Friday February 19th was a long, long day – but it went by quickly. We were doing a video shoot at a true mobile home park. I say ‘true,’ because most of the homes there were pre-HUD Code homes – so they were properly called mobile homes – dozens of which have been nicely updated.
When you talk to a zoning official or federal regulator, many have an incomplete or even improper view of modern HUD Code manufactured homes and their mobile home predecessors. Whose fault is that? We’ll table that question for now, because there are plenty of reasons for the problem and lots of responsibility for it to go around.
We worked all weekend on the first of a periodic series of the Inside MH Road Show videos to provide an initial snapshot of that park for MHLivingNews. My apologies for the delay in posting my weekend blog and the associated eblast, one of which is hereby done and the next will be coming your way shortly.
That new Inside MH Road Show video is linked here.
Misunderstandings Cost Us Billions – Which may Mean 6 figure$ and up for any 1 Operation
The only way to deal with the misunderstandings and misconceptions are with educational information. One might call that education: Image Building, Marketing, Public Relations, etc., etc.. From local zoning to state and federal issues, misunderstandings about our product are outrageously expensive to business. It costs an estimated 1.7 million of our industry’s most affordably priced home owners billions in total value.
UMH’s Sam Landy rightly pointed out in an interview that each company is responsibility for its own marketing.
That’s true, however there is also wisdom in synergizing with others. This is where the work MHLivingNews does to promote a better understanding of the MH industry. While individual companies are promoting themselves, and some associations may do a few things to promote their members, no one else in all of MH does anything as robust as MHLivingNews.
In the new video and story linked above, among the upcoming video features will be one focused on Dodd-Frank and the CFPB. This community has dozens of homes around and over that $20,000 and up price-point most impacted by the CFPB’s implementation of the Dodd-Frank regulations. That video will reflect the fact that home owners under the 20k price point are the most harmed by the regulations, not to mention the impact in that 20k to 75k range that the HMDA data reflects.
To rephrase, some in the video shown are the kinds of households that federal regulations are negatively impacting.
When MHPros combine the advocacy related facts found in this video linked here, with the impact of the reality of MHLiving found in stories like the ones in this new video, a picture emerges of a lifestyle that is worthy of protection!
As more MHPros understand and realize the need to promote the industry’s good news stories, while tackling the problematic issues that face us from outside and within, our ability to grow back to the higher volume sales levels of the past will grow.
While putting MH on a level playing field on so much of the federal largess would be nice, and it would dramatically benefit the federal government and consumers, we don’t have to have big brother’s “help.” What we need is to get local, state and perhaps most of all federal officials to stop creating issues where they don’t need to exist.
We need associations, individual businesses and motivated professionals to grasp this infotainment and educational approach, so those involved can grow their own businesses and so that collectively we can see multi-billion dollar increases in the value of new HUD Code MH being shipped.
That’s our story. We’re sticking with it. My thanks to all who are making these kinds of pro-MH trade media efforts possible.
Not doing these things collectively as an industry has harmed us for years. In a 1 trillion dollar a year housing market, that costs us billions and may cost you and your firm 5, 6, 7 figures a year or more.
Let’s learn the lessons and value of teaming up and synergizing more, and start moving the ball down the field again to much higher new home sales levels than we’ve seen in a decade. We can do it.
More, later…let’s catch up mid-week… ##
