Spotlight on the US manufactured home estate market - is it coming our way?

Ingenia CEO Simon Owen and Colliers Shane Nicholson have just returned from touring eight states

in the US learning about manufactured home estates. Some key facts they discovered:
• there are 44,000 MHEs in the US compared to 12,000 retirement villages
• 19.2 million people (6% of the US population) live-in MHEs
• in 2013 60,228 new manufactured homes were built (9% of all new homes in the US)
• the average sale price of a new manufactured home is $63,000
• 10,000 people turn 55 every day in the US

By comparison the top five MHE operators in Australia have approximately 70 locations. Australian MHEs generally cater to the 50+ market with a lifestyle bent, which is different to the US (see pie chart). Ingenia caters to the affordable end of the market and sells its new homes for $265,000. Halcyon in QLD delivers a prestige product under the same general ACT with their top price being $1.2 million at Hope Island. Palm Lake Resorts built and sold 80 homes at Fern Bay outside Newcastle at around $350,000 since November.