Washington, D.C. JUNE 29, 2026
TO: HUD CODE MANUFACTURED HOUSING INDUSTRY MEMBERS
FROM: MHARR
RE: SUBJECTS AS LISTED BELOW
FHFA CONCEDES UTTER FAILURE OF DTS IN MAJOR RESTRUCTURING
In the wake of recent MHARR communications to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director William J. Pulte and the White House regarding the utter failure of FHFA and federal mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to fully and properly implement the statutory Duty to Serve Underserved Markets (DTS) mandate within the affordable mainstream manufactured housing market – and particularly within the market-dominant chattel consumer financing sector – FHFA, on June 24, 2026, issued a proposed rule in the Federal Register (copy attached) that would effectively scrap the existing DTS regulatory structure and replace it with a new structure that would, in relevant part, focus on chattel lending within the HUD Code market.
In April 2, 2026 and April 21, 2026 communications to Director Pulte (copies attached), MHARR stressed two key points with respect to DTS. First, that complete failure to serve the manufactured housing chattel market under DTS was tantamount to not serving that market at all, and second, that FHFA was affirmatively required to reform DTS and provide for chattel support under Executive Order 14394, “Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction,” issued on March 13, 2026. In part, MHARR stated:
“[W]ithin the affordable manufactured housing market, nearly 80% of all consumers have consistently relied upon chattel, or personal property loans, to finance their home. *** [T]he chattel financing sector of the manufactured housing industry is [thus] so market-dominant that the Enterprises’ failure to serve that sector is functionally equivalent to a complete failure to serve the manufactured housing market [under DTS]. *** This failure — and brazen defiance of Congress and the law – by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not only having a devastating impact on the affordable housing market via consumer exclusion, but is also forcing the consumers who do remain in the market to seek higher-rate financing from a quasi-monopolistic lending market….”
(Emphasis in original).
In its June 24, 2026 Federal Register notice, FHFA effectively concedes both of these points, stating:
“Despite its importance, … the chattel lending market remains underdeveloped, with limited liquidity, [and] the absence of a securitization infrastructure. These gaps have constrained borrower access to sustainable credit, perpetuated reliance on higher-cost financing and restricted consumer choice. For these reasons, expanding responsible chattel financing is critical to the Enterprises fully meeting their Duty to Serve. *** Consistent with EO 14394, FHFA expects the Enterprises to develop and implement robust responsible chattel financing initiatives and will assess them on their progress in expanding liquidity, supporting sustainable credit, and enhancing consumer choice in the manufactured housing market.”
(See, 91 Federal Register at p. 37857, col. 2-3) (Emphasis added).
After nearly two decades, then, FHFA has acknowledged what MHARR has maintained all along – that the so-called “implementation” of DTS within the manufactured housing market has been a smoke-and-mirrors illusion that has not benefited mainstream HUD Code consumers or the mainstream HUD Code industry as designed and intended by Congress. Instead, the DTS mandate – without meaningful pushback by the Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI), as the self-professed “national representative” of the industry’s post-production sector – has been hijacked and subverted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to aid a tiny sliver of the manufactured housing market (i.e., real estate placements) dominated by the industry’s largest corporate conglomerates. Meanwhile the industry’s market-dominant portfolio consumer lenders have been free to charge higher interest rates than would otherwise prevail in a fully-DTS-supported system.
And while FHFA’s regulatory action to advance DTS support for manufactured home consumer chattel lending is encouraging, MHI has failed to publicly support amendment language submitted by MHARR for the pending “bipartisan housing bill,” which would have unequivocally made DTS chattel support mandatory by statute. Instead, after MHI executive staff, at an FHFA “listening session” offered the Enterprises a public excuse for ignoring DTS chattel (stating that chattel support was not mandatory), MHI has advanced, promoted and supported a “housing” bill that does nothing to address the Enterprises’ de facto exclusion of chattel consumer loans from DTS. All of this again proves the need for a truly independent national association to represent the industry’s post-production sector. Regardless, though, the history of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on this matter, combined with the fact that implementation of the new rules would be delayed until 2028 (during the last year of the Trump Administration) and the public excuse handed the Enterprises by MHI, cast serious doubt on whether the Enterprises will comply with FHFA or continue to defy Congress and the law.
Comments on FHFA’s proposed rule are due by July 24, 2026. MHARR will submit written comments in advance of the stated deadline and urges all industry members to support the mandatory inclusion of manufactured home chattel loans in DTS pursuant to an effective and fully-enforceable framework.
ENERGY DEPARTMENT BLASTS ICC ENERGY CONSERVATION CODE
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), in a June 26, 2026 News Release (copy attached) announced a new analysis of the International Code Council’s (ICC) 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). That analysis found that the 2024 IECC, would “increase residential construction costs by more than $9.2 billion annually, compared to 2006 code levels, adding more than $127 billion in cumulative costs nationwide.” Under the 2024 IECC, DOE found that construction costs for “a typical single-family home could increase by as much as $14,000.” This led DOE Secretary Chris Wright to state: “American families should not be forced to pay more for a home because of nonsensical energy-related mandates. For too long, climate activists have pushed regulations that increase housing costs, reduce consumer choice and make it harder for Americans to build and own a home.”
(Emphasis added).
DOE’s findings and Secretary Wright’s statement are potentially significant for manufactured housing, insofar as the pending DOE manufactured housing “energy” final standards, adopted on May 31, 2022, are based on an earlier (yet parallel) iteration of the same IECC code and would similarly impose needless but major price increases on mainstream manufactured housing consumers as stressed by MHARR in multiple rounds of written comments. As MHARR established in those comments, the DOE standards have no legitimate basis, in that HUD Code homes, according to U.S. Census Bureau data have lower energy operating costs than other types of homes. Further, the DOE “final” standards would impose thousands of dollars of additional costs on the purchase price of a new manufactured home, which would lead to the exclusion of millions of potential purchasers from the market and needlessly increase homelessness.
Based on the essential premise of Secretary Wright’s statement and DOE’s communication to ICC — that DOE “prioritize[s] the American homeowner and will not allow erroneous building requirements to push homeownership out of reach” – MHARR again calls on DOE to repudiate, retract and repeal its May 31, 2022 manufactured housing energy standards. Such action by DOE – as consistently urged by MHARR – is essential insofar as the pending “housing” bill championed by MHI would not definitively repeal the May 31, 2022 DOE standards and would leave in place the energy standards mandate of section 413 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) with only minor modification.
Accordingly, DOE should apply the same principles to its own May 31, 2022 manufactured housing “energy” standards – standards pursued and promoted by climate extremists – and eliminate those standards now.
cc: Other Interested Affordable Housing Proponents
Attachments
Manufactured Housing Association for Regulatory Reform (MHARR)
1331 Pennsylvania Ave N.W., Suite 512
Washington D.C. 20004
Phone: 202/783-4087
Fax: 202/783-4075
Email: MHARRDG@AOL.COM
Website: www.manufacturedhousingassociation.org
MHARR press releases are available for re-publication in full (i.e., without alteration or substantive modification) without further permission and with proper attribution and/or linkback to MHARR.
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