" on a rented lot in S California after leaving University. I had just been hired to work at Vandenberg AFB as a computer systems engineer for one of our country's largest Aerospace contractors. Our ultimate "dream home" it was not. But even back then, and as cramped it was, it provided me and my small family with a safe, functional, reasonably priced home for our circumstances.

Some 57 years later after 8 children and 23 grandchildren My wife and I have since retired into a resort style community and are living in a 1,300 sf "manufactured home". Our new home was officially renamed from "trailer" or "mobile home" to a "manufactured home", having been built to the Federal Housing Act of 1973 to uniform factory building housing codes, sometimes now referred to as "HUD Code homes.

After 10 years employment in the nascent mini-micro computer industry, I chose to invest in a "street dealer" business specializing in sales of modular and pre-1973 HUD Code mobile homes. During the next few years of selling, installing, and obtaining financing for my customers from two retail sales locations, local, seriously restrictive zoning and land use regulations made it all but impossible to obtain an adequate number of vacant fee-simple or lease-hold homesites for my customers. So I closed my business and went to work as the sales manager for factory built home manufacturers, and eventually built two new communities of my own.

Along the way, I obtained Real Estate Licenses in 3 states, and became a loan officer for one of the Nations largest bank's home mortgage operations. Today I continue to provide independent business consulting services to manufactured housing community investors and developers. However those clients as pre-cursors to new community developments are also waning. In the past 15-20 years the majority of new HUD Code homes has not been into safe new communities, but into in-fill city lots or rural private property locations.

Now in retrospect, after 47 years of experience from within the industry as a factory home builder, modular-mobile home street retailer, community developer and lender, and a real estate broker, it is all too obvious to me what can or should be done if Americans are to benefit from factory built housing. I learned a lot. It was during that period for example, I came to understand that a HUD Code homes could built "above" minimums such that they were virtually physically the same as IBC Code or modular homes, but at substantially lower costs for several reasons, none of which decrease safety features. However even when sold as real property improvements attached to and with the homesite, the financing terms are not on a par with similarly featured stick built homes.

I have served the M. H. industry in many ways. As the author of two manufactured home and community development books, co-author one as well, for over 30 years wrote columns for two major industry related publications, I was a key presenter at many State conferences and private seminars. I was also on the Mobile Home Committee of the California M.H. Association of Realtors and was the VP of the California Association of M. H. Retailers.

In my opinion, above all, the industry must employ and fully fund an aggressive advertising and public relations program to stimulate public interest in manufactured housing beyond living in decaying older trailer parks or age restricted seniors communities. This will require the financial support of all industry segments: home manufacturing, home transporters, supplier and accessory structure providers, chattel mortgage lenders, civil engineering entities, community development financing, specialty contractors, and other related industries.

It is critically important to establish appraisal based viable terms for resale home buyer financing, even when on leased homesites. Without terms comparable to new home financing, original home buyers may not be able to capture their equity, resulting in a false belief in home depreciation. We must continue to pressure the GSEs to comply with their mandated "duty to serve" all housing types, without exception.

Not the least in importance is the industry's support of using positive terminology for manufactured housing residents and their homes by eliminating many older non-relevant terms such as trailers, wobbly boxes, slots, slicks, and parks. Mass media, especially electronic and digital media must be educated in relation to differences in structures such as the use of motor homes (RV) as mobile homes, and acknowledging high wind damage caused by differences with stick built communities such as the common use of lightweight skirting, sheds, and awnings.

Its not just about affordability . . . its about manufactured homes as reasonably priced single family housing for those with needs through the equal application of: zoning and land use regulations, far and competitive home financing terms, and fair treatment of manufactured housing coverage by mass media. .

Edward "Eddie" Hicks
Lic RE Broker
Consultants Resource Group
(813) 300-6150 Cell
(352) 460-1688 Office
www.mobilehomepark.com
www.factorybuilthome.com
www.emptynester.com
www.fha207m.com