New Manufactured Homes Can Cost 2/3 Less Than Other Single-Family Homes

The nationwide housing shortage has driven home prices too high for many prospective buyers. Manufactured homes can be an affordable alternative to other single-family homes because they are built efficiently in factories and conform to just one federal standard, rather than myriad local codes.

To better understand the much lower cost of building manufactured homes compared with other similar sized single-family homes, The Pew Charitable Trusts commissioned a study, “Comparison of the Costs of Manufactured and Site-Built Housing,” by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. The research found that manufactured models of about 1,200 square feet could save a buyer the most, costing about a third (35%) of the price of a site-built single-family home of the same size. Larger (nearly 1,600 square-foot) and higher-end manufactured homes with porches or garages provided smaller but still substantial savings, with a price about three-quarters (73%) that of a comparable site-built single-family home.

These lower costs show that increasing the availability of manufactured homes is a cost-efficient way to help reduce the nation’s housing shortage.

The Pew Charitable Trusts provided funding for this project, but Pew is not responsible for errors in this paper and does not necessarily endorse its findings or conclusions.