Rising demand With single-family homes increasingly out of reach, many buyers are turning to manufactured homes, Page 2
Berkshire Business Journal 75 S. Church St. Pittsfield, MA 01201
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Berkshire Business Journal FEBRUARY 2025 I VOL. 4, NO. 2
While the cost of traditional housing has priced many buyers out of the market, these homes are
BUILT TO MOVE
PROVIDED BY TITAN HOMES
For every manufactured home it builds, Titan Homes completes a three-step quality review by staff members, a third-party inspection agency and an independent inspector that reports straight to the general manager. “Between those three elements that keeps quality at a very high standard,” said Jim Davis, Titan’s general manager.
For many, manufactured, or mobile, homes offer an affordable alternative BY CLAIRE O’CALLAHAN In the Berkshires, renters and prospective homeowners are on the hunt for housing that doesn’t consume more than half their monthly paycheck. The search is directing many to a nondescript housing option at the far end of the market: Mobile homes. But even as demand for this affordable housing option soars, it has yet to unseat the stigma that has surrounded mobile homes for decades. To this day, common refrain says mobile homes are low quality and energy inefficient housing inhabited
by poor people and besieged by crime. restrictions on mobile homes could ease Some local housing advocates, real the town’s housing crisis. estate brokers and town officials think Proponents argue that manufactured those persistent homes are a cost-efstereotypes have fective living option driven zoning in the In the Berkshires, the going that could quickly Berkshires that reexpand the town’s strict the expansion price for a manufactured housing stock and of existing mobile home was $92,888 in 2024. ease the market. home parks and Opponents reinstalling mobile spond that those homes on privately owned property. initial savings are accompanied by poor In Great Barrington, where mobile construction quality and high heating homes are all but banned, town officials and cooling costs. are debating whether loosening zoning The discussion begs questions. Is
there enough of a cost difference between manufactured and site-built homes to make the former an affordable alternative? And if homeowners save on the front end, are they signing up for future losses? A COST-EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVE? Mobile homes, or manufactured homes as they are called today, have always been a more affordable way for people with low and moderate incomes to access homeownership. That’s still true today.
MANUFACTURED, Page 9