Manufactured Houses Go Up Fast While Managing to Hold Costs Down by Making Efficient Use of Time and Materials

When James and Diana Jones outgrew their 1,200-square-foot home in Palmdale, they bought a 2 1/2-acre lot nearby and began searching for a contractor to build them a larger house.

They figured it would be at least a year before they’d step into their dream home. But before signing on with a traditional builder, the couple visited a manufactured housing dealer who offered them a lot more house in a lot less time for a lot less money.

After walking through models at several dealer showrooms, the Joneses were convinced that manufactured housing was the way to go. “The more we talked to them and looked into it, the better it sounded,” James Jones said.

Together with company engineers, they designed their own floor plan and in just three months, the couple, with their 6-year-old daughter and new baby on the way, moved into their custom 2,500-square-foot house, complete with cathedral ceilings, arched doorways, built-in planter shelves, double-paned windows, appliances, window treatments, upgraded carpets and tile countertops.

“A lot of people think when you say pre-fab you’re talking about a trailer,” Diana Jones, 31, said. “But when people see our house, they can’t believe it.”

As is standard for the industry, the company delivered the house in several finished pieces that included counters, cabinets, appliances and even drapes. A general contractor was hired to pour the foundation, assemble the house and attach it to the foundation, install the carpeting and hook up the utilities.

Best of all, they say, was the price of their factory-built home. The four-bedroom, three-bath house that’s permanently attached to the foundation cost $105,000--half of what they would have paid had a contractor built their house.

“I’m very, very happy with it,” James Jones, 32, said as he took a visitor for a tour. “A lot of my friends are contractors and they say it’s a really good house--not just for a manufactured home, but compared to any house, it’s really well built.”

The Joneses are among a growing number of Californians opting for custom, upscale manufactured homes over traditional stick-built housing. Already, 1.1 million Californians live in manufactured homes, representing about 9% of all single-family homes statewide.

About 560,000 of those houses are in the more than 5,900 manufactured-home developments in the state, according to the California Manufactured Housing Institute in Rancho Cucamonga. In 1990, retail sales of manufactured housing totaled $556 million statewide, a figure that industry leaders predict will soar as a larger number of families and developers search for more affordable, less risky housing options.

Spurring that growth, they say, are significant new California housing laws that are helping to pump life into the manufactured-home market.

The 1980s saw tremendous financial advances for manufactured homes built on foundations. During that time, they became eligible for conventional home loans instead of higher interest financing more closely associated with auto loans.

Historically in California, manufactured houses, which also include mobile homes, were permitted only in mobile-home parks or rural, agricultural zones, and until about 10 years ago weren’t allowed on permanent foundation, unless they were within a mobile-home park.

Later, in 1989, a state law was passed that allowed for manufactured homes to be placed on any single-family-zoned residential parcel of land anywhere in the state. That law was preceded by one passed a year earlier that prohibited neighborhood covenants from banning manufactured homes if the house can meet the architectural standards of homes in that particular neighborhood. And these days, many of them can.

Today, the manufactured home industry is turning out aesthetically appealing homes with higher roof lines and many of the amenities traditionally found only in high-end stick-built homes. A manufactured-home buyer can now order oak cabinetry, rounded walls, flat and cathedral ceilings, rock fireplaces, brick or stucco faces and tile roofs.

“We refer to manufactured homes as the best-kept secret in the housing industry,” said Craig Fleming, vice president of Silvercrest Manufactured Housing Inc. one of California’s largest manufactured-housing companies. “When people come to our factory and see our models they’re pretty impressed and surprised.”

But industry leaders are quick to add that not all manufactured homes fit that description.

“Today you can still go out and buy a very inexpensive, downgraded manufactured home that looks like a 10-year-old mobile home,” says Gary Pomeroy, president of Select Housing Associates, a manufactured-housing dealership in Newport Beach that sells homes from several companies.

Unfortunately for the industry, Pomeroy said, those are the homes most people associate with manufactured housing. Few, he said, recognize the newer-style manufactured home for what they are because they look so much like conventional houses.

“The only thing people seem to remember are the ones that don’t look like houses,” Pomeroy lamented, echoing an industry-wide sentiment. “So the industry doesn’t get credit for the good ones.”

