New manufactured homes may get more efficient thanks to housing law

A sweeping federal housing bill that became law last Saturday contains some big benefits for Americans poised to buy or rent new manufactured homes — the same families who often struggle to make ends meet and can least afford the rising cost of heating fuel and electricity.

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act — a rare feat of bipartisanship in Washington, D.C. — gives the Trump administration one year to issue updated minimum energy-efficiency standards for the construction of manufactured homes, which account for about one in 10 new houses across the country and are especially prevalent in the U.S. South.

The provisions on prefabricated housing mark a surprising turnaround on energy policy.

In January, the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives, with the support of dozens of Democrats, passed a bill to rescind new efficiency codes for manufactured homes — and instead lock in place 30-year-old standards for insulation, window and door sealing, ventilation, and other features. But during months of negotiations on the housing package, the Senate, also controlled by Republicans, fought to preserve the new codes. The final legislation passed the House last month with just 32 ​“no” votes.

The forthcoming standards — if they’re as strong as energy-efficiency advocates hope — will be crucial for Southern households.

Of the 4.7 million prefab homes delivered nationwide in recent decades, more than half are in 10 Southern states. Texas leads the country, with nearly 600,000 units, and North Carolina is second, with over 330,000, the U.S. Census shows. The ​“East South Central” region, which spans from Kentucky to Alabama, has the highest concentration of manufactured homes in the country, at 9.3%.

The dwellings are exempt from state and local energy codes, and older models are notoriously energy inefficient, with thin insulation, drafty windows and doors, and often outdated modes of heating and cooling.

“It’s easy to see, with an older … home, a $300 or $400 heating bill in the wintertime,” said Brad Rouse, executive director of the Asheville, North Carolina–based Energy Savers Network, which works to install energy-savings measures for modest-income households in the region.

High monthly costs tend to be especially difficult for manufactured home residents to handle: Their median income is $40,000, less than half that of families living in site-built houses. The Southeast, meanwhile, is the most energy-burdened region in the country, with one in three households struggling to pay their energy bills.

Residents of modular homes often ​“don’t have money left over,” Rouse said. ​“To have high winter heating and cooling bills can really hit them pretty hard in the pocketbook.”

The recently passed law includes two major provisions to unleash more manufactured housing across the country, said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.

One is the reauthorization of a grant program to help families replace older non–site-built houses, including those constructed before the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development had any efficiency standards whatsoever.

“If you go from a pre–HUD Code home,” Kresowik said, to a gold-standard version like those being built in Vermont, ​“you’re talking about potentially a 50% reduction in the energy use inside that home. That’s huge.”

The law also removes a mandate that manufactured houses, once widely called ​“trailers,” be built on a permanent steel chassis that allows them to be transported. Some 90% of such homes never move after their initial setup.

As housing manufacturers retool their facilities according to the new chassis rule, they also have an opportunity to make adjustments to account for upcoming efficiency requirements, Kresowik said.

“This is the perfect time to also update those factories to deliver lower-cost homes to live in,” he said.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last updated standards for manufactured homes in 1994. In 2007, a bipartisan law required the Department of Energy to issue more protective rules, aligned with model standards for site-built homes. In 2022, the Biden administration finally complied, but those criteria never went into effect, and Trump paused them indefinitely last summer.

Last week’s housing law doesn’t repeal the DOE requirement adopted in 2007. But it does specify that only HUD can promulgate and enforce efficiency rules, and says the agency must do so in a year’s time. It also mandates new standards every three years.

Under the 2022 proposal, the average double-wide home was expected to cost $4,222 more up front, a figure that would be offset in less than five years in the form of lower energy bills. For single-wide units, the additional up-front costs were pegged at $660, which households would recoup within one year.

Some half of all manufactured homes are already built well above the minimum code. Yet the industry has long resisted new rules, and the second Trump administration has been hostile to energy efficiency efforts. So advocates like Kresowik have their work cut out for them to push HUD to devise standards that are at least as strong as those proposed four years ago.

“In this moment where voters have clearly communicated that lowering their costs is a top priority, this would be a thing that HUD can do,” Kresowik said. “[Updated standards] should deliver tremendous energy savings and cost savings. They should lower the cost to live inside a manufactured home.”