Manufactured-home Buyers Prove to be Excellent Borrowers
Our data supports our belief that people with low incomes can be good borrowers.
Decades of Success
The stigma attached to manufactured housing has long perpetuated the myth that manufactured-home loans have higher delinquency rates, lead to more foreclosures and losses, and are not a good credit risk. But our 20 years of success in offering single-family lending for manufactured homes to low-income borrowers tells a very different story.
Our approach to providing loans for manufactured homes and developing underwriting guidelines, known as Welcome Home Loans, require an innovative and bespoke approach.
We believe that living in a manufactured home doesn’t mean that a borrower isn’t creditworthy or deserving of homeownership. It means that as a lender, we need to be flexible. We believe in a one-size-fits-one philosophy with an understanding that our borrowers want a type of housing that fits their lifestyle and sets them on the path to wealth building.
Our lending has preserved or introduced homeownership for nearly 11,000 households, but there’s more work to do. There are an estimated 30,000-plus manufactured homes in N.H. Many of them are at risk unless the residents are able to form a resident-owned community (ROC) so that owners own not just own their homes, but control the sale of the land beneath them.
There are only 316 resident-owned communities (ROCs) across the entire United States. To date, 150 manufactured-home parks in N.H. have converted to ROCs. And we’ve played a central role in reaching this milestone.
Our first manufactured-home loan was made in January 2003 to purchase a home in Freedom Hill Cooperative, one of New Hampshire’s ROCs. The initial Cooperative Home Loan Program (CHLP) has morphed into the present-day Welcome Home Loans. As of June 30, 2023, we have lent over $94 million to over 1,600 borrowers.
An Innovative Attitude
Manufactured homes are a good fit for people with special financial needs, essential workers, seniors, young families, New Americans (many of whom don't meet conventional underwriting guidelines), and many other types of borrowers.
We look for opportunities to serve borrowers with specific needs. On occasion, we have developed special-purpose pilot programs to meet these needs. Welcome Home Loans are one way we are able to help them. On occasion, we have developed special-purpose pilot programs to meet these needs.
We contracted with a manufacturer to custom-build 500-square-foot homes to install on 10 empty lots in a single ROC. With special fundraising and participation from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, we sold several homes to homeless veterans at 0% interest.
Originated in partnership with local area agencies, Home of Your Own (HOYO) was a limited program designed to assist borrowers with special financial needs in buying affordable homes. Along with existing Single-Family Special Initiative (SFSI) programs, we have found creative ways to help people own manufactured homes.
Keeping borrowers financially healthy is critical to the success of Welcome Home Loans. When creating the program, we worked with our employee-assistance program provider to make those same resources available to our home loan borrowers.
The Borrower Easy Assistance Program, or BEAP, is a benefit that only the Community Loan Fund offers. When borrowers face life challenges, the BEAP program helps them locate services that can help. During COVID, borrowers successfully used that assistance to navigate sudden family, financial, and employment challenges.
Many homebuyers who can afford the mortgage and maintenance on a manufactured home don’t have the savings to cover downpayment and closing costs. Your Turn homebuyer assistance might be a solution.
Your Turn offers an additional $35,000 loan to cover down payment and closing costs. You repay the Your Turn loan only when your Welcome Home first-mortgage loan is paid off, you sell or refinance, or you no longer live in the home.
Truly Affordable Housing
Our average mortgage payment, including principal, interest, taxes, insurance, and park rent is $1,261. The average apartment rent payment in N.H. is $1,584, and the average mortgage payment is $3,151. Fulfilling our mission of enabling traditionally underserved people to participate more fully in N.H.'s economy is why Welcome Home Loans exist.
You can see why Welcome Home Loans really are a viable opportunity for many Granites Staters to become manufactured-home owners.
Statistics Tell Stories
Manufactured-home residents face the same challenges as any property owner. Death, divorce, illness, job loss, and economic disruptions impact the ability to repay. But by combining lending with borrower coaching and guidance, we are able to keep delinquencies low.
960
loans in our portfolio as of June 30, 2023
$48.6+ Million
total dollars in outstanding loans at end of FY 2023
3.42%
total delinquency ratio for November 2023
17
homes appraised $5,000+ higher than purchase price
Celebrating Our Borrowers
Kathi Paradis, our VP of Welcome Home Loans, shares what she's learned in her time helping people realize their manufactured-home ownership dreams.
Get Kathi’s Perspective
Kathi Paradis, our VP of Welcome Home Loans, shares what she's learned in her time helping people realize their manufactured-home ownership dreams.
Manufactured-home Buyers Prove to be Excellent Borrowers
Our data supports our belief that people with low incomes can be good borrowers.
Learn MoreA Welcome Home Loan made it their turn, again
Kevin and Wanita lost their home after a string of financial and medical difficulties. A Welcome Home Loan got them into a place of their own again.
Learn MoreOnce adrift, family settles into a home of their own
Donna and Joe were beat up physically from lifetimes of physical, demanding work, and beat up mentally from barely scraping by and living in stressful, unhealthy environments. After 13 moves in 16 years, something needed to change.
Learn MoreAn unexpected loan, a 'new person'
Living on a farm and spinning yarn from her own woolly Shetlands fulfilled Anita's childhood dream. But when she and her husband parted ways, Anita was in need of more affordable housing and dreamed of living in a community again.
Learn MoreCancer survivor got a second chance at life, and a home
People who borrow to buy manufactured homes typically pay interest rates several points higher than those for site-built homes. But in a handful of resident-owned communities in N.H., including Camp Sargent, homeowners and buyers can get mortgage loans with low down payments and conventional interest rates.
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