We Built the Modular Industry… But Forgot to Explain It

When Ignorance Goes On Air

This morning, while watching Yahoo Finance, I had one of those moments that made my blood pressure spike before my coffee kicked in. A reporter—who clearly hadn’t done even the most basic research—was talking about “mobile homes” now being financed like traditional housing, repeating a term that the industry officially retired nearly 50 years ago.

On June 15, 1976, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development established the HUD Code and formally replaced “mobile home” with “manufactured home.” That wasn’t a suggestion or a marketing shift—it was a regulatory line in the sand. Yet here we are in 2026, still hearing national media use outdated terminology as if nothing has changed.

The Moment That Set Me Off

Then came the statement that pushed me over the edge. He explained that these homes are “loaded onto a truck and shipped to the homesite where they are placed in position,” casually blending together concepts that should never be confused.

What he described wasn’t just incomplete—it was flat-out misleading. He blurred the line between HUD Code manufactured housing and IRC modular construction, as if they were interchangeable products. They’re not. They differ in how they’re engineered, inspected, transported, installed, and ultimately valued. That kind of confusion doesn’t just misinform viewers—it reinforces decades-old misconceptions that our industry has been trying to overcome.

I was yelling at the reporter. That's when my wife quietly turned the TV off and told me to go to my room (office).

The Real Problem Isn’t the Reporter

After cooling down for a few minutes, I realized something uncomfortable. This wasn’t entirely his fault. No one had ever clearly explained the difference to him.

And that leads to the bigger question. If the media doesn’t understand what we do, who is responsible for making sure they do? At some point, we have to stop blaming the messenger and start looking at the message—and whether we’ve done enough to deliver it.

An Industry That Assumes It’s Understood

The offsite construction industry has operated for years under the assumption that people understand the differences between manufactured and modular housing. They don’t. To most of the public—and even many professionals outside our space—it’s all the same thing.

Trailer, mobile home, manufactured, modular—one big, blurry category of housing that shows up on a truck. That misunderstanding isn’t going away on its own, and it certainly isn’t being corrected by silence. If anything, it’s being reinforced every time we fail to step in and explain it clearly.

Where Are the Voices?

Look at the Manufactured Housing Institute. They consistently promote their segment, publish guides, and advocate for their industry with a clear and unified voice. Even newer sectors like hemp-based construction are producing detailed buyer’s guides and educational materials to define their place in the market.

See content credentials

Now compare that to modular. As far as I can see, there is only one person consistently promoting modular manufacturing to the outside world—Ken Semler, President and Owner of Impresa Modular. He writes every day about the benefits of modular construction, explaining it in ways that people outside the industry can understand. One person doing what an entire segment should be doing collectively.

Writing About It Isn’t the Same as Promoting It

I write constantly "about" the offsite industry—sometimes two or three times a day—but most of what I write focuses on how the industry works, where it struggles, and what needs to change.

That’s not the same as promoting it. Promotion requires a deliberate effort to educate people outside the industry, to simplify complex ideas, and to consistently reinforce what makes modular different and valuable. We’ve spent so much time analyzing ourselves internally that we’ve neglected the external audience that actually needs to understand us.

Conferences Won’t Fix This

We have no shortage of associations holding conferences, conventions, and industry events. They bring people together, generate conversations, make a profit, and create the appearance of progress. But most of these efforts are directed inward, toward people who are already part of the industry.

They don’t reach the reporter preparing a segment for millions of viewers. They don’t reach the homebuyer trying to understand their options. They don’t reach the developer who still believes modular is just a dressed-up version of a trailer. Until our message extends beyond our own echo chamber, these misunderstandings will continue.

The Cost of Silence

Every time misinformation like that airs, it chips away at the industry’s credibility. Not because people are unwilling to learn, but because they’re being given incorrect information and we’re not correcting it with enough consistency or volume.

Perception drives demand, and right now perception is still rooted in outdated ideas. If we don’t actively reshape that perception, we’re leaving the narrative in the hands of people who don’t understand it.

Modcoach Observation

If we don’t define modular construction clearly and repeatedly, someone else will define it for us—and they’ll get it wrong.

I attended this year's IBS as a member of the Press. There were dozens of us writing about the event but to be quite honest, I've seen very few actual articles in magazines, blogs, or on social media about the biggest event in our industry.

The issue isn’t that a reporter used outdated terminology. The issue is that we’ve allowed an entire industry to operate without a unified, persistent voice explaining what we actually do. Until factory owners, suppliers, consultants, and developers take responsibility for telling that story, we’ll keep watching the same misinformation play out again and again.

And we’ll keep yelling at the TV—while nothing changes.