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This podcast of News at Noon is sponsored in part by MHMSM.com/solutions more information on MHMSM.com/solutions will follow this podcast.
Coming up, Extreme Makeover Finally Puts Spotlight on Modular Ingenuity. AN MHMSM.com exclusive report.
But first…these stories.
House Port Showcases Hally Thacher PopUP House During Petaluma’s First Green Business Tour
Form WebWire.com – Petaluma, CA – You can visit the Hally Thacher PopUP House, the latest in sustainable, modular home design that can be built for under $100 per square foot. This is a rare opportunity to tour this beautiful home – one of 20 featured finalists in Dwell’s “Houses We Love” Contest. After visiting the PopUP House, take a Green Tour of Petaluma and stop by several participating businesses
House Port was founded by Hally Thacher in 2004 following the development of the original House Port concept in Joshua Tree, CA. The first PopUP House in Petaluma, CA was completed in spring of 2009 based on the successful Joshua Tree experiment. The Hally Thacher PopUP House represents a new, clean, simple concept in architecture that marries the image of Apple™ with the ease of assembly of Ikea™ and has a construction cost of less than $100 per square foot. For more information on House Port, please visit: www.ehouseport.com
Legacy Housing, LTD Celebrates 5 Years as One of the Nation’s Top Home Manufacturers / Financiers
Fort Worth, TX, June 10, 2010 –(PR.com)– Legacy Housing, LTD, a national manufacturer of HUD-code affordable housing and specialty finance company today announced the celebration of 5 years in business. (http://www.legacyhousingltd.com) Since 2005, Legacy Housing, LTD has evolved from a start-up manufacturer, offering affordable quality built HUD-code manufactured homes, to a thriving national manufacturer offering a comprehensive product line, including over 85 floor plans, 2 product lines, retail financing, inventory financing, mobile home insurance, mobile home transport, and a consignment division. This vertical integration has set them apart from other manufacturers and lenders in the mobile home industry.
“What started out 5 years ago with a vision has steadily grown into a business far exceeding anyone’s expectations,” said Kenny Shipley, Legacy Housing’s co-founder and President. “We are all very proud of this accomplishment and grateful to our customers, dealerships, and employees who helped get us here.”
Company to Sell Concrete Homes in Gulf Coast Area
Rebuilding efforts along the Gulf Coast since Hurricane Katrina have been delayed by high insurance rates and new wind load regulations for coastal buildings. The stricter regulations for new homes have meant higher cost for home buyers during an already bad economy.
Royal Concrete Concepts has reached an agreement to sell 248 of its concrete modular homes through Clay Gutierrez of Concrete Building Concepts. The first dwelling will be a model home that will arrive on site in mid-June.
The homes are pre-engineered concrete modular homes comprising concrete walls, roof and foundation. They are category five hurricane resistant and energy efficient.
Extreme Makeover Finally Puts Spotlight on Modular Ingenuity
Industry in Focus Report by Eric Miller, MHMSM.com journalist
PINE MOUNTAIN VALLEY, GA, June 9, 2010—The season finally of the popular ABC television series Extreme Makeover Home Edition recently brought the modular home industry into the national spotlight. It took just nine days for the crew from Nationwide Homes, Inc., a subsidiary of Palm Harbor Homes, to build the 13-section 3700 square foot modular in its Martinsville, Virginia factory. Seven additional days and the home was fully assembled for the Williams Family on its Georgia site.
The show, which sends a deserving family on vacation while a home is constructed for them, gave the television and network crew a first-hand look at modular construction.
“They were wildly enthusiastic about it,” comments Nationwide Marketing Director Dan Goodin. “The construction team was extremely positive with comments like ‘We should build this way all the time.'”
The home features 12-foot ceilings, gas fireplace, loft, glass block shower surrounds and is fully accessible.
Two members of the Williams family have Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or ALS, (Lou Gehrig’s disease) which attacks the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord that control voluntary muscle movement.
The idea for the show originated at a Nationwide exhibit at the International Builder’s Show in January, 2009.
More than 30 Nationwide builders either sponsored or participated in the build, including 22 on site assisting in the set and completion. Among them was Scott Shimberg of Scott Shimberg Homes of Tampa, Florida. In a video shot on site in Georgia, Shimberg called his company’s involvement the opportunity of a lifetime.
“It’s an evolution of the buildings systems process that it only makes sense that you would engineer a house the way you would engineer any other manufactured product from a car to a boat to anything that we build and to migrate to a process where we’re engineering in a controlled environment and then assembling on a job sites—it just makes a lot of sense. This is the right way to do it.”
A custom builder with 50 years of experience, participation in Extreme Makeover Home Modular Edition coincided with the launch and re-branding this year of Scott Shimberg Homes* as a builder using modular methods. Shimberg told www.MHMSM.com he doesn’t use the word “modular,” however, because as he says “the homebuyer is confused by it.” In his view, the technologies are ahead of the public perception. Instead the words “off-site” and “controlled-environment” are utilized.
Shimberg also says the show was important in highlighting the advantages of housing built off-site, both to the public and to the TV crew and cast from Extreme Makeover. “They’ve built countless homes and you could just see it—in their eyes it was ‘wow,'” Shimberg says. “They’ll be doing more of this in the seasons ahead.”
The 42-minute show resulted in a marked increase in traffic to Nationwide’s web site. In addition Goodin says there has been interest on the part of other programs including HGTV’s Designing Spaces and The History Channel’s You Want Answers, part of what he says is a recent surge of interest in prefabrication in print media and elsewhere.
While the publicity from the show is rewarding, as is common in television production, much of the footage didn’t make it to prime time. For example, five hours shot in the factory with Nationwide President Andy Miller was left out.
“A lot of the cool stuff got squeezed out,” Goodin says. “The footage with Andy Miller and the designers tells a really good story and about their impression of modular housing.”
That story won’t remain untold, however. Nationwide hired its own videographer to record the event and will release its own video told from a builder’s perspective later in the summer.
This podcast of News at Noon is sponsored in part by MHMSM.com/solutions.
Do you have vacant homes or sites? Does your financing, marketing, sales or management need a boost? From high Return on Investment online marketing, to public relations, sales, lead and management systems and more, make us your Solutions Resource. When you are ready for the answers to your needs, visit MHMSM.com/solutions.
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