Texas Manufactured Housing Sales in March 2021 and April Early Read

April Preliminary Data

New manufactured home sales titled to date for April are up a seasonally adjusted 0.5% from March even as the raw total of homes moved down -5.7% from the previous month. The raw decline stemmed from a pullback in single-section home sales as multi-section sales are currently ahead of March at this same point a month ago. The March to April decline for single-section sales is a typical seasonal effect. March is the usual top selling month for single-section home sales, while multi-section sales tend to stay strong through June.

Compared to last year in the middle of the state’s lockdown, new manufactured home sales for April 2021 are up 21.6% over 2020, but they’re trailing the record April pace of 2019 by -7.7%.

May has been a strong month for the past three years running, but it was a very wet May this year with much of the eastern side of the state receiving 5-8 inches more rain than usual. That will have put downward pressure on retail traffic and sales, so we’ll see what the early numbers look like next month. May sales titled to date are still holding up, but that’s the way too early to tell read.

The first forecast for total new homes sold in April is 1,486 +/- 183.

March Data

As we mentioned last month, the year-over-year and month-over-month comparisons are quite distorted for March, so looking back to 2019 is more informative. For titles issued by TDHCA to date, new home sales for March of 2021 are just -1.0% behind 2019’s total at this point in time two years ago.

You will see in the New Home Characteristics table below that the median number of days between when a home was manufactured and when it was sold as dated on the title has moved down for single-section homes to 99 days in March. That is below the 100 day median for multi-section homes and has pushed the annual statistic for 2021 down below 100 days. The annual statistic has been above 100 prior to this since 2018. This could be a bullish signal for single-section home shipments moving forward.

The final forecast for total new homes sold in March has moved down to 1,537 +/- 94.

Annual Totals

For the year new home sales are running 3.5% over the pandemic suppressed sales of 2020 and -6.5% behind new home sales in 2019.

The current forecast for new home sales for 2021 moved up to 15,682 +/- 1,231.

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 2021-06-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

Charts

This first chart shows what monthly sales totals look like for each year in the series for titles processed through 6-15.

Note: These calculations are based on titles processed by TDHCA through 2021-06-15. 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 2021-06-15. 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 2021-06-15. 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 2021-06-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

The fifth chart is the annual median for the number of days between a homes 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 2021-06-15. 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 2021-06-15. Late submissions will impact these figures going forward.

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