The key to attainable homeownership is allowing manufactured homes where single-family can be built.
New site-built homes in the Commonwealth of Virginia now cost more than $560,000 – a price that is well out of reach for most families in the state. However, proposed zoning policy updates could bring costs down by hundreds of thousands of dollars per new home. There have been four bills introduced that would allow manufactured homes (HB 801, HB 655, HB 418, and SB 346, introduced by Representatives Helmer, Maldonado, Cole, and Senator VanValkenburg) to be permitted wherever site-built homes are allowed, provided they meet the same requirements as other single-family homes.
Modern manufactured homes are uniquely positioned to bridge the affordability gap for entry-level and middle-tier housing. Manufactured homes are constructed in dedicated homebuilding facilities, built to the federal Manufactured Housing Construction and Safety Standards (HUD Code). Because of factory efficiency and the consistency of federal building requirements, these homes could save buyers between 45% and 66% compared with a new site-built home (even accounting for the usual size and cost of land).
Notably, these proposed policies would allow manufactured homes installed on permanent foundations in neighborhoods like any other single-family home and would not change local policies about manufactured home communities or mobile home parks (where land is leased instead of owned).
At the county level (where sufficient data were available), potential savings are significant. The most substantial savings occur when more modestly sized single-section homes are used. Even when accounting for median land size and cost in the county, the majority could be installed for less than $200,000, and even the larger, energy-efficient CrossMod™ homes, which are usually around 1600 square feet, typically would have home and land costs under $300,000. (See Table 1.)
Table 1
Median price of site-built home from 2020-2025 compared with current prices of manufactured home, including median land size and price per square foot by county
Notes: The cost to purchase land and build a new manufactured home was compared to the median sales price of recently constructed site-built homes in Virginia counties with available and reliable data.
Median sales prices, assessed values, and lot size for site-built single-family homes built since 2020 and sold from 2020 to 2024 at the state and county level were obtained from property and real estate transaction records from ATTOM Inc. New manufactured home prices were calculated from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Manufactured Housing Survey using an average of Virginia-specific data from 2020 to 2024, for both single-section and double-section types, as well as data from a Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies report for the CrossMod type. County-level land value estimates were obtained from the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s 2024 experimental land cost database. Per-square-foot land values were multiplied by the median lot size of newer site-built homes to provide an apples-to-apples comparison. Counties were included in the analysis if they had land-value data and at least 100 site-built transactions from 2020-2024.
CrossMod™ is a registered trademark of the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI).