Industry Corner: The Outlook for Manufactured Housing in the United States

Manufactured housing - once known as trailer or mobile homes - is a $9-billion industry that represents the least expensive type of housing per square foot. With improved designs and more elaborately furnished, multisection units, manufactured housing today appeals to a broad range of consumers from low-income buyers (the traditional stronghold) to more affluent empty nesters and retirees. Manufacturing is concentrated in areas of high demand, primarily in the south and southwest United States, and appears to be consolidating structurally through mergers and acquisitions. Manufactured housing accounted for nearly 20 percent of U.S. housing starts in 1996, but revenues and units shipped are expected to show annual declines of 1.2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, to the year 2001.