| Despite the steady demand for affordable homes, builders are developing fewer site-built homes for first-time homebuyers. Competition from the manufactured homes industry and expectations of new homebuyers are making it more difficult for builders to produce and sell well-built, affordable starter homes. Marketability, affordability, and durability are often seen as competing ideas that cannot be combined in one home.
To increase the number of site-built, entry-level homes, HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research recently released a manual that illustrates how developers can construct high-quality, energy-efficient, durable, and affordable housing. A Builder's Guide to Marketable, Affordable, and Durable Entry-level Homes (MADE) To Last, developed as a part of the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing, provides builders with:
* Tools to market affordable housing to entry-level buyers.
* Successful techniques for building affordable, durable housing.
* Methods to define homebuyer expectations and fulfill their needs both before and after the sale.
* Preliminary plans illustrating how many of these techniques fit into a MADE-to-last demonstration home. |
