New Mexico is not a wealthy state. things are changing as more here, including the movie industry and more retirees and entrepreneurs relocate to our land of enchantment. However, one of the things we have always had a lot of is manufactured housing because it has been the most affordable option for many people. There were lots of families with land and when children grew up and married the were more often able to put a manufactured home on the family land than to afford to buy or build elsewhere. It also served to keep families close, and able to assist one another when needed.

Unfortunately, many of these older homes were the old fashioned, poorly insulated, tenn foot wide trailers or mobile homes that most people still think of when they think of manufactured housing. Tody's manufactured homes bear little resemblence to these earlier homes. Some, placed on a permanent foundation are indistiguishable from the cookie cutter site built development homes going up today. Others are elegant, unique and quite well built. Today's manufactured homes can raqnge from homes built like the old trailers, as complete housing units on wheels that are usually removed once it is put in place to the same units built in sever sections to acheive double wide or triple wide configurations; buildings built with only the shell and then moved to the site and finished. There are kit house that can come with a shell or with wiring and plumbingand windows and doors. Structural Insulated panels can come with all the ering, plumbing and doors and windows installed. So how is all this "green"?

By building in factory controlled situations there is much less waste. It becomes easire to recycle things on site. There is much less loss of materials. Factoryprecisions insures that things fit and factory inspection insures that they work properly. Less energy is consumed not only because of the efficiency of scale but also because the end product requires less transportation --you move the whole thing once instead of moving all the different compnents to the site from different areas and then having workers traveling back and for weeks assembling them. Many people say they prefer a site built house. Many people are also shocked to learn that what they thought was a site built house is actually a panelized home. I once had someone insist that I must have given the wrong disclosure because it said that the house was not site built. Thank goodness the seller was the original owner who had the plans and specifications for the manufacturer of the panelized home!