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Why Manufactured Homes?
Manufactured homes offer a multitude of economic and quality benefits
when compared to site built homes. However, there are many misconceptions in
the marketplace about what constitutes a manufactured home, and how
manufactured housing measures up against traditional site built homes in
construction materials, government inspection criteria and price.
Click on any of the links below for more information on what you can
expect from a quality manufactured home in the 21st century, and how the
industry and respected companies such as Ma Williams strive to achieve
excellence with every home we supply.
What is a Manufactured Home?
To understand why manufactured homes are beneficial compared to site
built homes when building a custom home, first we need to define WHAT A
MANUFACTURED HOME IS.
The manufactured home is constructed to comply with the National
Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards, a uniform building
standard administered and enforced by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD Code). Over 97 percent of all homes constructed in California
factories meet this code.
Manufactured Homes are NOT the same as Mobile homes. Mobile homes
have not been constructed since June 15, 1976 at which time the federal
preemptive HUD Code took over.
WHAT BENEFIT DOES THE
HUD CODE OFFER?
The benefits of the HUD CODE are numerous! The
quality of construction has significantly improved. The HUD Code allows for a
more lenient process for obtaining permits from your local building department.
As a HUD approved home, the entire plan approval process is bypassed because a
manufactured home has already been approved by a Federal Agency which
supersedes any local jurisdiction.
The federal standards regulate manufactured housing design and
construction, strength and durability, transportability, fire resistance,
energy efficiency and quality. The HUD Code also sets performance standards for
the heating, plumbing, air conditioning, thermal and electrical systems. It is
the only federally-regulated national building code. On-site additions, such as
garages, decks and porches, often add to the attractiveness of manufactured
homes and must be built to local, state or regional building codes.
HOW HAS THE QUALITY AND TECHNOLOGY IMPROVED MANUFACTURED HOMES?
In the past 30 years manufactured homes have also made quite a
stride! QUALITY OF CONSTRUCTION AND TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES
have significantly improved the manufactured homes of today and increased the
number of homes used for private property development.
Today’s manufactured homes have experienced a major evolution in the
types and quality of homes being offered to buyers. Technological advances are
allowing manufactured home builders to offer a much wider variety of
architectural styles and exterior finishes that will suit most any buyer’s
dreams, all the while allowing the home to blend in seamlessly into most any
neighborhood. Two-story and single-family attached homes are but two of the new
styles being generated by factory-built innovation. As a result, today’s
manufactured homes are offering real housing options for the neglected suburban
and urban buyers.
At the same time, greater flexibility in the construction process
allows for each home to be customized to meet a buyer’s lifestyle and needs.
Interior features now include such features as vaulted ceilings and working
fireplaces to state-of-the-art kitchens and baths, giving the homebuyer all the
features found in traditional, site-built homes. Enhanced energy efficiency in
manufactured homes, achieved with upgraded levels of insulation and more
efficient heating and cooling systems, provide another source of savings for
homeowners, especially in this era of rising energy costs. Smart buyers are
turning to EnergyStar-labeled manufactured homes for substantial savings in
many aspects of owning and operating a home.
The majority of the nation's new homes still are erected at the
building site by a large number of small builders, and technological advances
are slow to make their way through this fragmented building community. However,
as housing prices have continued to rise, traditional builders have looked
toward prefabricated components and subassemblies to better meet the demand for
more affordable homes. At the same time, manufactured, or HUD-code housing, has
expanded into higher income markets and has been increasingly used by
innovative developers.
Among the factors driving home builders to industrialize are: the
decline in the number of skilled tradespeople, difficulties with maintaining
construction quality, the complex system of regulations that control on-site
construction, and the need to construct homes at a competitive price. This is
particularly the case with affordable housing, where small changes in price
have a huge impact on the financial viability of a project. It is increasingly
difficult for the affordable home builder to deliver a quality product without
having some, if not most, of the components built off-site.
Along with these pressures, there have also been significant
incentives for the HUD-code home industry to produce innovative designs. While
in the past, HUD-code homes have developed largely apart from the mainstream
home-building industry, this housing type has been increasingly used by on-site
developers. As such, manufactured home designs have become more complex and
sophisticated to meet the demands of a more affluent customer base.
IS THE INSPECTION/ENFORCEMENT
PROCESS LESS STRINGENT THAN SITE BUILT HOMES GO THROUGH?
Manufactured Homes tend to have a more stringent INSPECTION/ENFORCEMENT
process on the home than site built homes do.
It can generally be acknowledged that a building code is only as good
as the enforcement system that accompanies it. The manufactured home
enforcement program required by the HUD is a thorough and efficient system
designed specifically for the factory production environment. Uniformity and
consistency can be maintained better in the HUD enforcement system because of
two key factors. First, the inspections take place in the factory, during each
phase of construction, and follow behind the manufacturer’s own in-plant
inspection and quality assurance teams. This allows for more thoroughness,
since time is spent inspecting homes rather than traveling to inspection sites.
Efficiency is increased because travel time is limited and necessary paperwork
is minimized. Second, consistency is maintained because fewer people inspect
more homes. The enforcement procedure is much less susceptible to individual
interpretations, as would be the case with on-site inspections in every
jurisdiction across the country. Keep in mind that all this inspection process
by HUD is in addition to the inspections carried out by the manufacturer’s own
foremen and its quality assurance inspectors.
HOW IS PRICING
COMPARED TO SITE BUILT HOMES?
So, manufactured homes are built with the same materials as a site
built home, endure a more stringent inspection process to assure a high quality
construction, offer the same or more technological advances to improve the
functionality, esthetics, and efficiencies of your home, and the best part is
that all of these benefits come at PRICES RANGING FROM 10 TO 35 PERCENT
LESS per square foot than conventional site-built homes.
Technological advances, evolutionary designs, and a focus on
delivering quality homes that families can afford are the driving forces within
the manufactured housing industry. That’s why more people are turning to
manufactured housing to deliver homes that fit their needs and wants, at prices
they can afford!
The affordability of manufactured housing can be attributed directly
to the efficiencies emanating from the factory-building process. The controlled
construction environment and assembly-line techniques remove many of the
problems encountered during traditional home construction, such as poor
weather, theft, vandalism, damage to building products and materials, and
unskilled labor. Factory employees are trained and managed more effectively and
efficiently than the system of contracted labor employed by the site-built home
construction industry.
Much like other assembly-line operations, manufactured homes benefit
from the economics of scale resulting from purchasing large quantities of
materials, products and appliances. Manufactured home builders are able to
negotiate substantial savings on many components used in building a home, with
these savings passed on directly to the homebuyer.
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