During a hearing of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity evaluating the effectiveness to which the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has implemented key provisions of the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000, Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA) formally unveiled legislation (H.R. 3849) to reduce regulatory burdens impeding access to affordable manufactured housing financing. In detailing challenges facing the manufactured housing industry, Congressman Miller cited a number of difficulties the industry has suffered over the past decade, including: a decline in new manufactured home construction of roughly 80 percent; the closure of more than 160 plants; and the loss of over 200,000 jobs. He specified that “Congress must address the problems with regulatory overreach that impedes the ability of consumers to obtain mortgage financing for manufactured homes.” The bill (titled the Preserving Access to Manufactured Housing Act) was developed on a bipartisan basis by Reps. Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Stephen Fincher (R-TN) and Gary Miller, in consultation with the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), to address both reducing the threshold by which small balance manufactured home personal property loans are considered High-Cost Mortgage Loans under provisions within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (P.L. 111-203) and thereby subject to punitive and onerous liabilities and clarifying that those selling manufactured homes—who are not fundamentally engaged in the business of mortgage origination —are not to be considered mortgage originators under the federal SAFE Act and thereby better able to provide adequate technical assistance to consumers throughout the manufactured home buying process—similar to the SAFE Act treatment of real estate brokers. The full text is available at MHMSM.com
