Videos and Special Reports

Senators, CFPB Chief Richard Cordray Explain How Current Rules Harm  Manufactured Home Owners, Buyers, Sellers and Lenders in the Under-$100K Market For the past year or so, various media outlets have framed unflattering stories about manufactured housing around the premise that the industry’s lending practices unfairly gouge people of modest means, and that Dodd-Frank regulations have failed to protect them. …

With millions of Americans stuck in ever-rising rental rates, and skyrocketing conventional housing prices, the need for an appealing, safe and affordable option is clear — and the solution is hiding in plain sight. Perhaps 99 percent of all Americans are operating under a number of outdated and misinformed notions about factory-built homes. But that is about to change. Manufactured …

Jerry McKibben is an engineer, and his wife Karen spent years doing customer service. As you’ll learn in this video, they’ve owned conventional housing, as well as lived for a time in a pre-HUD Code mobile home that was on the property where they planned to build. Now retired, Jerry and Karen did their home work. Jerry approached home buying …

Meet Cathy and her husband Bruce Reimenschnedier. They are retired, successful business professionals. They own a conventional house in a subdivision, another place on the Fox River in Illinois, and now they own a manufactured home in a quiet, modest community tucked away on a side street that’s not far from the beaches and activities found in the St Pete/Clearwater/Tampa …

When the video interview posted on this page began, I knew Skip VanZant was a smart, experienced and successful housing professional, but I didn’t know that he was an engineer. It was during this video that his degree was discovered.  It is through the lens of engineering a home that we “framed” part of this video, because continuous evolutionary engineering …

Time to Re-Think Where to Seek Shelter from Hurricanes and Tornadoes “We see winds getting underneath those structures…those forces are tremendous…” — Julie Rochman – President & Chief Executive Officer, Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety Spring is a season of great renewal, but it is also a time when windstorms blossom, causing anxiety and fear for millions who …

Quality affordable living. It’s a hot-button topic across much of the United States. Reporters, public officials, housing advocates, educators, experts, lenders, investors and the home shopping public are all looking for common-sense solutions. Inspector Becki Jackson says it’s a matter of education, because the solution is available right now, today. “It used to be that manufactured homes were just for …

Gretchen Vogel is a quality control manager. We met her shortly before she going to work. We asked her to sit down on camera and tell us her experience and insights into Highland Mobile Home Park. Highland is a 55+ adult community, centrally located minutes from beaches, shopping and the attractions in popular St. Petersburg, FL. See and hear her …

“We had an Energy Star home done right, and families could qualify for a broad range of mortgages.” — Stacey Epperson, Next Step Network Lakeland, Fla. — Stacey Epperson used to have some fairly strong ideas about manufactured housing — none of them particularly flattering. The materials must be “weird,” she thought, and the quality questionable. But all of those notions …

Wherever you live in the USA, factory produced items are on your body, are in your hands and surround you daily. From the vehicle you go shopping in, to the smart phone, tablet or computer you use to read this article and watch the video below on, the clothing you wear or even the spoons, knives or forks you use …

Imagine a U.S. senator, an association CEO, an award-winning lending expert, HUD’s secretary, the CFPB director and an array of home owners and housing professionals from border-to-border all agreeing in principle on a solution to the nation’s growing affordable housing crisis. Imagine they all agree that regulations are part of the reason the solution is not being fully implemented. Then …

Tucked in a quiet Lakeland suburb, a man who calls himself L.A. “Tony” Kovach is nurturing an enterprise he firmly believes could be the next Google or Amazon or Facebook. Just don’t ask him what the L.A. stands for. “It’s a secret,” he says. “A conversation starter.” But it is no secret that what Kovach wants to talk about is manufactured …

No two people or places are exactly alike. There are no perfect people or perfect places, but there are lots of good people and good places. Once those realities sink in, amazing discoveries are possible. Who says? E. Jon and Pat Chione, who owned a large townhouse on a nice lakeside property west of Chicago, and used to think “thumbs …

Quality affordable living is — and should be — a bi-partisan issue. There are interest groups that are attempting to use the media to manipulate Congress and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) by diverting attention away from the simple truth that manufactured housing lending is unique and benefits millions of Americans.  To make that case, we open the video …

The recent hoopla over Actress/Singer Hilary Duff getting the manufactured home in her break-up with ex-National Hockey Leaguer Mike Comrie is once more bringing attention to the rich and frugal who want the good life at a lower price. But middle America needs good, quality affordable homes too. The video shown will give you sneak peaks into nice-to-gorgeous quality homes, that …