Texas Manufactured Housing Sales in February 2020 and March Early Read

March Preliminary Data

Because of the unprecedented impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the state, we are going to lead off this week with the early read on March.

Last month we reported on the large decline in titles issued per day by TDHCA MH. I’ve found we can get better insight by filtering down to only new titles issued to alleviate some of the noise that MH community ownership transfers inflict upon titling data.

Average new titles issued per day bottomed in March at a rate of 53 new homes per day. For comparison sake, that’s a -25% drop from the 70 new titles issued per day in 2019.

The good news is that new titles issued per day has since moved up, with the final rate for April coming in at 64, down -7% from 2019, and May is currently tracking at 65 new home titles per day, down -9% from May of 2019.

While these declines are deep, we appear to have at least hit a support and are currently tracking in line with the new title issue rate we had at this time in 2017.

Titling data currently has March sales down -18% below 2019. Historically there is quite a bit of variance between how a month is tracking against the year before it and how that comparison ends up when we release the on-time report one month later.

March in particular happens to be the month with the highest amount of variance, and although year-over-year declines of this magnitude usually move up for the better, the back half of March is when all of the city shelter-in-place ordinances started to go into effect and commerce began to contract, so there may be less additional titles coming in over the next month then there otherwise would under more normal times.

April new home sales are currently tracking -31.7% below 2019 and with 316 homes sales titled so far are tracking right at the 9-year average for the month.

February Data

New home sales in February expanded over January driven mostly by multi-section sales. The month came in -2% below February of 2019 which was a series high for that month since reporting began in 2012.

The median age for new homes grew longer for both single-section and multi-section homes.

Harris County had large new home installation gains over January and came in neck and neck with Montgomery County. Ector, Liberty, and Midland counties all posted large gains.

Used home sales were elevated over last month by an apparent community purchase with 56 park-owned homes transferring ownership in Mineral Wells.

Annual Totals

Adding the February data in 2020 was up 2.5% over 2019 before the COVID-19 sheltering-in-place event hit the state in March. Year-over-year growth was stemming from an expansion in single-section home sales.

Single-section median age of homes is tracking right where it was at the end of 2019, multi-section homes have grown by 7 days.

Montgomery County remains number one for new home installations on the year.

January Revisions

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2020-05-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Charts

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2020-05-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2020-05-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2020-05-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

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