Virginia’s housing affordability earns a B-, according to the Realtor.com® State-by-State Housing Report Card. But a new bill moving through the state legislature could raise that grade by unlocking access to one of the most overlooked forms of affordable housing: manufactured homes.
Despite offering homeownership at a fraction of the cost of traditional site-built houses, manufactured housing has long been sidelined by stigmas that date back to outdated, pre-1976 construction standards. That’s left these homes off-limits in many communities even as demand for affordable housing has soared.
“Virginia’s got a problem,” Democratic state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg, who introduced the Senate version of the bill, explained to Realtor.com. As a civics teacher and lawmaker, he sees housing affordability pressure everywhere, from the classroom to the campaign trail.
“I’ve really made housing supply a priority,” he says, “because otherwise people are going to move away. Businesses aren’t going to come, families aren’t going to come. My kids and other kids are going to leave the state and not come back.”
His bill could change that, by forcing localities to treat manufactured homes the same as any other house.
Why manufactured housing is still blocked
Currently, manufactured housing is effectively limited to being a rural affordability solution in much of Virginia, says Randy Grumbine, executive director of the Virginia Manufactured and Modular Housing Association.
By right, manufactured homes are generally permitted only in agricultural zones—a restriction that dramatically narrows where they can be placed and keeps them out of many residential neighborhoods.
“So zoning is by far the biggest challenge to be more broadly accepted,” he says.
That zoning barrier is reinforced by lingering perceptions rooted in decades-old housing stock. “We live with the stigma of the homes that we built originally in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s and even into the ’80s,” Grumbine says.
But much of that stigma predates the federal construction standards that govern today’s manufactured housing.
Homes built after June 1976 must comply with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) standards for safety, durability, and energy efficiency, making modern manufactured homes a fundamentally different product from the mobile homes many local zoning codes were written to exclude.
VanValkenburg’s bill would change that, by making manufactured homes allowable wherever a site-built house is.
“So this bill does not change anything about the definition of manufactured homes,” he emphasizes. “It just says that where other site-built housing is allowed, you have to allow manufacturing homes. You just can’t discriminate against them.”
What changes if the bill becomes law
If passed, the bill could open the door for manufactured homes to be placed on individual lots in residential zones—marking a shift from their current confinement to agricultural areas or preexisting rental communities. But Grumbine says that there are parts of Virginia primed—or not—for adoption.
“Where it will be slowly adopted is probably in the northern Virginia area,” he says. “We don’t have a retailer, builder base in that area, because we’ve been zoned out for the most part.”
Instead, the earliest adopters are likely to be communities already familiar with manufactured housing.
“The fastest to adopt would be where we’re already operating,” Grumbine explains, particularly on what he calls “the suburban edge, where there’s growth, but there’s not a lot of affordable housing.”
Those edge markets span the state—from Bristol and Roanoke in the southwest to Harrisonburg, Charlottesville, and parts of Richmond’s surrounding counties, including Albemarle, Nelson, Hanover, and Chesterfield.
The bill could also bring new inventory to buyers priced out of the current market. He says that he expects to operate under the $300,000 threshold for homeowners buying both the home and the land—a significant savings from the $425,000 median sale price for the state, according to data from Realtor.com.
Why consensus is forming
So far, the bill has commanded a powerful consensus to not oppose, if not vocally support.
The House version of the bill, sponsored by four Democratic state representatives, has so far generated no nay votes after clearing both a sub- and full committee.
That broad agreement didn’t happen by accident. Two major concessions helped ease local government concerns.
First, the bill requires homes placed in residential zones to be classified as real property—not personal property, giving homeowners the opportunity for home price appreciation on parity with site-built homes.
From 2000 to 2024, manufactured homes appreciated by 211.8% compared with 212.6% for site-built homes, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute—almost identical growth. It also opens the door for a more conventional homebuying and selling process, says Grumbine.
“They can go through the MLS service. They can sell it through a [real estate agent],” he explains. Just as importantly, “they can get a conventional mortgage on that home because it is tied as real estate and not personal property.”
The second key provision: The new zoning protections apply only to newly built homes, ensuring older housing stock isn’t moved into established neighborhoods. A pending amendment would also create carve-outs for historic districts, allowing them to maintain aesthetic and design standards.
But consensus isn’t just about compromise, it’s also about need. VanValkenburg points to himself as a prime example.
“When you think about a locality like mine, for example, where the average home price in the last five years has gone to over $400,000, what you’re really doing is you’re pricing out service workers,” he says.
As a public school teacher with nearly two decades of experience, he says if he was trying to buy a house today in Virginia it wouldn’t be possible.
“When you think about the fact that a lot of localities don’t have housing supply for a broad middle class, that’s a huge problem,” he says.
Manufactured homes as one piece of ‘all of it’
For Virginia—and many other states—solving the housing crisis won’t come from a single breakthrough. It will take every tool in the toolbox.
“There’s no one solution to the housing crisis,” says VanValkenburg. “It’s really a series of solutions.”
That includes everything from townhomes and duplexes to modular builds and higher-density development around transit. And it must include manufactured housing.
“Manufactured housing is a key component to that,” he emphasizes. “If we’re leaving options on the table, I just think that’s wrong, and I think we are leaving options on the table with manufactured homes.”
Supporters of the bill aren’t promising instant transformation. “Will we double our amount of productivity next year? No, we won’t,” says Grumbine. “But in 10 years, could we? Yes, absolutely we could.”
He believes that once people begin to see today’s manufactured homes for what they are—modern, energy-efficient, and indistinguishable in many cases from site-built homes—attitudes will shift. “Longer term adoption will be more significant once everybody says, ‘Oh, well, these homes aren’t what my preconceived notions were.’”
Getting there starts with one thing: saying yes.
“We need people who are going to say yes,” VanValkenburg says. “And I’m hopeful we’ll get to yes on this bill.”