Past few generations, homeownership has been the bedrock of household financial assets. Even during the recent periods of instability in the housing market, homeownership has remained the primary source of wealth for many Americans and continues to be the centrepiece of the American Dream.
About this Resource Guide This guide is a resource for policymakers, advocates, and industry stakeholders interested in ways to expand the availability of better and less expensive conventional mortgage financing for buyers of manufactured homes, especially low- and moderate-income buyers. This guide:
■ Lays out the different methods of titling manufactured housing and the implications for home financing.
■ Discuss manufactured housing finance.
■ Outlines challenges in accessing conventional mortgage financing for manufactured housing.
■ Offers policy recommendations for increasing access to conventional mortgage financing for manufactured housing.
The Role of Federal Loan and Loan Guarantee Programs
Federal loan and loan guarantee programs from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Rural Housing Services (RHS) are also important to the availability of mortgage financing for owners of manufactured homes. The secondary market buyer for these government-backed loans is most often Ginnie Mae. FHA ensures manufactured housing loans made by FHA-approved lenders under the Title I and Title II programs. Title I insures loans that finance or refinance a manufactured home, the land on which a manufactured home will be placed, or the combination of land and home. Title II insures loans on manufactured homes placed on a permanent foundation that are classified as real estate. Although the FHA has been insuring loans on manufactured homes under Title I since 1969, the program has been relatively underused in this decade, with fewer than 2,000 loans per year made from 2003 to 2006, down from a high of 30,000 loans per year in the early 1990s. Structural barriers, including low loan limits, an outdated insurance structure, a circumscribed secondary market for insured loans, and limited lender participation, among other factors, were cited by industry officials for the program’s atrophy.
