Texas Manufactured Home Shipments in April 2024
April Shipments
Manufactured home shipments to Texas retailers moved up sequentially again in April by an unadjusted +3.6% over the previous month. The seasonally-adjusted numbers were near flat coming in at +0.1%, but the 1,621 homes shipped was a +45.9% increase over April of 2023 and trailed only 2022 shipments for the month.
| Shipments | Singles | Multis | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total for April: | 743 | 878 | 1,621 |
| Change from March (Raw %): | 6.6% | 1.3% | 3.6% |
| Change from March (Raw Units): | 46 | 11 | 57 |
| Change from March (SA %): | 3.2% | 0.6% | 0.1% |
| Change from April of 2023 (%): | 56.1% | 38.3% | 45.9% |
| Change from April of 2023 (Units): | 267 | 243 | 510 |
April Production
Texas manufactured housing plant production also moved up a raw +2.8% in April over the previous month for total number of homes, but run rates were slightly lower and the seasonally-adjusted total was down -0.7%. The raw total of 2,018 homes was a +37.9% increase over April of 2023.
Shipments to out of state retailers remain elevated on a year-over-year basis.
| Texas Plant Production | Total | Shipped Out of TX | Min Floors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total for April: | 2,018 | 513 | 2,817 |
| Change from March (Raw %): | 2.8% | 1% | 1.9% |
| Change from March (Raw Units): | 55 | 5 | 52 |
| Change from March (SA %): | -0.7% | NA | -0.1% |
| Change from April of 2023 (%): | 37.9% | 24.2% | 39% |
| Change from April of 2023 (Units): | 555 | 100 | 790 |
May Outlook
The forecasting models have May shipments at 1,590 (+/- 223) and Texas factory production at 2,005 (+/- 230) homes.
The Texas Manufactured Housing Survey (TMHS) for May showed some leveling off of run rates for respondents, but still indicated an overall increase for the state’s aggregate production per day.
The updated forecasting models we released last month were only off by +66 for shipments and -8 homes for production for April, but May should have the same number of production days and the survey still points toward expansion, so I’d take the over for both shipments and production.
Annual Totals
The shipment total for 2024 is currently up +39.4% over 2023 and Texas plant production is up +36.3%.
The forecast for annual Texas shipments in 2024 moves up to 18,506 (+/- 2,260) and forecasted Texas plant production moved down slightly to 22,992 (+/- 2,614).
| Shipments | Singles | Multis | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total for 2024 YTD: | 2,867 | 3,292 | 6,159 |
| Change from 2023 (%): | 39% | 39.7% | 39.4% |
| Change from 2023 (Units): | 805 | 935 | 1,740 |
| Texas Plant Production | Total | Shipped Out of TX | Min Floors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total for 2024 YTD: | 7,730 | 1,975 | 10,758 |
| Change from 2023 (%): | 36.3% | 35.6% | 36.3% |
| Change from 2023 (Units): | 2,057 | 518 | 2,866 |
Charts
In this chart you can see that when the shipment moving-average crosses the retail sales moving-average a turn in shipments usually follows. The last downward cross occurred in June of 2019 and it’s not too hard to see that shipments were headed back up for the upward cross in March of 2020, right when COVID-19 hit and strangled production for several months. It is that unprecedented stretch of retail sales above shipments from June of 2019 through August of 2021 that I think best explains the huge expansion in shipments we see after that point that peaked in August and September of 2022.