Here are some interesting excerpts from an article posted on Businessweek.com

“Thanks to style-conscious architects, today’s manufactured houses prove you can combine low cost and high design — and they’re selling well.

Is the phrase “affordable, stylish house” an oxymoron? It may seem so, given a still-heated real estate market. The median price of an existing American home in September was $212,000 — up 13.4% from the same period last year, according to the latest figures released by the National Association of Realtors.”

“While figures from the Manufactured Housing Institute show that sales of manufactured homes in general (defined as factory-produced single-family houses) are down — representing 9.8% of new single-family housing starts in the U.S. in 2004, compared to 14.8% in 2002 — the market for modernist prefab seems to be experiencing brisk sales.”

The article continues…

“Prefab was long associated with bad design,” says Jill Herbers, author of Prefab Modern. “It got into the hands of the government and other institutions as a way to put up shelter quickly and cheaply, and as a result, design was downgraded. Now we’re seeing the polar opposite.”

For full article:
www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/oct2005/id20051026_962297.htm