The Indicator: The number of mobile and manufactured home units that were shipped in December was up 30% from the month before.
What It Means: A pick-up in the mobile home market could be a harbinger for the larger housing market. According to Nicholas Colas, a chief market strategist at ConvergEx Group, while the demographics between the buyer bases of single-family homes and mobiles are indeed different, he sees the recent uptick in manufactured homes informing the “likely path of eventual recovery for the industry as a whole.” Despite some hints of a broader turnaround, so far this is the only part of the housing sector where you can find such significant growth.