About Us

The Manufactured Housing Multiple Listing Service (MHMLS) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the MHB Group of Companies (MHB). The MHB Group, a family-owned publishing company founded in 1972 and based in Sunnyvale, California, publishes a monthly magazine that is distributed to over 360 manufactured housing communities and 76,000 homes throughout California.

The idea for a MLS service for Santa Clara County, Northern California started in the early 1970s. The County at that time was a typical manufactured housing market where all the retailers were selling new homes and re-sales were left to fend for themselves. By 1979 the market had changed with rent control, escalating land prices and no new manufactured housing communities being developed. Recognizing these trends made the decision for the future of the industry clear: sell re-sales or go out of business. In fact, many retailers who did not accept the warning signs did go out of business.

Ed Parish, a manufactured housing retailer, originated the concept of a MLS exclusively for manufactured housing. He realized that re-sales are a specialized market that required a proactive sales approach to interested buyers. With five retailers and twenty sales professionals, Ed started co-opting listings and compiling data on re-sales. He used the Century 21 real estate concept as his model not only for the MLS, but also for other marketing tools such as signage in order to provide a cohesive and professional image for clients.

Since the developing concept of an MLS needed administrative continuity, Ed asked Elizabeth (Betty) Tripp, President and Founder of the MHB Group, to take over the responsibility of running the MHMLS, and the service became a part of MHB's activities. As a result of this revolutionary idea, retailers dominated the resale market and even forced Realtors® to deal through them as a force in the resale of manufactured homes.

Since the early 70s, the MHMLS has grown and developed an extremely professional service to the industry. All the dealers in the county are members and through their listings, data on re-sales has provided all the members with up-to-date information on sales, which has aided the financial community in providing loans and mortgages, based on sophisticated market information. MHMLS has extended its services to dealers and agents in Southern California. We are now poised to provide this critical sales tool to manufactured home sales professionals throughout the rest of the country.

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