George Allen / EducateMHC Blog Mobile Home & Land Lease Community Advocate & Expert

August 3, 2018

MANUFACTURED HOUSING, a Book Proposal

Filed under: Uncategorized — George Allen @ 9:17 am

Blog # 496; Copyright @ 5 August 2018; community-investor.com

Perspective. ‘Land lease communities, previously manufactured home communities, & ‘mobile home parks’, comprise the real estate component of manufactured housing.’

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INTRODUCTION:

26 years ago, in 1992, engineer David Alley, consultant Edward Hicks and I, along with our wives, met in a downtown Philadelphia, PA., hotel to plan the book proposal we’d submit to J. Wiley & Sons (New York publisher). I’d been encouraged by the brisk sale of self-published Mobile Home Park Management following its’ release in 1988; and now, the three of us believed there was a ‘window of opportunity’ for new community development, as HUD-Code home shipments numbered 210,787 units that year. Turns out we were right! Shipment volume continued to rise, year by year thru 1998. So, Development, Marketing & Operation of Manufactured Home Communities debuted in 1994. It was followed, in 1996, by How to Find, Buy, Manage & Sell a Manufactured Home Community. It too proved highly popular and sold well.

A quarter century has passed, and the manufactured housing industry, along with its’ land lease community segment, is – in my opinion – poised to effectively address our nation’s affordable housing supply crisis! We must educate legislators, regulators, bureaucrats, investors, homebuilders, and prospective homebuyers/site lessees as to the aesthetics, quality, economy, energy efficiency and durability of our type factory-built housing product. That’s where this formal book proposal comes into play.

This formal book proposal has already been submitted to J. Wiley & Sons, in the hope they too will once again ‘catch this vision’, and revisit their ‘setting of the manufactured housing business standards’ effected back in 1994 & 1996. Will they? Too soon to tell, but the offer has been made to, once again, serve our industry and realty asset class by researching and authoring a seminal text needed for these promising times.

And you should hope, for several reasons, this project gets the green light. Not only do we need the text, as a reference and HOW TO guide, but we’ll need at least a dozen ‘duty expert’ writers to pen various parts of the text. Are you qualified, experienced, motivated, and interested? If so, let me know via gfa7156@aol.com.

I.

TO: J. Wiley & Sons Publishers

FROM: George Allen, CPM Emeritus, MHM Master
40 Year Consultant to the Factory-built Housing Industry,

SUBJ: Book Proposal Opportunity for J. Wiley & Sons, to once again,
Publish the ‘Business Standard for all Manufactured Housing’!

In 1994, J. Wiley & Sons published a text ‘setting the business standard’ for raw land development of (then) manufactured home communities throughout North America!*1 Two years later, another J. Wiley & Sons-published text was quickly acclaimed to be
‘the bible’ for acquisition, property management, & disposition of manufactured home communities throughout North America!*2 Two decades have passed. Though long out of print, both case bound books continue to be sell online at $ amounts only slightly less than their respective retail prices in 1994 & 1996. Talk about retaining value!

I co-authored the first text, and was lead author and editor of the second one. See personal vitae enclosed with this book proposal.

Well, it’s high time for a new tome, covering similar subject matter, but in an expanded fashion, featuring today’s trade terminology, appropriate statistics, and business trends.

Not only is historicity and usefulness in play and demand here; know there’s a widely recognized affordable housing supply crisis afoot in our nation today. Only during the past several years have ‘housers’, across housing-type lines, begun to seriously consider the nature, availability, energy efficiency, and pricing viability of HUD-Code manufactured housing, and its’ related land lease community lifestyle, as being – if not ‘the answer’, certainly a significant part of the solution to this worsening national crisis. What the national housing supply audience needs now, is a contemporary text with which to educate themselves and others! And J. Wiley & Sons, by dint of the firm’s 1994 & 1996 enduring textual contributions, is well-positioned to address today’s housing education need.

Since the mid 1990s, I’ve authored a dozen books, mostly having to do with manufactured housing and (now) land lease communities.*3,4,5,6,7,8,9. Additional titles have to do with figurative language & figures of speech, a Chapbook of Business & Management, HOUSING AFFORDOGRAPHY, a Chapbook of Prayer, and more.

The proposed J. Wiley & Sons book will pick up and update from where the first two ended. The manufactured housing industry and land lease community real estate asset class have changed significantly, especially since the turn of this century – when the unique factory-built housing type, thru its’ own missteps, lost easy access to chattel capital needed for home mortgages on new homes sited on leased realty.*10. Today, the industry is on its’ way to recovery. * 11,12

Just what might the Table of Contents, of a new J. Wiley & Sons-published book, on affordable housing, manufactured housing & land lease communities, contain?

• An Introduction to Affordable Housing & overview of this nation’s affordable housing supply crisis….

• Manufactured Housing; one of four types of factory-built housing

• Land Lease Communities; development & operations, including property valuation, acquisition & disposition

• Making the Case for Manufactured Housing & Land Lease Communities as this Nation’s Most Practical Solution to its’ Affordable Housing Crisis!

Well, there you have it; the makings of a dynamic, hands-on, HOW TO text, relative to ins & outs of factory-built housing in general, manufactured housing in particular; raw land development into land lease communities – or, acquisition, management & sale thereof. And most important of all, how this type housing – costing 50% per square foot less than traditional stick-built housing – and its’ related community lifestyle, are indeed, ‘the answer’ to the affordable housing supply crisis in the U.S. today!

Who will author this text? My plan is to follow the successful pattern used in the J. Wiley & Sons-published text, How to Find, Buy, Manage & Sell a Manufactured Home Community, 1996. Then I identified and recruited 16 contributors to pen various parts of the 508 page text. While few of those individuals remain active in business circles today, I well know more than a dozen other businessmen and women who’ve become ‘duty experts’ in their own right, relative to affordable housing, manufactured housing, and land lease communities. I see my role being as a contributor to, and editor of, the new text.

Possible titles for the new text?

• Manufactured Housing = Affordable Housing

• Manufactured Housing & Land Lease Communities Today!

• Affordable Housing Supply Crisis Solution? Manufactured Housing!

Is J. Wiley & Sons interested in exploring this book proposal further?

For book marketing purposes, know I pen, publish, and distribute the only two print manufactured housing-related, subscriber-supported, monthly business newsletters: the Allen Letter professional journal ($134.95/year) & the Allen CONFIDENTIAL! ($944.95/year). In addition I write for the MHInsider trade (advertising-supported) magazine, and post a weekly blog read by many. Newsletter samples available on request.

Furthermore, since 1989, our firm has grown and maintained an exclusive, confidential data base containing names and contact information of 500+/- known portfolio owners/operators of land lease communities throughout North America! According to the 29th annual ALLEN REPORT (a.k.a. ‘Who’s Who Among Land Lease Community Portfolio Owners/operators in North America!’), the average property portfolio today, contains 39 land lease communities, and each property contained therein averages more than 200 rental homesites. We exercise this unique, one of a kind, data base almost monthly, for a $1,000.00 fee, in behalf of lenders, would be investors, product/service suppliers, and portfolios in disposition. This data base is their sole access to all these major players! And it’d certainly be a major marketing avenue for this new J. Wiley & Sons text as well. Sample ALLEN REPORT also available on request.

Looking forward, maybe, to working with J. Wiley & Sons once again.

End Notes to book proposal not included as part of this blog posting..

***

George Allen, CPM, MHM
COBA7, a division of GFA Management, Inc., dba PMN Publishing
Box # 47024
Indianapolis, IN. 46247
(317) 346-7156

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