Texas Manufactured Home Shipments in March 2020
March
Manufactured home shipments remained strong in March coming in just 46 homes below our forecast.
The 3% increase over February was due to an increase in the number of production days, but the homes shipped per day was right in line with the 68 homes shipped per day in January, and just a little below the 73 homes shipped per day in February. Both January and March had higher percentages of multi-section homes with 55% and 54% respectively. Only 51% of homes shipped in February were multi-section houses.
With the inclusion of the March data, the first quarter of 2020 was up 20% over 2019.
In an effort to give greater insight into what is happening as near real-time as we can get, we have released a new Monthly Manufacturer’s Shipments Report. The new report not only gives monthly totals on single and multi-section home shipments per manufacturer, but also includes the number of homes exported out of the state, the number of homes built but undelivered, as well as each manufacturer’s total home production number for the month.
In other news I am also very proud to announce that we will be piloting a new MH Manufacturers Outlook Survey later this month with our friends at the Texas A&M Real Estate Center. Participating manufacturers will provide a monthly survey response to questions on production and sales trends that they are experiencing.
Once the survey is up and running and enough data has been collected, we will have a great leading index on what to expect in the immediate future from the market. If you are a GM or Sales Manager for a Texas plant and haven’t already committed, please consider participating in the pilot and reach out to me at rob@texasmha.com to learn more about this effort.
Based on the historical shipment data we have to date our point forecast for April shipments is 1,477. April was the first full month of the statewide lockdown response to the Covid-19 outbreak, so the forecast produced by our model is almost certainly too bullish.
| Shipments | Singles | Multis | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total for March: | 695 | 799 | 1,494 |
| Change from February (%): | -2% | 7.8% | 3% |
| Change from February (Units): | -14 | 58 | 44 |
| Change from March of 2019 (%): | 17.8% | 20.9% | 19.4% |
| Change from March of 2019 (Units): | 105 | 138 | 243 |
Annual Totals
| Shipments | Singles | Multis | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total for 2020 YTD: | 2,087 | 2,359 | 4,446 |
| Change from 2019 (%): | 15.4% | 24.1% | 19.8% |
| Change from 2019 (Units): | 278 | 458 | 736 |
Charts
Here are the annual totals for manufactured home shipments in Texas from 2012 through 2019.