Have you been sticking your nose up at the manufactured home borrower? Like it or not, with the increasing popularity of the Reverse Mortgage loan product for the mature borrower, loan officers and processors are dealing with more and more manufactured homes in their portfolios. It makes sense when one realizes that seniors have chosen to congregate in the manufactured home park setting as a retirement oasis, offering the amenities of security, recreation and a sense of community. The concentration of an active senior population in a close-knit living atmosphere naturally lends itself well to word-of-mouth advertising for the Reverse Mortgage industry. And now with the recent passage of H.R. 3221 , the housing stimulus bill signed into law on by President Bush, you can count on the numbers of manufactured home loans increasing. (more…)

One of the problems with manufactured housing and its perceived reliability in the mind of the consmer to withstand different weather and terrain conditions has been the disconnect between how the code requires the home to be designed and engineered in the factory and how the home is installed in the field. In other words, there is a lack of continuity between what the manufacturer sends out the door and the dealer and installer delivers and sets up on the home site. While the HUD Code of 1976 established that manufactured homes had to be factory designed and engineered to federal law standards with specific electrical, heating, plumging and thermal standards as well as performance requirements for structural design, construction, fire resistance, energy efficiency and transportation from the factory to the site , the installation standards were left to the local and state jurisdictional authorities. Interestingly, in some states installation requirements are rigorous while others, lax to non-existent. (more…)