Rob Ripperda

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” ― Epictetus

Housing Reform in the States: A Menu of Options for 2026 Although state legislatures took unprecedented strides toward releasing the housing supply from its regulatory straitjacket in 2025, most pro-housing policies have not yet been adopted in most states....

Tireless Mercatus team @salimfurth.bsky.social @ebwhamilton.bsky.social @charlescgardner.bsky.social just dropped 18 (!) strategies for state govts to increase housing supply. Love the ideas to limit "lawsuits of questionable merit" [ahem, Virginia]. www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

When in doubt there's always The Simpsons

Apartment construction in Austin, TX.

ZIRP

Watch The Four Falls of Buffalo, then watch the Josh Allen children's hospital video, then watch Hard Knocks and root for the Bills.

Gotta re-legalize starter homes on small lots, encourage more experimentation with manufactured housing and other construction modes, restore fiscal discipline to bring down interest rates

At what point should holders of inflation protected securities start to worry?

Grew up in Austin, TX and I was a huge fan of the WGN Sandberg led Cubs and the TBS Justice led Braves.

Investment property owners?

Had fun watching my Longhorns win it this year. It's a great sport, just patch up those interference calls.

I'd also like to thank @kylewalker.bsky.social whose tidycensus R package is my go to for exploring legislative district data.

Y'all have a great ADU law that we sure would like to bring to Texas!

That lack of volume hurts the scale benefit that manufactured home builders are able to achieve in lowering their costs.

They are built to different codes which is one part of the cost difference, but here in Texas there also doesn't seem to be a lot of demand for them. Texas manufactured housing plants will build 1,900 homes in a month here, the highest I've seen residential mods hit was less than 400 for all of 2017

National Zoning Atlas again informs advocacy - this time on manufactured housing reforms in Texas. Our Legislative Brief on Senate Bill 785 used NZA data on 824 jurisdictions, finding 44% would be affected.

A link to the Brief (& other uses of NZA data by advocates) up at zoningatlas.org/advocacy!

Manufactured Housing Survey (MHS) The Manufactured Housing Survey (MHS) is conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau and sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). MHS produces monthly regional estimates of the aver...

The only things I would add would be delivery and installation/anchoring of the home, but those are dealer setup costs that are included in the pricing data that is published by the US Census Bureau's Manufactured Housing Survey. (www.census.gov/programs-sur...)

Housing Reform in the States: A Menu of Options for 2025 To address the high cost of housing, lawmakers across the country can learn from the experience of states such as Colorado, Tennessee, Connecticut, Arizona, and Montana. Options for reform include rev...

"HUD Code housing is one of the country’s most important sources of housing affordable to low-income people without subsidy. Zoning codes are one factor limiting the use of manufactured housing" - @salimfurth.bsky.social @ebwhamilton.bsky.social www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

Additional Manufactured Housing Could Benefit Millions of U.S. Homebuyers At a time when the U.S. housing shortage has caused home prices to soar, removing the barriers that prevent more manufactured housing from being built is vital. Improving access to these modern mobile...

"Improving access to these modern mobile homes could give millions of people nationwide better access to a kind of unsubsidized and more affordable homeownership." - @pewresearch.org www.pew.org/en/research-...

Manufactured housing: the Ugly Duckling of affordable housing - Niskanen Center Allowing manufactured homes to compete evenly with site-built is good for consumers and homeowners seeking housing solutions that fit their needs.

“Manufactured housing quietly provides deeply affordable starter homes at an average construction cost under $90,000, but is easily excluded by some communities.” @niskanencenter.bsky.social @aarmlovi.bsky.social www.niskanencenter.org/manufactured...

Recent HUD Update Could Significantly Impact Manufactured Home Construction | Texas Real Estate Research Center Last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the most extensive update to the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards in more than three decades.

“Some cities are also taking steps to integrate manufactured housing into their communities. New local initiatives, combined with the new federal regulations, will hopefully increase the availability of MH in urban and suburban areas.” trerc.tamu.edu/blog/recent-...

Equitable Zoning for Manufactured Housing This issue of Zoning Practice examines the persistent inequitable treatment of manufactured housing in many local zoning codes and offers considerations for code updates. It begins with brief summarie...

“…manufactured housing has remained an underexploited opportunity for providing millions of Americans with decent affordable housing.” www.planning.org/publications...

“If manufactured homes were more widely accepted, they could play a role in chipping away at the 3.8 million-unit housing deficit, shrinking the affordability gap and promoting a more equitable housing landscape. A more inclusive approach could make that happen.” sf.freddiemac.com/docs/pdf/fac...

Harnessing the Potential of Manufactured Housing to Expand Entry-Level Homeownership Last year, James Shen, Chris Herbert and I co-authored a paper that showed that manufactured housing offers significantly reduced construction costs c

“Manufactured housing … offers significantly reduced construction costs ... to conventional site-built homes. ...the savings from these reduced costs could make homeownership ... attainable for low- and moderate-income households.” – @harvard-jchs.bsky.social www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/harness...

First a huge thank you to @sarabronin.bsky.social whose research team at the @zoningatlas.bsky.social provided information on how SB 785 would impact all of the Texas cities in their amazing zoning project!

TMHA supported this legislation from the start and distributed some excellent research that has been done on zoning reform for MH.

What a great legislative session for attainable housing Texas just had!

SB 785, which ensures most TX cities zone at least one district for by-right manufactured housing, is headed to the Governor's desk. 🧵

Pretty concerned about ye olde budget deficit situation with inflation still a bit above target and interest rates rising

U.S. Debt Is on Pace to Set a Record. (The Data Goes Back to 1790.)

If Republicans pass their megabill, the record will arrive even sooner — putting America’s debt at more than 113 percent of the size of its entire economy.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/u...

When vacancy rates rise, rents fall. It's the most robust finding in housing. If you want housing costs to fall, you have to build.