Texas Manufactured Housing Sales in March 2023 and the April Early Read

April Preliminary Data

New manufactured home sales in April for titles issued to date moved down from the elevated levels they were at for the first three months of the year coming in a seasonally adjusted -6.9% below the previous month. New home sales are down -4.8% from April of 2022. Both single-section and multi-section sales were down.

The forecast for new homes sold in April based on sales titled to date is 1,361 (+/- 85). The lower bound of the prediction interval is above Aprils shipment total, so we should get three straight months of retail sales outpacing shipments.

With the additional sales data titled to date, the median age for new homes sold on the year moved down again from where it was last month for single-section sales. That’s a good sign that elevated inventory levels are continuing to decline, although the statistic moved up slightly for multi-section homes.

March Data

New home sales titled to date for March are up a seasonally adjusted +0.5% from the previous month, and are up +7.1% from March of 2022. The raw total of 1,350 new home sold is the highest sales total at this point for the month since before the Great Financial Crisis.

The updated forecast for total new homes sold in March moved down slightly with the additional titling data to 1,575 (+/- 94). The raw total of new home sales has already surpassed shipments for the month, as have February sales.

Annual Totals

New home sales for 2023 are up +8.8% over 2022 for all retail sales titled through this point in the calendar year. New retail home sales have surpassed 5,000 homes faster than any previous year in the series since before the Great Financial Crisis.

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

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

The forecast for new home sales on the year moved down slightly to 16,640 (+/- 1,673).

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 2023-06-16. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Charts

The first chart shows monthly sales totals for each year with only titles processed through 6-16.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-06-16. 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 2023-06-16. 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 2023-06-16. 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. Retail sales have not beaten shipments in any month since July of 2021.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2023-06-16. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Here are the 12-month moving averages for shipments and retail sales through February sales. 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 2023-06-16. 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 2023-06-16. 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 2023-06-16. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

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