The release of 2021 HMDA data in March set off a familiar round of impactful analysis[1]. However, there are components that cannot be obtained unit the final release in July, including the important category of manufactured housing, a key piece of the policy discussion around affordable housing. Last year we dug into this topic[2] and it would be a good time to update this analysis with new information from the final 2021 release.
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First of all, manufactured housing experienced a resurgence in 2021:

With affordable housing for Low-Moderate Income (LMI) households at the top of the policy agenda, we take a look at loan data for manufactured housing (MH). In a recent report, the CFPB provided a comprehensive survey of this market based on enhancements to the HMDA data first made available in 2018[1]. These include data on
Secured property type:

1. Mortgage: the loan supports a manufactured home and the land on which it sits
2. Personal Property Loan: the loan is secured by the home but not the land

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In their survey, the CFPB looked deeply into the data for 2019. In this note, we update some of their work with 2020 HMDA data. This is important because of the onset of Covid-19 that year. The site-built market performed strongly, but this cannot necessarily be presumed to carry over to MH as Covid is a supply shock, impacting labor markets and supply chains.

Another innovation in this note is that rather than looking at this market by state the way the CFPB does, as a policy guide we look at it bifurcated between rural and nonrural MSAs.

Below finds a chart of the progression of single-family manufactured housing origination volumes for personal loans (securitized by chattel) and mortgages (securitized by real property) from 2018-2020, along with the share of all single-family manufactured housing loans (personal loans plus mortgages) of the total single-family mortgages including those for site-built homes.