If a local businessman has his way, upscale Hilton Head, South Carolina will see a 14-home site manufactured housing community (MHC). Enrique Lopez has applied to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control for Coastal Zone Consistency Determination, and intends to sell lots for $70,000 each. Noting a manufactured home (MH) can be purchased for $30,000 to $35,000, he anticipates consumers will buy the lots over time, adding people are paying $500 a month rent for home sites now. In July the median price of a residence in the Hilton Head area was $248,000, 17 percent below July 2013.

As blufftontoday.com reports, Mark Dillard, executive director of the Manufactured Housing Institute of South Carolina (MHISC), says it may be a challenge because most people think of the old stereotypes of 1950s and 1960s as their reference point, when in fact construction of MH has been stringently controlled by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) since 1976. He says the new MHCs cannot always be distinguished from site-built homes in subdivisions. As MHProNews understands, SC has 750,000 people living in 350,000 MH, about 18.2 percent of the population. ##

(Photo credit: Freehold Real Estate Management)