“The full 2018 review features the many major milestones achieved by the retail auto industry last year, including such highlights as: The nation’s 16,753 franchised dealers sold 17.22 million light-duty vehicles. Total new-vehicle sales topped $1 trillion,” said NADA.
That means the typical new car dealer or retailer sold an average of 1,027.88 new units each.
That 85.66 units a month per dealer.
That’s more than numbers of manufactured home retailers sell annually.
To be sure, manufactured home sales are more complex than automotive.
- The car, truck, minivan, or SUV is driven off the lot.
- By contrast, the manufactured home must be scheduled.
- Sites must be checked and prepared.
- A transporter – ‘totter’ – must get the route and related paperwork ready for delivery.
- Installation crews meet or greet the home. If it is a multi-sectional, those marriage lines must be properly mated. The supports, anchoring systems, adjustments – the list of necessary details goes on. Manufactured housing is in those ways more demanding.
- That said, there are aspects of the automotive retail model that properly applied to manufactured housing could yield more profits per unit. That’s one of the reasons why Jim Clayton left the car business for manufactured housing.
Systems must be in place in both the automotive and manufactured housing worlds. The car dealership owner – if they ever got the burn – could rapidly learn to run rings around many a manufactured home retailer, no matter how big the company.
It’s happened before. One well known example? Jim Clayton, founder of Clayton Homes.
Here’s what a trillion dollars looks like, in a step-by-step infographic.
There are several ways that either manufactured home professionals and/or automotive gurus could take manufactured housing sales to the next level at the local market.
Imagine those volume dealers and/or their methods being used by honorable, committed manufactured housing professionals in select local markets. It would be a revolution in the current era.
To grasp the upside potential of our industry, consider the following statistics and pull-quotes. The industry’s potential can arguably only be tapped when enough retailers learn to sell in the kinds of numbers that auto dealers already do. Focus on Andrew Beebe’s comment, and then ponder the other comments more closely.
Problems are opportunities in disguise.
Unlike cars or RVs, there is often no need to have huge inventories. The margins can be better. Properly planned and executed, it could rival the results of auto dealers. “Among the projects we’ve been involved in, there was a community operator that documented 75 sales – sales, not leases – in a 90 days time frame,” said L. A. ‘Tony’ Kovach. “If that can be achieved in a land-lease, why not more at a retail center?”
That’s this afternoon’s look at “News through the lens of manufactured homes, and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” ©
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Submitted by Soheyla Kovach to the Daily Business News for MHProNews.com.
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