First Read

August is only about 43% titled at this point, but we can use installation reports to fill the gap. Installers’ Form-T filings reach TDHCA within days of the install, and a home’s installation tends to land a few days before its recorded transfer of ownership date. So the installations already reported for August give an early gauge of the month’s sales before the titles arrive.

Blending August’s titles issued to date with its installation reports points at roughly 1,360 new home sales (± 120) for the month. This first read will firm up considerably by next month’s early look.

The plot below shows how this method has scored so far. May’s First Read is holding, but the June and July calls have come down by 100 and 180 homes as those months filled in. The July early look below covers what changed, but installations ran ahead of titles in June and July of 2025 as well, so this may be a seasonal pattern the model cannot allow for until a second year confirms it.

A note on the plot: every diamond is now a true out-of-sample estimate, built only from the months that had settled by that date, with nothing later used to set the factors. Holding to what was knowable at the time shortens the scored record to start in December 2025 rather than August.

Note: Every diamond is the model’s First Read for that month. Months on the solid line are old enough for their totals to be effectively final. For the months still accumulating titles, the dashed line traces the titles actually issued so far and the shaded band shows the range where each is currently expected to settle, incorporating everything reported since its First Read.

Early Look

New manufactured home sales for July 2026 titled to date are so far up a seasonally-adjusted 4.9% from the previous month and are running 10.5% above July of 2025. This is the first early look to compare against the months where the change in title timing took hold a year ago. July of 2025’s early look jumped nearly 25% from June on the same basis, so most of the cadence inflation that flattered the last several year-over-year readings should now be washing out of the comparisons.

About 90% of a sale month’s eventual total is already on the books at this point in the reporting cycle. That puts July on pace to settle near 1,350 new home sales (± 80) once the remaining titles are issued. That would land within about 1.5% of July of 2025’s final total of 1,332, with the expected range straddling last year’s figure.

That is a sizeable step down from the roughly 1,500 our July First Read pointed at a month ago, and June has told the same story on a smaller scale, easing from a First Read near 1,450 to an estimate of about 1,350. July’s titles were issued unusually fast in the first two weeks of August, and July’s installation reports, at about 1,525, are running roughly 13% ahead of where the month’s sales now look to settle. That widening gap between installations and titles could be the community and rental channel discussed under the moving averages below, the seasonality mentioned above, or some of both.

As the plot below shows, July’s early count is still running above prior years at the same point, as is our titled-to-date count for August, but the 2025 line now lifts closer to the 2026 totals as last year’s faster titling kicks in.

The comparisons in the table below are based on where the previous month’s numbers were when originally reported on one month ago.

TMHA Member’s Retailer Annual Sales Totals Report

Titled on Time

New home sales for June titled to date were down a seasonally adjusted 4.5% from the previous month and are up 26.2% on the raw total from June of 2025.

June’s 1,310 homes sold held nearly all of May’s gain, and the two months together are the strongest consecutive pair of on-time report months so far in 2026.

With June roughly 97% complete at publication, expect the month to settle near 1,350 new home sales (± 20) as the last titles are issued.

That settled estimate would land about 18% above June 2025’s final total of 1,145, a genuine gain rather than a cadence effect, since June of 2025 was the last month before the change in title timing took hold. Starting with next month’s report the comparisons run against the second half of 2025, after the enforcement change took hold, which should bring the year-over-year readings much closer to apples to apples.

While the plot above contains revised totals for previous months the comparisons in the table below are based on where the previous month’s numbers were when released one month ago.

TMHA Member’s Retailer Monthly Sales Totals Report

Titled Installation Location Trends

Here are the month-over-month changes for the top 10 counties for new home sales over the past five on-time report months, ranked by their total placements across that span.

June split the top ten. Midland jumped 68% to 52 homes, its best month in the window, Montgomery rose 33% and Harris 9%, while Ector and Bexar held flat. The other five slipped, led by Brazoria (down 21%), Smith (19%) and Bastrop (14%), with Hidalgo (8%) and Liberty (5%) easing only slightly.

TMHA Member’s Retailer Annual Sales Total per County Report

Moving Averages

The plot below shows the 12-month moving averages for manufactured home shipments, retail sold titles, and new home installations. We recently added the new home installation series that shows more support for shipments than the retail title series was depicting alone. Some of that installation increase is from new manufactured home communities that were placing homes into their inventory and rental stock that have not yet been titled. Some of those homes go from being rentals to used home purchases which don’t show up in the retail sales line that is limited to titles designated as new homes. We will continue to research how to best account for the community channel’s impact on aggregate retail sales totals. The shipments line runs through July, retail sales through June and installations through August.

THMA Public Shipment Report