Karsten Homes in the process of being bought by Clayton Homes.

[terry]

The other day I was in Albuquerque, N.M. and I was talking with a dealer there and he told me Karsten Homes was being acquired by Clayton Homes in the next two weeks. Has anyone heard of this.

[David Oxhandler]

Clayton purchases Fleetwoods retail operations for $74M-- Bizjournals.com - Thu 07/07/05 10:37:24 pm --Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. said Thursday it would sell its manufactured home retail business to Clayton Homes, a unit of Berkshire Hathaway for $74 million, according to reports. The recreational vehicle and manufactured housing producer also reported a higher loss for the fourth quarter 2005 on Thursday...Fleetwood (NYSE: FLE), based in Riverside, said its loss for the fourth quarter widened to...

[rmurray]

Sure is the rumor along with the Fleetwood purchase...I do not think there has been any public announcement yet...


Someday we will all be working for or buying from Clayton...

[David Oxhandler]

WHOOPS! I left the wrong reference to the news story above. Here is the one about Karsten that I had intended to show... It is not a rumor... the great consolidation movement continues
Clayton Homes Agrees to Buy Karsten Homes- www.Forbes.com - Mon 06/27/05 07:56:01 pm Clayton Homes, a unit of Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said late Monday that it agreed to purchase manufactured home builder Karsten Homes. Financial terms weren't disclosed. The company will be integrated into CMH Manufacturing Inc., the manufacturing group of Clayton Homes. The acquisition is expected to be completed within the next 60 days. Founded in 1995, Karsten Homes

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[Sylvia]

That's a good thing. Clayton is owned by Berkshire Hathaway which is overseen by Warren Buffett. If they are buying it it means that there is A.) a quality company which makes a quality product and B.) great customer service. These tend to be the hallmarks of any BH acquisition.

[jgn]

At least that helped me make the decision between PH and Karsten. Buffett has a pretty much hands off approach to companies he buys as long as they meet bottom line numbers.
PH is in the housing business only which is what I am looking for.
John

[annaz]

I didn't think Clayton was up there on quality?

[rmurray]

Clayton is expandingf at a lighting pace...Clayton does have some experience in quality home with the Norris line out of TN....

[Sylvester]

With these mergers, what will happen to Karsten or Fleetwood? I am not experienced with mergers of these types. Will the models Karsten or Fleetwood build still be built after the merger? OR will we all have "Clayton" homes whether we like it of not???? We are looking at purchasing a Fleetwood model in the future......

[Jeff Martin]

I am a service coordinator for a manufactured home dealer in Montana. We were an exclusive Marlette dealer in Montana. When Clayton took over, quality went south. We could not get a home for 4 months. When we did get it, it had wavy floors. Ceiling light fixtures were any where but in the center of the room, sometimes in corners. Moldy wood was used. Finger jointed 2x4's were standard, instead of using a 6 foot 2x4, you had a 6 piece 2x4 glued together. Also, Marlette dropped their 5-year warranty to 1-year. And no raised sidewalls anymore. We finally went with Kit Homebuilders West, which delivered quality homes in 4 to 5 weeks.

Where did the quality go? Marlette's best and brightest went to Kit Homebuilders West. They were tired of building crap under Clayton. They bought the Kit Caldwell, Idaho factory and re-tooled to Marlette's old quality control standards. They do raised sidewalls. Although the website is still under construction, please bear with them, the best is yet to come.

As for Clayton buying Karsten and Fleetwood, don't look for any quality improvement. Clayton owns Vanderbilt Mortgage which owns a butt-load of manufactured housing mortgages including mine. I had problems with them before and switched to Chase . Now Chase sold me to Vanderbilt again. Clayton wants to own 100% of the manufactured housing business. Bigger is definitely not better.