The Manufactured Housing Forums

On March 10, Fleetwood filed chapter 11. go to http://fleetwood.investorroom.com/index ... 3&item=405 for more info.

Ouch... I do not think they were ever one of my favorite product lines, but they have been in the industry FOREVER..The court filing Makes it clear they are closing the travel trailer business (once they were the top) and continuing to operate their manufactured home and motor home divisions while looking for buyers of these divisions of the company. Well if they close travel trailers and sell manufactured homes and motor homes what will be left of the Fleetwood we all know?

I'm afraid it is not looking good for Fleetwood. They just did not evolve with the times and continued to build big gas suckers while at the same time could not overcome the credit crunch. They have been delisted off the Stock Exchange and it looks like they will hang on only to see off the remaining assets. I thought I was clever and that they were just too big to go away so I purchased some of their stock when it hit 25 cents... at the moment it is at about seven cents. One more reason I will be kicking tires and slamming doors for years to come

It doesn't look good for Fleetwood, although according to a 3/10/09 letter to Fleetwood dealers from Charles Lott (Pres. of the housing group) Fleetwood's MH side has operated profitably for the past five years. Still, there is currently way too much factory overcapacity industry-wide that it's hard to imagine any other MH builder wanting Fleetwood's MH side, even at fire sale prices.

As for home shoppers, I am recommending they steer clear of Fleetwood for the moment due to the very iffy status of the company's warranty service going forward.

It's pretty sad. I owned a Fleetwood Class C during the 90s and took family camping trips all over the Northwest and British Columbia with our son. Fond memories. Fleetwood's RV line was excellent.

John Grissim
Author: The Grissim guides

John -

For ten cents each you can have my Fleetwood stock certificates. This will be enough to wall paper your office and a portion of the kitchen as well... you can always have fond memories of your days rolling around in that RV. Please send in one dollar bills in a plain brown wrapper

Smile

John,

You need to add a financial due-diligence section to your guide. After ordering the guide, I purchased a Patriot home last summer only to have the Alabama site file for bankruptcy before completing my warrenty work. Other than that, I love my home and appreciate your analysis.

Danbus, thanks for the kinds words about my Ratings Guide.
As for the financial due-diligence section, you'll find it on the copyright page.Excerpt: "...Nothing in this book should be construed as a substitute for competent legal or financial advice."

FWIW, because of the turmoil in the MH industry in this recession, I have prepared a half-page notice inserted in every shipped copy of the Ratings Guide urging my book buyers to go to the Grissim Guides web site and download the very latest updates and revisions to the Guide, so that they will be totally up with the latest news. Some readers may not have seen that notice in the text of the guide.

As for Patriot, I'm sad to see them go. They made a fine home and stood behind it. Hopefully one of their former execs will find investors to open up at least one factory and build the same or better kind of homes.
John Grissim, author, the Grissim Guides

I think it is sad...hope the mobile home side survives. You would think with the economy MORE people would be wanting new manufactured housing. I suppose there are so many repos out there that the fire sale prices on them force new sales down. Just like in stick-built homes. One guy I heard about got a new singlewide PalmHarbor...actuallya "Masterpiece" for $38000 and had a finance rate of 18%...owns it for eight years and still owes $36000 on it. Total payback...30 year loan on a singlewide....$150,000. If that happened a lot....no wonder people are gun shy about mobile homes! There are a few dealers selling Fleetwood Homes here in NC. They were the best selling singlewide here all through the 90's. It seems here the boom years were 1993-1997.

You are right about 30 year mortgages...This same issue has hit the whole housing business in a big way..Lenders responded to market pressure and allowed Hundreds of thousands of folks to buy homes (manufactured, stick built, condos) with much too small of cash commitments and for far too long of term..It is beginning to happen in the car business now..Rebates (false discounts) for down payment and up to 8 years to pay.The government has already bailed GMAC out to the tune of 5 Billion of your and my tax dollars.If you are like me I am not happy subsidizing the HUMMER and Caddy buyers in the last few years.None of them have offered me even a 1 mile test drive. If that continues there will be another HUGE financial disaster in the not too distant future. It is sad about Fleetwood. They like scores of other home builders have been caught in this disaster..I doubt the will continue in any way. I do expect the courts to sell their name an assets to another company. The Fleetwood name will probably continue on...