If you look around the world, Americans have much to be grateful for, and so too does our once far greater industry. But as one carefully peers and ponders the details, one begins to sees that there’s so much more that could be accomplished in our nation.
The same holds true for manufactured housing (MH).
Our MH Industry has underperformed for decades. What will you do about it? How will you be part of the solution?
Let’s be blunt. Thousands of our fellow industry independents have already failed. Don’t believe it? Click to see the third-party, data-laced report by the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson by clicking the linked text/image box below.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/examining-derek-thompsons-atlantic-report-on-mobile-home-retail-market-as-fastest-dying-business-in-America/
Derek’s data points – linked above – are your latest third-party-inspired wake up call. It’s sobering.
Bigger Boys, But Not A Giant?
While thousands of our readers are from mom-and-pop operations, direct reader-feedback plus third-party metrics tell us that this is the runaway most read by the so-called ‘big boys’ too, and all those in the mid-ranges under that big boy level too.
Useful information and straight talk vs. spin and happy talk pays.
Never forget or ignore authentic manufactured home history.
The old Fleetwood and Champion homes of 20 years ago are gone. Once the two leaders in MHLand, the only things left of old Fleetwood and Champion are their names. Hey, it was Warren Buffett’s annual letter that declared those two plus Oakwood had once held 44 percent of the industry’s market share.
The old giants of yesterday fell, in what now today is only MHVille.
Since Buffett wrote that, Clayton hovers around 50 percent market share. Want to wait until it is 60 percent, or more?
The Atlantic report is just one of numerous reminders that thousands of pros who once had successful, thriving businesses are no more. Many were millionaires in their day. Today, their old firms are Dust in the Wind.
Don’t think it can’t happen to you. It’s happened to thousands of others. The Omaha-Knoxville-Arlington axis is slow, deliberately so. They are also relentless. Do you want to be their next discounted acquisition? Isn’t that the name of the Moat-builder’s game?
So you, we – and all others who want to be long-term in MHVille – must be equally relentless too. They have advantages. So do you and we, BUT only if you properly understand the dynamics at play.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/why-is-manufactured-housing-struggling-during-an-affordable-housing-crisis-former-mhi-president-vp-others-quotable-insights/
The arguably hypocritical, corrupt, and years of misfires at MHI – linked above and below – are just examples. There’s more.
Former Manufactured Housing Institute President, Manufactured Home Owners, Urban Institute, and You
Why did Lesli Gooch defend Clayton and their related lenders against claims of monopoly leveled by Doug Ryan at what today is known as Prosperity Now?
Why doesn’t Gooch and company just as enthusiastically defend the industry each and every time a lesser challenge is hurled at what harms the rest of MHVille? Where is Gooch or MHI on the Disney controversy? Or one of the many mainstream media stories that misuses terminology or otherwise mischaracterizes our industry every week? Facts are #NettlesomeThings.
The Dirty Little Secret…
Apparently, failure to act by MHI to defend the broader good name of manufactured housing is fine with Berkshire Hathaway and their brands in MHVille. Here’s the dirty little secret. If MHI wins or loses on an issue, Berkshire, Clayton, and their sister firm’s win either way. Ponder that. We’ll show that another time, but the people that shared that tip have proven to be correct, time and time again. Clayton’s market share just grows.
Because avoidable, artificial, regulatory, media, and other headwinds are arguably part of the vale acquisition strategy of Moat building deployed against independents – or you? – by the Omaha-Knoxville-Arlington axis.
As a prior reports reflected, even working for the Clayton’s and Berkshire brands doesn’t make you safe. It’s just that you’ll get the painfully purported shaft later in life.
There is a struggle. But why not team up now, and lessen the pain?
It can be as simple as tips. It can be as sobering and profitable as open support, or steps in between.
What Will You Do To Advance Your Location, Business, Organization, and Thus Your Industry?
Let’s be clear. We write what we write. If someone has guest comments that we opt to publish, then they are speaking for themselves.
Put differently, we don’t expect or even ask a sponsor to sign off on any given article.
Think of it something like a talk radio station. They often play a disclaimer, ‘the views and news here may or may not represent those of our sponsors’ or business development clients.
Sponsors benefit because we have the largest audience, and the most engaged one in MHVille. Period. No one else in MH trade media even comes close.
Legacy Housing – for example – may be with us for a another few months, or for years, we have no clue. But what we do know is what Legacy has said in their own words.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/huge-february-2019-manufactured-home-sale-announced-competes-with-louisville-tunica/
Legacy have a backlog, the biggest in their history, while the industry at large is slipping.
In the wake of their ads on MHProNews last fall, they had two reportedly very successful events in the last half of 2018. Legacy came back for more. That activity contributed to that backlog. That’s the logic of their own published statements. Their big GA event was so successful, they are repeating it.
Push Back Pays Dividends
MHVille Marketers, are you paying attention? Not only is push back against the powers that be smart, Legacy proved it pays off too.
The industry won’t cure slurs against it’s products and home owners without resistance. MHI clearly hasn’t given that kind of leadership. The MHI vision arguably one of lemmings being led off a cliff, like lambs to the slaughter at the altar of Berkshire or some other allied big boy firm.
If you happen to be one of those allied firms, never forget the lessons of those who helped topple Tsarist Russia. Once the revolutionaries were successful, their allies were routinely among those executed.
This is a war. It’s a business war, within and around our industry.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/exploring-corporate-association-individual-investor-and-governmental-corruption-involving-manufactured-housing/
It is peaceful in the sense that it starts and continues using information. Thus, as an MHI member-producer called it, this is an Info War. That’s a war we can win. Why? How? Because truth properly told and repeatedly shared can triumph over lies and deceit.
