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UMoveinNow Manufactured Home History
2003 LongTide Homes (UMoveinNOW) was founded as a partnership in 2003 to sell used manufactured homes. The two partners of LongTide Homes (UMoveinNOW) had different experiences with the manufactured housing industry. One of the partners had built a very successful career in manufactured and site-built home building and construction. During his 15 years in the manufactured housing industry, he learned every aspect of the manufacturing process, having worked his way up increasing levels of responsibility culminating as a very successful General Manager for one of the nation’s largest manufactured housing companies. He also had a strong background in site-built home building, having built a number of custom homes from the ground up. The second partner had a much different background in a diversified business environment, having owned and run a successful business featuring developing subdivisions, constructing site-built homes, manufactured housing parks and subdivisions, and commercial land development. The two partners brought widely-diverse experiences to the partnership, allowing them to build a very strong, stable used manufactured housing organization from the ground up. But they found that their combined experiences would allow them to build a strong used manufactured housing wholesale business, so they bought a fairly-large piece of commercial property on I-35 in Burleson, Texas.
2004 As LongTide Homes (UMoveinNOW) began to grow its very successful manufactured housing refurbishment business (refurbishing manufactured homes and selling them to manufactured home dealerships), they noticed a strange phenomenon – Their factory-trained manufactured housing building crews kept calling them and complaining, “You HAVE to do something about all of these people!” LongTide Homes’ (UMoveinNOW) Managing Partner replied, “What do you mean – All of these people?” The construction foreman said, “All of these darn people keep stopping by and asking us if we’ll sell them one of these houses. They’re bothering my crews and interrupting our work. You have to do something about it!”
2005 Well, it didn’t take long for LongTide Homes (UMoveinNOW’s) Managing Partner to realize that there just might be a viable business to be built around selling manufactured homes to the general public, and not just to manufactured housing retailers. So they decided to “fix” the problem by building their first retail manufactured housing location on the front of the property in Burleson. They started buying more and more manufactured homes, and LongTide Homes (UMoveinNOW) was born. If you’ve been to Burleson over the past few years, you’re probably seen our location there on the freeway. At first they only sold pre-owned manufactured homes. But they quickly learned that they were pretty good at selling and servicing new manufactured homes, and GREAT at providing terrific customer service.
2007 By 2007, LongTide Homes (UMoveinNOW) had grown to several locations, and evolved into a fairly large new and pre-owned home sales operation. From 2003 – 2007, LongTide Homes (UMoveinNOW) became one of the most successful retail manufactured home operations in the state of Texas, providing both new and used manufactured homes to thousands of families in North Texas. 2008
By 2008, the housing market began to see what was to become a dramatic downturn. More and more foreclosed manufactured homes AND site-built homes began to show up on the market. The economy entered into what was to become a profound recession, and everyone suffered.
But, we decided to make the best of a difficult situation. Our lending partners began calling us to say that they had properties available with FHA homes already set up on land. They asked us to help them solve their problem.
At the same time, our customers were looking for more affordable, better-quality homes. They said, “high pricing and affordable housing” are terms that just don’t fit.
Manufactured Homes on Land: So, we launched another effort—which was to buy the best quality homes from the lenders—already set up on land. We’d refurb them (just like we’d been doing on our storage lot). And then offer those homes to customers that were looking for nice, fully-refurbished manufactured homes that were already set up on land, and ready for immediate move in.
After just a few months, we began selling more and more homes on land, and fewer from retail sales centers.
Affordable Homes: Why? Because it can be expensive to buy a new manufactured home from a sales center; then buy the land; and then pay for all of the improvements and the installation of the home (Click here to look as the “Buy Versus Build” comparison.
2011 Since 2008, we’ve become the single largest purchaser of HUD manufactured homes on land in the nation.
And the good part for our clients
These homes have all of the FHA improvements: Foundation, utilities, driveways, and can be ready to move into VERY quickly.
The financing is just the same as standard mortgage lending
We can include a 1-Year Warranty, just like a brand new manufactured home.
There are no complicated building projects to supervise (and the time it takes to do this).
And YOU SAVE UP TO $50,000 over the same size and style of home by buying a manufactured home already on land!
Well, as you can imagine, this part of our business was really successful, but our customers wanted even better quality at lower
prices.
Cutting Costs: So, we realized that we had to drastically change the way we did business, to make our manufactured and site-built homes even more affordable. The only way we could see to give our home-buyers what they were asking for was to invest more in our refurb efforts, while cutting costs. This was a TALL order.
Something had to give. After thinking long and hard about it, we realized that it didn’t make much sense to keep on spending a lot of money to keep manufactured housing retail locations open, when that drove up cost and prices so much.
So we began the gradual move from manufactured home retailing, to simply selling Real Estate with nicely-refurbished and brand new manufactured homes already set up on land, that are WAY less expensive than any other manufactured or site-built homes out there.
Because we’d become so efficient and so good at refurbishing pre-owned homes, and because we had developed such a good “feel” for where our clients wanted to live, we could remodel our homes more efficiently than our competition, and we began to sell a LOT of pre-owned manufactured homes and site-built homes.
A “Virtual Retail Center”
So along with our move from retailing to selling Real Estate, we set up a Website where our customers could go and shop for a home, learn about mortgage lending and special promotions, and essentially shop for their homes, 24/7.
This site has now become our “Virtual Retail Center,” where thousands of people come to look for homes every month.
LongTide is UmoveinNow.com
Since we’ve changed our business model so dramatically, we decided to change our name, and start doing business almost entirely on the Internet.
What that means to you, our home-buyers, is that we dumped the cost of retailing and pass that savings along to you. YOU don’t have to pay for a costly, inefficient retail operation.
More Homes, Better Pricing
We’ve streamlined our business further to provide great homes at even better prices. Now we have TWICE AS MANY HOMES as we had before, and at a fraction of the cost.
Browse Our Website for More Information
You’ll find home-buyer resources, information on home financing, home-buyer resources, and essentially a “one-stop shopping” experience to help you find just the right kind of home, for just the right kind of price, at the right location.
AND, along the way, you’ll get to know a very professional, very friendly and courteous staff whose sole purpose is to assist you with your home-buying journey.
Click on this link to meet our team!
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