MBA's Fratantoni says Freddie Mac's purchases are up 50% in a year as new lenders enter
Among the biggest developments from the 21st Century ROAD to Housing law passed earlier this year were the changes to manufactured housing requirements.
Kimber White, immediate past president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB), touted the removal of the chassis requirement and the increase in FHA-insured loan limits for that type of housing as two major wins in the legislation.
He believed that this renewed focus on manufactured housing could benefit both first-time homebuyers and those in more rural areas. New data is showing that lending on these properties is increasing.
Lenders that already specialize in the space are selling more loans to Freddie Mac, and lenders that haven’t done so before are entering, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).
That could open a new line of business for brokers and originators looking for volume while mortgage rates stay high.
Mike Fratantoni (pictured top), chief economist at MBA, said the shift is already showing up in what Freddie Mac is buying.
"I had a conversation with the folks at Freddie Mac yesterday, and their purchases over the past year are up 50%," Fratantoni told Mortgage Professional America.
What is driving the growth
The purchases are of non-chattel loans, meaning manufactured homes financed as real estate, Fratantoni said. He asked Freddie Mac what is behind the increase and got a two-part answer.
"It's lenders that were already specialists in the space increasing sales to Freddie, and it's lenders that have not done manufactured housing loans in the past that are now in the space as well," he said.
Freddie Mac bought 6,232 manufactured housing loans titled as real property in 2025, about $1.17 billion, according to its Duty to Serve report to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). About 64% of them went to first-time buyers, compared with 51% of its single-family purchases overall.
A quarter of the lenders that delivered qualified manufactured housing loans in 2025 had not sold loans to Freddie Mac in at least a year, if ever. That suggests new sellers are coming in, in line with Fratantoni’s point.
MBA's forecast has mortgage rates above 7% through 2027, with originations down. Against that backdrop, Fratantoni said, MBA will begin treating manufactured housing as its own segment.
"So really a growing area," Fratantoni said. "So we're going to start forecasting specifically in the space because it really is going to be a new business line for a lot of lenders."
What brokers should watch
Marina Walsh, MBA's head of industry analysis, said chattel lending is drawing interest, though it remains a small corner of the market.
"Lots of conversation around them. It's a niche product," Walsh said. "There are about five lenders that are really big in this space. But yeah, there's certainly potential there for sure."
Census Bureau data show the market for new manufactured homes is roughly flat. Shipments totaled 67,800 through August, about 4% fewer than in the same months of 2025, so the gain in Freddie Mac's purchases is not coming from more new homes.
The seasonally adjusted annual pace has risen from 95,000 in January to a preliminary 104,000 in August, near the 103,300 and 102,700 homes shipped in 2024 and 2025.
New manufactured homes shipped in May sold for an average of $130,500, up from $126,800 a year earlier, according to the Census Bureau. Freddie Mac puts the average price of a newly placed home, land included, at about $200,000, against more than $500,000 for a typical site-built home.
Joel Kan, MBA's deputy chief economist, said the removal of the chassis requirement comes as the market needs more affordable housing stock, and MBA is tracking the segment more closely as it builds its forecast. The effect could also vary by state, he said, because state-specific requirements determine what counts as a mortgage versus property.
"I think early to tell, but clearly in the right direction," Kan said.
Freddie Mac’s guidance backs up the state point. A manufactured home loan must be real property to be eligible for sale to Freddie Mac, and converting a title from personal property depends on state titling and lien laws.
On the borrower side, Freddie Mac allows temporary buydowns on these loans, and Home Possible allows down payments as low as 5% on standard manufactured homes and 3% on CHOICEHome loans for income-qualifying borrowers.
The Oct. 22 executive order created a Task Force on Manufactured Housing Innovation, co-chaired by the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the director of the FHFA. It has 180 days to recommend ways to use modern manufacturing methods in factory-built housing.
Kan also pointed to the prefab side, where flat pieces ship to a site and get assembled. For brokers and originators, more lenders entering the space could mean more places to send manufactured housing files.
"It's going to be blurring the lines between modular and manufactured without a chassis," Fratantoni said. "And then that could bring some scale to that business that wasn't there in the past."
Stay updated with the freshest mortgage news. Get exclusive interviews, breaking news, and industry events in your inbox, and always be the first to know by subscribing to our FREE daily newsletter.
