Texas Manufactured Housing Sales in August 2023 and the September Early Read

September Preliminary Data

New manufactured home sales in September titled to date have moved down a seasonally-adjusted -1.2% from the previous month and are -4.1% below September of 2022.

The forecast for total new homes sold in September based on sales titled to date is 1,331 (+/- 76). The lower bound of the prediction interval is once again above the shipment total for the month, so we should see nine straight months of retail sales outpacing shipments after having no such months in the stretch between August of 2021 and December of 2022.

August Data

New home sales for August titled to date are up a seasonally adjusted +1.3% from the previous month and are +4.5% above August of 2022.

The updated forecast for total new homes sold in August moved up with the additional titling data to 1,470 (+/- 76).

The median age of single-section homes sold moved way down to 88 days in August from 162 days last month, and the median age for all homes sold year-to-date moved lower but remains historically high for single-section homes.

Annual Totals

New home sales for 2023 are now trailing 2022, down -0.4% for all retail sales titled through this point in the calendar year. Single-section and multi-section home sales are both below 2022 totals. The cumulative new home sale total for this point trails only last year and leads all other years in the past decade, but the back half of 2022 was ultimately surpassed by the total volume of sales in the 2019-2021 selling years.

Time will tell where 2023 ultimately ends up.

The forecast for new home sales on the year moved down again to 16,184 (+/- 492), but October sales titled to date indicate the model is probably too pessimistic about sales to come.

Install counties with the most additional new home placements over last year are again Harris, Midland, Montgomery, Hidalgo, and Ector.

Mailing address cities with the most new home placements over last year are Midland, Odessa, Conroe, Houston, Pearland, Kyle and Denton.

Because titles continue to come in for past sales months, here are all prior months for the year and what their current sales totals are at this report release.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Charts

The first chart shows monthly sales totals for each year with only titles processed through 11-15.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

The second chart shows monthly totals at the official release date for each month. All of these totals have moved up since release, and the most recent totals can be seen in the chart below this one.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

The third chart is all sales data in the series to date with single-section and multi-section home totals plotted.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

This chart tracks the difference between shipments and sales each month. Because late title work pushes recent sales totals up, I’m including data through the previous officially released sales month.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Here are the 12-month moving averages for shipments and retail sales through July. Because late title work pushes recent sales totals up, I’m including data through the previous officially released sales month, but the last several months will move up as title work continues to be processed.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

This chart displays the annual median for the number of days between a home’s date of sale and it’s date of manufacture. Prior to 2/22/21 this chart included sales from manufacturers to communities, it now only includes sales from licensed retailers.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

The final chart is for all used monthly retail sales data. The outliers are typically the result of community purchases were titles move from the previous to the new MHC owner.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-11-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

TMHA’s Market Research Reports and Tools