Some will choose to have their feet in both ponds. Okay, that’s a company’s free will right of choice.
Monopolists are slowly gobbling up America. It has been so for decades. Only now, it is quite visible.
We celebrate honest success. We are not socialists, but neither are we crony capitalists. We believe in the American Way, which is free enterprise and limited government that protects the people and their rights. Have you noticed how the crony capitalists often support the political left? Or how they often buy political influence in both major parties?
It’s about power and money. Money begets political power, and political power begets money.
You can’t ignore the trend lines and facts forever.
Antitrust and RICO
The good news is that antitrust action can win this struggle, but that too requires good information. There are civil, state, and federal actions and suits that can be brought.
While its bad news for them, and is potentially – potentially – good news for the industry – is that more than one ‘someone’ in the MHI camp of surrogates have misused the U.S. Mail, and misused ‘the wires’ in an obvious attempt to silence us.
That – per legal experts we’ve spoken with – can constitute elements of RICO. RICO has civil and criminal components too.
MHI has failed to properly promote our industry. We have, by contrast, the letters and related that demonstrates that we know how to grow business honestly at the local level.
These bullets and factoids combined are part of how MHVille can become – once more – MHLand. In time, with the correct approach, manufactured housing could emerge as the MHNation.
That’s a slow, but arguable goal of the monopolists too.
When Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Alexa Fund invested several million in a prefab start-up, that’s a wake up call to you, every MH Pro, and every MH investor or advocate. The Alexa Fund estimates this marketplace to be worth $330 billion a year.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/300-billion-market-as-predicted-jeff-bezos-amazon-alexa-fund-dives-deeper-into-prefab-homes/
Poor, inept, uncaring MHI apparently can’t even get the math right about our industry’s size. They keep saying it is $3 billion a year that MHVille ads to the GDP. They are demonstrably wrong by more than half. They are an embarrassment to themselves, and to the industry. The total is closer to $6.5 billion, because it is a retail sales figure, not wholesale or Lord-knows what number they pulled out of a hat to arrive at the clearly wrong $3 billion figure.
That’s mentioned only to show once more that they are either inept, incompetent, uncaring, or whatever phrase you might use to describe people that have spent millions, while shipments stalled, and finally, fell.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/comparing-conventional-housing-data-for-november-2018-to-manufactured-housing-industry-data-nov-2018/
Conventional housing data – in historic context – should be telling us why manufactured homes ought to be roaring, not snoring. That’s an indictment of MHI, and their puppet masters, pure and simple.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/manufactured-home-production-decline-accelerates-in-november-2018/
Professionals – often members of MHI – say that a lack of good information is part of what holds the industry back.
Others – producers, for instance – say the lack of retail distribution is holding the industry back. Pay attention to why Legacy Housing said they pursued their IPO. It is to increase their retail distribution.
There are solutions to every problem that the industry’s independents face.
You can feed the hand that is biting your hands, if you want to.
You can feed the hands that are backstabbing you, if you want to.
Perhaps, you may think that you don’t have a choice.
You do.
Join those who are calling for their own, or are working with us, to start the next phase of the Manufactured Housing Revolution. We’ll be meeting privately in Louisville and Tunica to discuss this with select professionals. How about you?
Finally, information properly shared is power. There are arguably reasons why the Omaha-Knoxville-Arlington axis is risking a RICO charge in the first place. It’s simple. They have their eyes on their part of a $330 billion dollar pie. The biggest threat to them is a breakup under federal, state, and civil RICO and/or antitrust.
That breakup of Berkshire and other monopolistic moat builders will require good information.
State and federal officials – we know first-hand – are already on this matter. It takes time. Don’t expect a headline tomorrow, that’s not how this works. It’s actually quite interesting that the local Knoxville media carried the report shown below.
Experts have told us that our safest place is being out front. In the open. Guess what? That’s where your safest place is too.
WVHI’s Andy Gallagher blew his own cover over a year ago, at his own request. Did Andy lose his job? No. Why? IMHO, because we publicized the matter.
Your safest place to hide is in plain sight.
NAMHCO is doing it. See the related report, further below the byline and notices.
MHARR has done it for many years.
We have survived and grown our readership, while ‘they’ are trying their best to undermine, intimidate, and destroy us.
For an employee at Omaha-Knoxville-Arlington related firm I get that you want to stay anonymous. We are thankful for every tip we get.
For those in business, look beyond a nice time you had at a MHI meeting. That’s Buffett’s Buffet. You are an upcoming meal, arguably nothing more.
Don’t roll over and play dead. In whatever ways your circumstances allow, this is the time to fight back. Info Wars is on, but the next phase is underway. Stay tuned. “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (News, commentary, and analysis.)
(See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them. Third-party images and content are provided under fair use guidelines.)
By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.
Tony is the multiple award-winning managing member of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.
Office 863-213-4090 |Connect on LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach
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Related References:
The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which an be accessed by clicking on them.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/new-era-in-national-u-s-manufactured-home-community-representation-underway/
Manufactured Housing – Greener Savings by Design – Earth Day Opportunities Missed?
The Two Gardens, America, and Manufactured Housing
Most of human history is a story of the struggle for authentic freedom against various forms of limitations, captivity, or enslavement. Much of history is the hidden or open battle between the truth and a captivating lie. People are often offended when lied to, and for good reason.
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/new-era-in-national-u-s-manufactured-home-community-representation-underway/
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/the-future-of-retail-disney-trailer-trauma-and-manufactured-housing/
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/manufactured-housing-institute-housing-alert-affordable-housing-crisis-mhis-nettlesomethings-response/
https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/new-era-in-national-u-s-manufactured-home-community-representation-underway/
