Coming home

The decision to buy a manufactured home instead of a traditional site-built residence was easy for Ronn Marcelais to make. The decision to move his home to Strawberry Station was even easier.

Marcelais was able to pay for the manufactured home without financing, but would have needed a mortgage to buy a site-built home.

Strawberry Station is a new type of manufactured-home community that tries to offer residents all of the amenities people look for in a site-built neighborhood. Residents have a clubhouse, and a playground is planned for the development's next phase. Community rules ensure that each yard has at least one tree and six shrubs.

It's a community that challenges stereotypes.

"This is not a trailer park," says Marcelais, who lives in his 2,270-square-foot home and rents the lot on which it is located. "This is a community. Our lots are a quarter-acre. We have block parties. We get together on holidays. We all play golf together."

Homes must be three years or newer to be allowed in the community, says Kelly Gabel, its manager. They must have shingled roofs and vinyl siding. Sheds also have to be shingled and must be the same color as the house. Each home also has a three-car parking pad. On-street parking and auto maintenance are prohibited.

Marcelais' home features a large kitchen with oak cabinets; living, dining and laundry rooms; drywall instead of thinner wallboard; energy-efficient windows; walk-in closets; and front and back decks.

Mark Dillard of the Manufactured Housing Institute of South Carolina says such communities began to appear in the early 1990s and are a trend that can be found across the nation.

"What we have seen in the last 15 years are communities that are designed to be attractive not only to residents, but to fit in with the community at large. The communities you are seeing are really designed along the lines of subdivisions."

Other aspects of the trend include national companies such as American Residential Communities, which owns Carnes Crossing in Summerville, buying old parks and raising their standards, Dillard says. And while buying the home and renting the land still is the way most parks operate, more are selling homes and lots together.

Manufactured homes are a popular residential option for South Carolinians, Dillard says. About one in five South Carolinians — 355,499 — were living in manufactured housing in 2000, according to the S.C. Office of Research Statistics.

Prior to 1976, manufactured homes were called mobile homes or trailers. To underscore the improvements in construction and materials used to make them today, the industry has changed the way it refers to them.

In addition, manufactured homes built since 1994 are required by federal law to be constructed and installed to withstand 100-mph wind gusts in counties nearest the coast, including Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester.

The difficulty in getting a loan for a site-built house in today's tight lending climate is making a manufactured home appeal to more people, says Dillard.

"You can get yourself into a nice house without having saved $30,000."

In South Carolina, a buyer's sales tax is reduced $300 and he receives a $750 income tax credit for purchasing EnergyStar manufactured homes, Dillard says. EnergyStar is a government-supported program aimed at protecting the environment through energy efficiency.

Reach Wevonneda Minis at 937-5705 or wminis@postandcourier.com.