June 1999
Introduction
It’s becoming harder and harder for builders to produce and sell those well-built, well-priced, starter homes of the past. Many builders indicate that they are producing the homes that buyers want, but a study by NAHB entitled "What Home Buyers Want" points to a large gap between first-time buyers’ expectations and what they can actually afford. Furthermore, new home price information supports that the market in many areas is moving away from entry-level homes and more toward the move-up buyer. Despite this latest trend, research also shows that markets exist for affordable homes and that manufactured housing is capturing a growing portion of this market that has historically been the domain of the site-built home. According to a report recently completed by the NAHB Research Center, manufactured housing sales increased by 72 percent between 1992 and 1995 and currently make up over 30 percent of all single-family homes sold. During the same period, site-built housing starts have increased by approximately 17 percent.
There are, however, builders in various markets who are successfully building and selling affordable site-built homes. Their experiences represent a valuable resource of successful practices that other builders can learn from and apply in their own markets. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the NAHB Research Center, with the help of nationally renowned experts and affordable home builders, has prepared this manual for building Marketable, Affordable, and Durable Entry-level homes (MADE). The MADE manual will provide builders with:
- Tools necessary to market aflordable housing to the entry-level
buyer;
- Successful techniques for building affordable, durable housing;
- Methods to define home buyers expectations and fulfill their
needs both before and after the sale; and
- Preliminary plans illustrating how many of these techniques fit
into a MADE-to-Last demonstration home.
The key features of the demonstration home are identified on the following pages. The prototype demonstration home will provide builders with a real example of how to incorporate the ideas of this manual into their homes. These plans will be used to build a MADE-to-Last Demonstration Home in the NAHB National Research Home Park, located in Upper Marlboro, Maryland.
Prepared for:
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Prepared by:
NAHB Research Center
Upper Marlboro, MD
92 pages
Purchase a hardcopy of this report from the NAHB Research Center's bookstore.