While thousands upon thousands of homeowners throughout the United States are completely happy with their new modular homes, ABC 5 in Boston is on the side of several rightfully outraged homeowners that are blaming an entire industry for not delivering their dream homes.
This is a terrible position for any homeowner to be put in. Their home was bought in good faith through a builder they trusted. The bank gave them a mortgage that they are paying on even though they can’t move into it.
Only one thing could make this worse; inviting “Undercover” Mike Beaudet to the party and giving Kevin Gallagher, the ‘15 minutes of fame’ Acushnet Fire Chief another forum to spout about the horrors of modular housing.
CLICK HERE to read ABC 5’s “State oversight of modular homes criticized”
Modular home factories across the breadth and width of this country build hundreds of new modular homes every week. You have to wonder why the only state that seems to have a problematic experience with modular is Massachusetts.
An excerpt from the ABC article:
“The state used to have a position of director of manufactured buildings, but that post has been vacant for more than a year.
There was a task force assigned to look at these issues but it never met and was disbanded.”
The state office that was responsible for all claims against manufactured home builders was for all practical purposes dismantled leaving both the consumer’s and the modular home industry’s best advocate, Director Steve Kennealy, without a job. One has to ask if any of these lawsuits would have reached this point if the state of MA has not done away with that agency. We will never know.
The story does state one fact that can’t be disputed. “The state only requires the private inspector to view each section of the modular home once, and unlike the process for homes built on site, inspections are even allowed to happen in the factory after the boxes have been constructed, walls and all.”
What is not mentioned in the article is every factory has a QA inspector walking through the modules every day doing inspections. If something gets past them, then the factory should be held accountable. However, in my career in home building and in the modular industry I have found that most of the problems occur at the job site.
Once the modular home leaves the factory gate it is taken for a ride on a carrier, lifted into place with by a huge crane, set on the foundation by a set crew that makes sure the house is sealed from the weather and finally it is finished by the customer’s builder.
Set crews and crane operators get specialized training.
But the person ultimately responsible is the builder.
Over the years we seen builders with insufficient training building homes, builders that have run out of money during the building process and worst of all, just taking deposits and running off with the customer’s money leaving customers to clean up the mess. However, these problems are found more often in site built homes than modular home builders but it’s funny you don’t hear about that.
Mike Beaudet and Kevin Gallagher seem once again on a mission to hurt an entire industry that housing and construction experts say is the future of home building in America.
In response to this story, Tom Hardiman, Executive Director of the Modular Home Builders Association issued the following:
The TV station reached out to MHBA last week to say they were doing a story about the lack of oversight on the modular industry in Massachusetts. We replied with the quote in the story stating that there was oversight and in fact Massachusetts has one of the more robust programs in the country. When the piece came out, it was clear that the station was trying to paint a negative image of the modular industry as a whole by talking with three unhappy modular customers. Now, we don’t like it when anyone is dissatisfied, but the station found what appears to be the only three dissatisfied customers in the last two years, one of whom had multiple opportunities to walk away from a bad builder and chose not to.
In the minutes recently posted by the Massachusetts Board of Building Regulation and Standards (BBRS) Rob Anderson, Codes Chief in Massachusetts, indicated that a survey was forwarded to the head of each building department in the commonwealth on February 21st asking whether or not they have experienced any difficulties with manufactured buildings over the last 2 years. About 70 responses were received. Most responses indicated no issues, some identify deficiencies that had been resolved and a few reveal ongoing issues. History demonstrates that, in most instances, difficulties relating to manufactured buildings occur during the set.
MHBA is aware of three ongoing issues as reported by Boston’s WCVB-TV. It is unclear from the BBRS minutes if the 70 responses represent 70 modular projects or 70 building department heads who may have experience with multiple modular projects. Assuming 70 total projects, the industry can definitely state the we have a 96% satisfaction rate in the state of Massachusetts (67 satisfied out of 70) over the past two years. While we all want to achieve 100% customer satisfaction, we know that sometimes there are factors out of our control. We will also put that 96% satisfaction rate up against the site-built home industry any day!
