The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) on Tuesday published a proposed rule in the Federal Register to increase and index the loan limits for its Title I Manufactured Home Loan Program.
The program insures loans used to finance manufactured homes titled as personal property. The FHA seeks public comment on its proposed data-driven methodology to calculate loan limits for the program on an annual basis.
FHA said publication of the rule is the latest step in its efforts to promote manufactured homes, an important component of the Biden administration’s May 2022 Housing Supply Action Plan.
“Adjusting loan limits to current market conditions will make Title I a much more useful source of affordable loan financing for manufactured homes,” said Federal Housing Commissioner Julia Gordon. “This proposal is the next step in FHA’s ongoing work to support manufactured housing as an affordable and attractive option in a challenging housing market.”
Loan limits for the Title I Manufactured Home Loan Program were last updated by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. The proposed methodology will be used to establish indexes that annually calculate and adjust loan limits using sale prices, number of sections of the manufactured home, and property data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau, FHA said.
The proposal, the agency said, includes separate indexes for single-section manufactured homes and multi-section manufactured homes for the three loan categories covered under the Title I Manufactured Home Loan Program:
- Manufactured Home Loans used for the purchase or refinance of manufactured home only;
- Manufactured Home Lot Loans used for the purchase or refinance of the land where the home will be installed; and
- Manufactured Home and Lot Combination Loans used for the purchase or refinance of both the home and the land on which the home will be installed.
In November 2021, FHA published revised and enhanced Title I Manufactured Home Loan Program policies in its Single-Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1. The changes made it easier for lenders to understand and use the program while providing expanded eligibility requirements for loan financing that are consistent with the criteria for income and property valuations used in real-estate mortgage financing.
Comments on the proposed rule published Tuesday are due by Dec. 19, 2022. Information on submitting comments is available here.
