Vermont just got its biggest delivery of superefficient manufactured homes — the latest example of how a pioneering state program can lower energy bills for residents of this type of affordable housing.
The all-electric, heat-pump-equipped homes slash energy use by more than half compared with new conventional manufactured homes. To achieve that feat, each meets the exacting specifications under the Advanced Manufactured Home program, which was created by the state’s energy-efficiency utility Efficiency Vermont in 2024.
The standards aren’t mandatory; it’s up to the federal government to regulate the efficiency of manufactured homes. Instead, Vermont’s initiative certifies best-in-class options that will help the state meet its housing and climate goals — and offers a $3,000-per-unit incentive for the builders who opt in.
This month, manufacturer Titan Homes has been installing 18 of these prefabricated buildings at the largest manufactured-home park in Vermont, Tri-Park Cooperative Housing in Brattleboro. Residents who live in the floodplain and have suffered home damage in past storms will become the new occupants.
Including this latest batch, Titan Homes, based in New York, and Clayton Lewistown in Pennsylvania, have together built more than 30 units that have been installed around the state. Any Vermonter can purchase an Advanced Manufactured Home and work with Efficiency Vermont to get one.
When residents move in, they’ll enjoy much lower utility bills. Older manufactured homes are notoriously inefficient, and those of any vintage are difficult to weatherize after leaving the factory. In Vermont, the structures are typically heated with costly and polluting fuel oil or propane, driving average energy bills to about $4,000 annually, according to Efficiency Vermont.
Though they cost more up front, certified Advanced homes can save residents about $2,700 per year on energy bills over existing manufactured homes on average, and more than $1,300 over new manufactured homes built to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s current standards, according to Peter Schneider, principal engineering consultant at VEIC, the nonprofit that operates Efficiency Vermont.
That’s a significant difference. While the median income for occupants of site-built single-family homes is $85,000, it’s $40,000 for manufactured home dwellers, said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, a nonprofit research organization.
“These families are facing some of the most acute stresses and pain of making decisions about whether to pay their energy bill or their home loan or put food on the table or buy medicine,” he said. “Their energy bills shouldn’t put them back in the streets or back into a rental.”
Vermont’s Advanced homes “are setting a benchmark for the rest of the country,” Kresowik said.
The utility’s program pushes some of the most energy-efficient manufactured homes in the country, going beyond a comparable definition set at the federal level.
Once called mobile or trailer homes, manufactured homes make up 7% of new housing. On average, they sell for about a third of the price of site-built homes, or $123,000, according to federal data.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Energy developed standards to certify what it called “Zero Energy Ready Homes,” including one for manufactured homes. (The program under the Trump DOE is now called “Efficient New Homes.”) This rubric requires a slew of efficiency measures, but also allows for gas furnaces and water heaters, which take two to four times the energy required by their heat-pump counterparts. Homes that meet or exceed these standards allowed the builder to qualify for the up to $5,000-per-unit New Energy Efficient Home Credit, or 45L, although that incentive expires tomorrow.
Kresowik isn’t aware of any other standard outside of Efficiency Vermont’s that outdoes the DOE’s, he said.
Soon, however, the entire nation may have stricter requirements for manufactured homes — if not as stringent as those in Vermont.
