Meet the new mobile home: Manufactured houses deliver the American dream amid tough housing market

• Manufactured, or mobile, homes are growing in popularity in an overheated housing market.
• Their cost is roughly half that of homes built on a permanent site.
• From 2014-2019, the median value of manufactured homes rose at a faster clip in 27 states than the median value of single-family homes.

Chesney Cross, and her husband, Ken, began hunting for a new home in the Knoxville, Tennessee-area just as the pandemic began upending the housing market.

After a year of searching, the couple were unable to find anything that fit their $250,000 budget.

“Everything was selling super quickly and above what we wanted to spend,” says Chesney, 33. “We couldn't find anything that wasn't a giant fixer-upper.”

The couple had been living in a 1,100-square-foot home for a decade. But when their first child, Cash, arrived in November 2019, it began to feel cramped.

As frustrating as the house-hunting process had become, Cross would still spend hours scouring Instagram for her dream home: #Farmhousestyle.