As the only national advocacy organization representing manufactured home community owners and operators, the MHI National Communities Council devotes a substantial amount of time and resources to pursuing an aggressive legislative and regulatory agenda. Much of that hard work has paid off last year with the passage of the implementation of the FHA Title I reforms, and the Title II changes for manufactured housing condominiums, and the implementation of a new “duty to serve” the manufactured housing industry by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. However, more hard work needs to get done to improve the ability for our customers to purchase homes.

The NCC has made finance issues its top legislative priority over the past three years given the crisis in liquidity we are facing as community owners- and we are not out of the woods yet. The MHI NCC is aggressively pursuing the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the new regulator of the GSE’s, to get Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop a personal property loan program similar to their conventional mortgage lending program. Getting a personal property “flow” program in place would be a huge step for our community owners and operators. Not only would more customers be able to obtain financing, liquidity would be provided in our marketplace, enabling lenders to then finance even more customers.

The MHI NCC also knows there are unique aspects with financing consumers in communities, particularly when the community operators themselves have had to provide the financing. Therefore, the MHI NCC has continually pushed for any loan program to be as broad and deep as possible. We must capture as many homeowners in need of affordable housing as possible, and help all of those communities that provide financing for their residents. During the MHI Legislative Conference, this issue was the highlight of the industry’s visits on Capitol Hill, and was well received by Members of Congress which we believe will result in positive developments for the industry.

In these challenging times, now more than ever it is important that the MHI NCC work together, in unison, with its other industry partners. There are exciting things underway that will benefit and help propel the land-lease community business, but we need to work in concert. There is strength in numbers to be sure, but more importantly there is strength in the message we can deliver in Washington, DC when we have the full force of the industry with us.

As an NCC member, if you have any thoughts or issues you would like to raise, please feel free to contact me. You can email me at chris@parrishmanor.com.

Chris Parrish
Chair, National Communities Council
Vice-President, Parrish Manor