Critics, such as contractors, contend the federal Housing and Urban Development codes that control the manufactured housing industry aren’t up to par with the state-controlled Uniform Building Code. Manufactured-housing industry leaders say the opposite.

But Paul Kranhold, assistant director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which is charged with regulating manufactured homes and promoting affordable housing in California, says neither code is better than the other.

“They’re both based on two different sets of standards,” Kranhold said. “It’s impossible to compare the two. Both are fine and work well in their respective industry.”

Kranhold said factory-made homes provide an affordable option for many Californians who might otherwise not be able to buy a home.

Others contend that manufactured homes also make good sense for developers searching for low-risk projects.

“It eliminates forever standing inventory, which is what puts almost every builder out of business and what sinks almost every project,” Pomeroy said. “Why build 50 homes at a time without selling them first? It’s a dumb way to build. With manufactured homes, you can deliver the product within 60 days. It’s a safe, very low risk way to build.”

Developer Ray Watt of Santa Monica based Watt Industries agrees. Watt is now building an 800-home development in Sylmar called Santiago Estates. The houses, which are on leased land, cost between $79,900 and $99,900 for models that range in size from 1,007 square feet to 1,333 square feet.

Watt, whose firm also builds traditional developments, said that while the manufactured homes a decade ago weren’t up to par with their stick-built competitors, today’s manufactured homes are “every bit as good as our stick-built houses and in an engineering respect, better. All the plywood on the floors and the drywall is screwed-in and glued, which gives you a tighter bond, less noise and less squeaky floors.”

Industry officials say the use of kiln-dried lumber in many manufactured homes is another plus, as it stays straighter once the house is built than the green lumber often used in traditional houses. And, they say, permanent teams of carpenters who build in the factory’s controlled environment provide consistent workmanship.

But most important to home buyers is the overall traditional appeal manufactured homes now offer at a better price.

David Maddock, president of American 21st Century Homes in Palmdale, a dealership that specializes in one brand of home, said upscale manufactured homes average between $30 to $36 a square foot. Extra amenities, such as tile roofs or stucco finishes usually add a few thousand dollars to the price, depending upon the size of the home.

Maddock said the cost of manufactured houses is about half that of conventional homes because of mass production and the ability to build under a roof with no weather delays.

“In three months you can be living in your house,” Maddock said. “This not only cuts down on the cost of the product, it cuts down on your costs for (interim housing) payments and construction loans.”

Those who want a custom home can sit down with a staff engineer and revamp an existing model for as little as $500--even if the house is among the growing number of super-size models catering to those with large budgets and extravagant tastes.

One of the largest manufactured homes in California is a rambling 6,300-square-foot house perched on a San Juan Capistrano hillside that boasts a 270-degree ocean view.

The four-bedroom, four-bath home, whose owner asked that his name not be used, features a large formal dining room and gourmet kitchen with a combination breakfast nook/playroom for his children. It has a large, marble-floored entry room, a weight room and a large master suite with two dressing rooms and a walk-in closet.

The home is the owner’s second manufactured house. He first bought one about 10 years ago for a desert property.

“The headaches were minimal and we liked it,” he said. “In our last stick-built house the wind would blow through and it was one big headache after another.”

Not so, he said, with his manufactured homes.

“The windows don’t leak and the wind doesn’t blow through the house,” he said.

And when problems do arise, most of the companies have crews on call who take care of them during the first year.

The man said that after he and his wife finished designing their custom home with the company engineer, they waited only six weeks until moving in.

Since then, they’ve added their own finishing touches, like granite countertops and some stained-glass windows. And now, when friends come to visit, he says, “they can’t believe we brought it up in sections.”

Industry officials hope houses like this one will help rid them of their greatest enemy: the prevailing stigma that manufactured homes are merely glorified trailers.

“The image of manufactured housing has been and remains a barrier to market acceptance and the industry still has a long way to go to overcome the image,” says Tony Hadley, director of local government and development services for the California Manufactured Housing Institute.

Hadley says one step toward general acceptance is in marketing the home the same way other single-family houses are marketed: in fully furnished and landscaped model centers, which some dealers are beginning to do. “When we do that, the consumer doesn’t care that it was built in a factory.”

Diana Jones agrees.

“If you don’t tell anybody, they wouldn’t even know it’s not a (conventional) house,” Jones says of her new manufactured home. “When people see the house they don’t think ‘pre-fab’--they just love it.”