Mark December 3rd, 2015 on your calendars. That was the day that 15 modular home factory owners and top management sat down for a Roundtable discussion and finally shared their thoughts about the future of modular single family housing, openly and honestly.
The production from these factories account for 80-90% of all single family modular housing in the Mid Atlantic and New England regions.
You’re probably asking what was accomplished at this Round Table? Well, that is a tough question. Both Tom Hardiman, the Executive Director of the MHBA and the facilatator of the Round Table, and I each thought we had a good idea what would be discussed. We were wrong.
The discussions quickly came down to several key points. How do factories market modular housing for both the builder and the entire industry, how to attract new site builders to become modular builders and finally, how to create a real partnership with the existing builder network to ensure both the builder’s future that of the entire industry.
Several committees were formed and people agreed to begin immediately on arriving at action plans for each area. The staff of the MHBA will work with the committees to make sure they move forward in preparing the plans.
They also asked me to organize a Modular Builder Round Table for late January. No factory people will be allowed to attend. By then some of the committees should have a brief outline of an action plan and want builders to add to them, modify and finally to join with these key factory people on the committees to prepare the Action Plans.
I was humbled to have been a part of helping bring these people together and saw a side of our industry I have never seen in my 8 years of writing this blog. Their first thoughts were about the builder and how to help them market and sell the homes built by their factories. For anyone that’s been in this industry more than a couple of years, you know this is monumental!
Modular Housing has between 8 – 20% of all non-tract single family housing starts in the New England and the Mid Atlantic regions and this group of factory people want to double, hell no, triple that and with the help of their existing builder base and new modular builders. It will happen.
As soon as I can make all the arrangements for the Builder Round Table in January, I will contact the factory people that attended and ask for their builder list so I can fill the 22 seats on the Round Table.
Not only mark your calendars for this evet but also think about how you can help make modular housing the thing new home buyers will want, no, demand modular as the way to build their new home.
