It’s hard out there in the housing market right now. Prices are high and mortgage rates aren’t low; no-one wants to sell and many people have given up trying to buy. In a recent sentiment survey conducted by Fannie Mae, only 17% of respondents said now was a good time to make a purchase.
Desperate times call for, well, different measures. With that in mind, here are four suggestions for anyone who’s still interested in achieving homeownership, but who’s had it with the current state of the traditional housing market.
Manufactured Housing
If you’ve seen one trailer park, you’ve seen all manufactured homes, right? Wrong.
“I’m in the Marines and I’ve traveled all over the world and lived in a lot of homes. This is by far the best home that I’ve lived in,” said Hector Cardenas, who bought one of the first houses available in a new manufactured-housing development near Richmond, Virginia, in 2023.
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The house boasts four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and large yards in both the front and the back. It cost Cardenas $240,000. He estimates that a comparable “site-built” (manufactured homes are also known as “factory-built”) residence would have cost him $125,000more.
Cardenas is one of the beneficiaries of a big industry-wide push that started about a decade ago to make manufactured homes look and function more like site-built ones, said Chad Reed, director of programs and growth at Boston-based Ivory Innovations, a housing…
