Here on the Cutting Edge of Manufactured Home Marketing and Sales blog, we tend to focus on topics that can drive more business for retailers, communities, developers – and by implication – those producers, lenders and vendors who serve them. Today, we'll look at 6 million FACTS the should all point to why manufactured housing (MH) should grow to levels 5 to 10 times what they currently are.
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Realtors ® are complaining that there is a shortage of affordable homes in their market.
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In some markets, conventional resale housing is being sold within days of being listed by a Realtor ®.
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The Seasonally Adjusted Annual Rate (SAAR) for existing housing (think house/condo/townhouse etc. resales) for 2014 is over 5 million.
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The SAAR for multi-family and single family new housing for 2014 is over one million units.
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That's over 6 million total housing units in 2014. Rents keep rising. So too conventional housing prices. These are all FACTs.
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And yet our manufactured housing product – which is appealing, less costly and greener – is going to finish 2014 under 70,000 new homes shipped?
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Before you give yourself, your association or business an EXCUSE as to why you can accept such a pathetically low sales volume, remember too that RVs – which have a smaller target audience than MH and a higher cost per square foot – outsells MH by about 5 to 1 in 2014.
Before you accept an EXCUSE – like "lack of lending" – just remember that every specialty lender we have in MH has said publicly there is "no lack of capacity" for them to originate more MH loans!
Even U.S. Bank. – which just announced they are exiting MH direct lending – is doing so in part because of low loan volume. If there were another zero behind new MH sales levels, don't you think they'd be staying in the business?
Part of the problem in our industry is a "Lack of Vision" in MH of Biblical proportions.
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The Industry must do better, meaning
YOUR Business or Association must do better!
In our paid training sessions for clients, we begin with the fundamentals, things like Attitude and Perceptions. The mind must be willing to accept the reality that we can sell more, before you will in fact sell and do more. If you think "I can't sell more because…" then you are right.
Any old excuse can do the trick.
Some people don't see what they don't want to see. Others don't see because of old habits, or a plethora of other causes.
Which is why each of us often need help, we all need at times someone else to remove the blinders so we can see what we are missing.
As part of our training sessions for clients', we often do recruiting and training of of new sales people, women and men new to our MH industry. We can take a motivated, open minded person and coach them into selling more homes than people with many years of more experience in MH do. Why?
Because of the facts in the U.S. Housing market. Don't get me wrong, the current MH sales people often improve too, when they see just how reasonable it is for them to do something different to get a better result.
The point is that – veteran or newbie – anyone motivated to do more, willing to learn more can. We have the right product with manufactured housing and the right time for it. The fact that we have to work smarter to sell more, well, its worth it.
See and Hear for Yourself!
If you are an association or business executive, leader, owner or manager, come to the 2015 Louisville Show. Attend our free seminars on improving new business development via marketing and sales based in the real world, not the "I can't world."
Listen to a guest we will bring who will tell you how our common sense system is rapidly improving their MH sales.
They are not alone.
If there is a hunger burning inside you to sell more, do more, profit more, you'll be at the 2015 Louisville Manufactured Housing Show, the single best attended event in the U.S. in MH! if you've not been to the KEC and the Louisville Show lately, it is All Indoors, for your shopping, networking and educational comfort!
Remember, there are some 6 million reasons your business should grow. Let's be honest, there are actually more than 6 million, because that number is how many housing units will be built or sold this year.
Will you fight for the crumbs, or join the crowd looking for the bigger piece of the pie? See you in Louisville in January 2015? ##
(Image credits: Top – Wikicommons, next 3, FlickrCreativeCommons)