Manufactured Homes? Mobile Homes? Housing? Factory-Built Homes? What Should We Call our Homes?

Hollywood,

For forty plus years, the MH industry has tried to change the mobile home perception and sophisticate the MH product by changing the name.  When business was sooo good, newbie MBA’s came in and screwed  things up as that was their job which was to make changes and expose what is wrong.

The new group along with industry insiders claimed that the name “mobile home” was not proper.  They said the name is disgraceful and trashy like “trailer.” Industry vets went along with new culture hires and agreed to the name change. The purchasers or those who live in the MH didn’t care at the time and still don’t. 

We changed the name to manufactured housing and after decades of pounding manufactured housing into the public’s mind, most new MH purchasers and MH dwellers still used the term mobile home, so then we decided to change the name to just housing and that did not work as there was no identity to our product, so then some geniuses said to change to factory built homes and so on and so on – so many names.

Still after 4 decades, the public still relates to the mobile home name and per all data, mobile home is used on the internet as much or more than manufactured housing.  Thus, we should never down grade the mobile home name of past which did so much good during a very special time in our industry and especially with so many MH customers still living in them.

So what do we do?  You and I have had numerous conversations as to industry concepts and image and that is why we both have always used the name MH.

You are correct in using MH for the industry’s product name in all of your writings.  It is much easier to say, write and change to.

The recreational vehicle changed to RV and everyone knows the RV name.  The same should be used with MH.

Keep up the good work by using MH in your publications and you will realize more and more using MH.

Barry

Barry Cole

Manufactured Housing Insurance Services (MHIS)

RV/MH Hall of Fame Inductee – Class of 2014.

CMHI’s “Jack E. Wells Memorial Award” for distinguished service to the manufactured home industry.

Past Chairman RV/MH Hall of Fame

(Editor’s Note: this message to L. A. “Tony” Kovach (whom Barry and some other industry pros like to refer to as “Hollywood”) is an on-the-record commentary  by Barry on the article, linked below. Numerous other ‘off the record’ comments have come in as well. As always, your comments – on or off the record – are encouraged.)

http://ManufacturedHomeLivingNews.com/cancer-cures-and-todays-mh/

A Cup of Coffee with…Barry Cole, is linked here.