For about 50 years, every manufactured home in America had to sit on a steel frame that nobody really needed once the house was set. That rule is gone, and it could change where and how factory-built homes go up, including two-story and multifamily projects.
Robbie Sequeira of Stateline laid out the change in a story republished by NC Newsline, and there's good news in it for North Carolina in particular.
What changed
This summer's big federal housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, removed a 1974 mandate that every manufactured home be built on a nonremovable steel frame, called a chassis.
Manufactured homes are built entirely in a factory under U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development codes and then trucked to the site. The Manufactured Housing Institute, an industry group, says they cost 50% less per square foot than site-built homes. Experts told Stateline that dropping the chassis could cut another $5,000 to $10,000 per home.
Stephanie Hawke of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley said the chassis is a "very heavy, expensive thing on the bottom of these homes that is not needed and it is not used." Without it, she said, homes are easier to stack into two-story and multifamily buildings.
UMH Properties, a publicly traded company that owns and develops manufactured-home communities, said on a 2026 earnings call that the change will let it put two-story homes on existing lots. "You build 2,000 square feet of homes instead of 1,000 square feet on the same piece of land," said founder and chairman Eugene Landy.
Where North Carolina stands
Under the new law, states must certify by July 11, 2027, or by 2028 if their legislatures meet every other year, that they'll treat manufactured homes the same with or without a chassis.
North Carolina is one of at least three states, along with Tennessee and Texas, that already updated its definition of a manufactured home so it follows HUD code changes automatically. "North Carolina did an incorporation by reference, essentially saying, 'We are just going to define this like HUD defines it. Go see HUD's definition,'" Hawke said. "It's a lot simpler."
Other states have more work ahead. Rachel Siegel of The Pew Charitable Trusts' housing initiative said more than 30 states will need to update their definitions, and it may not be as easy as striking a few words because "permanent chassis" language shows up all through state law. A Stateline review found that language in states including Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland, New York, Washington and Nevada.
Zoning and financing still stand in the way
Prices have been climbing. The U.S. Census Bureau's Manufactured Housing Survey shows the average new manufactured home went from $81,900 in 2019 to $127,200 in 2025. Fewer manufactured home communities have been built since 2000, a trend largely blamed on restrictive zoning and rising land costs.
Local rules can be tough. In Texas, the National Zoning Atlas looked at more than 6,700 zoning districts and found 33% of localities have explicit restrictions on manufactured housing. Last year Kentucky and Texas banned local ordinances that unreasonably restrict where manufactured homes can go, and Kentucky also barred local design standards stricter than those for other homes.
Financing is the other hurdle. Siegel said states should revisit laws that title manufactured homes as personal property, like cars, because that can keep buyers from getting a regular mortgage. Pew's analysis found a typical $100,000 mortgage would save a borrower roughly $49,000 over the life of the loan compared with a personal-property loan. Georgia, Maine and New York have already made it easier to convert some manufactured homes to real property.
Modern units don't look much like the old trailers, either. "They have the same walls, ceiling, sheetrock, windows and shingles," said Dustin Brakemeier, who runs manufactured home communities in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. "One's built in a factory, one's built outside."
Why it matters for Contractors
Factory-built doesn't mean contractor-free. Every manufactured home still has to be trucked to a site and set there, and chassis-free designs that stack or blend into subdivisions could open new kinds of projects, from two-story infill on existing lots to small multifamily. North Carolina contractors are in a good spot since the state's definition already follows HUD. If you also work in South Carolina or Virginia, watch those legislatures, because until they catch up, chassis-free homes may face extra hurdles there.