In 2006, I bought a “Manufactured Housing Community” in rural upstate New York, just south of Albany. I started building new, beautiful manufactured homes in the park that looked like modular or even site-built homes, as well as attached garages. I wanted to list these homes in my local Multiple Listing Service, but manufactured homes on a land lease were not allowed. Manufactured homes built after 1976 are built to HUD code, meaning manufactured housing is a home, built to federal building standards, for which owners can receive a mortgage. But MLSs still don’t see them as “real” property. In short, they look down on “trailer parks” and mobile home living, and they don’t want those listings on the MLS.
A long list of frustrations drove me to create NY State MLS in 2009, but this was near the top; that’s why one of the first features I decided on was that we would accept all property types (we even have a couple houseboats). NY State MLS and eventually My State MLS were created in response to a broken system that didn’t work for real estate professionals or the end consumer. While some rules are required to ensure fairness between members, a majority of existing rules were primarily created to collect fines and make money for the MLS.
I wasn’t alone in my frustration - a flood of manufactured housing agents, dealers, and community owners have joined My State MLS for a listing service that actually wants their listings instead of just tolerating them (or not allowing them at all). Over the years, I’ve learned so much about these communities and this property type, and we’ve expanded to meet their needs.
The frustration doesn’t stop there, though. Consumer-facing websites for mobile and manufactured housing are clunky and difficult to navigate. Even worse, the data is often woefully out of date, leading buyers to waste hours contacting sellers about listings that haven’t been on the market for months. I’m sure you can see where this is going - the existing solution doesn’t work, so I once again built my own.
Buyers looking for affordable housing options in this volatile market deserve an accurate, user-friendly experience. Community owners and salespeople need a website where they can list manufactured and mobile homes for rent and sale without losing leads to a cluttered, inaccurate system. That’s why we created MHAuthority, our first consumer-facing listing website. MHAuthority helps buyers find affordable manufactured homes all over the country as well as providing community information and other resources for buyers, sellers, community owners, and dealers of manufactured housing.
I’ve since sold my trailer pa manufactured housing community, but the need for a good site that lists accurate, real-time manufactured homes for sale still exists. If you’d like more information on listing a mobile home for sale, you can contact our team on the MHAuthority website. There are other sites out there that advertise manufactured homes, but none as accurate and timely as MHAuthority.
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