Extended House by OOD House
THE PLOT · JUNE 27, 2026
Three signals from the field this week. One you can act on today.
GUIDE OF THE WEEK
Financing modular — the four paths buyers actually use
Most banks don't write traditional mortgages for factory-built homes. That stops a lot of buyers cold — but it shouldn't. Four financing paths get most modular and manufactured builds funded, and each one fits a different buyer profile.
01 Personal property loans (chattel)
For manufactured homes on leased land. Fastest to close, highest rates, no real estate appraisal needed.
02 Construction-to-perm loans
For modular on owned land, set on permanent foundation. Treated identically to stick-built once final inspection clears.
03 Builder financing
The manufacturer carries paper directly. Common with smaller modular shops — surprisingly competitive rates for qualified buyers.
04 Cash-out refi on existing equity
The move-up buyer's path — and the pool that's grown the most this year as resale inventory tightens.
We dig into how each one works, and the questions to ask before signing, in our financing guides:
FIVE MARKETS TO WATCH
Where the data is moving right now
The category isn't moving everywhere at the same speed. Five markets where the permit data, the builder backlog, and the buyer intake all point the same direction.
CALIFORNIA
ADU is the story.
California's ADU laws, and the follow-on bills since, made it one of the most permissive ADU markets in the country. Most single-family lots can now add an ADU and a junior ADU. The bottleneck has shifted from policy to builder capacity.
TEXAS
Factory capacity is the signal.
Demand around DFW and Austin isn't the question. The question is whether modular builders there can scale without losing quality. That's the number to watch.
NORTH CAROLINA
The Triangle wants land and time back.
Buyers moving to the Raleigh-Durham corridor want more land and less time in a builder's queue. That's exactly where factory-built homes shine.
FLORIDA
Hurricane rebuilds favor factory timelines.
When insurance is paying and local crews are booked solid, a home built indoors in a factory can be finished months sooner than one built on site.
ARIZONA
Phoenix ADU policy is the wedge.
For first-time buyers priced out of resale, land plus an ADU is becoming the way in.
FROM OUR INBOX
Three questions buyers asked us this month
“Will it appraise?”
Most lenders treat modular as real estate identical to stick-built once it's set on a permanent foundation. Manufactured is treated differently — chattel vs. real-property financing is the fork that surprises most first-timers.
“How long does it actually take?”
There isn't one answer — the timeline is set by three variables: where your builder sits in their factory queue, how much site work your land needs before set, and how fast your financing closes. The honest move is to ask each of those before signing. Anyone giving you a single confident month number without knowing your land is selling, not telling.
“What about resale?”
The data is thin because the category is young at this scale. The early signal in markets where modular has critical mass — parts of California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington — is that well-built modular holds value comparably to stick-built. The land underneath does the heavy lifting either way.
Your plot is waiting.
PERCH sells modular homes, built to order in a factory near you and delivered to your land. See the homes and their delivered prices.
See you next Friday,
— Cameron, Founder, PERCH
Reply to this email if there's a market signal you want us to dig into. We read every one.
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