Manufactured home sales are skyrocketing. Here’s why

The last few years of ultra-competitive, low-inventory housing markets have pushed more Americans to buy small—and have spurred an uptick in the popularity of manufactured homes. In fact, manufactured housing hasn’t been this popular since 2006.

A manufactured home is a compact house small enough to be made in a factory. They can range from 500-2,000 square feet and tend to include all the typical home amenities found in a single-family home.

Americans lost interest in this more compact form of housing in the early 2000s when lenders were hyping subprime mortgages to single-family home buyers—a practice that ultimately triggered a housing market collapse. Through much of the 2010s, sales of manufactured homes remained low; however, in 2018, Bloomberg declared that manufactured housing was making a comeback.

Stacker examined data from the U.S. Census’ Manufactured Housing Survey to see how manufactured home prices and shipments have changed over the last eight years. In just five years since Bloomberg’s declaration, these types of homes have increased in price faster than single-family homes, as more and more Americans seek affordable housing options.

Manufactured homes are the country’s largest source of affordable, unsubsidized housing; however, rising prices and increasing investor activity are pricing many buyers out. It is also more difficult and costly to get a mortgage for a manufactured home than for a single-family home, according to research by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

After a boom in popularity during the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. passed laws regulating how mobile homes were built and also bestowed the home type with its new name, which carried with it less of a connection to Hollywood depictions of trailer parks. The regulated industry of manufactured housing was born.

The standards for building a manufactured home today are comparable to those for building single-family homes. Some even argue these homes are built for more wear and tear than their single-family counterparts, given that they have to be sturdy enough to transport on highways either in pieces or in their entirety. They are generally 8 feet or more in width and 40 feet or more in length while in transit.