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Is Affordable Housing Moving Mobile? Analyzing the Impact of COVID-19 on Demand for Manufactured Housing

By Jair Coleridge Soman Alleyne

As demand for affordable housing continues to increase in America, manufactured homes provide a private solution to this problem. Research has shown that manufactured home prices are largely dependent on the price of local housing substitutes as well as other geographic hedonic factors. This paper looks at the impact of Covid-19 on the manufactured housing market to determine the effects that economic shocks have on the demand for manufactured housing. Conditional on wanting to buy a house, we use a logistic model to examine the probability that an individual purchases a manufactured home and whether this probability increases at times of high unemployment and economic uncertainty. Due to the nature of our data, although the impact of Covid as a disease is difficult to measure, we do find decreased income and increased unemployment to be a factor increasing the likelihood of purchasing a manufactured home. We also find that in 2020, demand for manufactured housing increased significantly compared to the years prior.

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Advisors: Professor Charles Becker, Professor Michelle Connolly | JEL Codes: R2, R21, I32

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