Positive Sparks: opening doors

Affordable housing access can expand when businesses reduce construction costs or widen mortgage availability, provided regulation, infrastructure and customer adoption support the process.

• UN-Habitat estimates that up to 3.4 billion people lack secure, safe and adequate housing, while homes priced below five times typical full-time earnings were available in only 7% of English and Welsh local authority areas in 2025, compared with 31% in 2003.
• Baillie Gifford's research conversations, including one with a sociologist, showed that affordable housing depends on land ownership, planning rules and ongoing site rents as well as building costs.
• Freddie Mac estimated a US housing shortage of 3.7 million homes in 2024, while manufactured homes represented about 13% of new single-family home sales. Cavco's factory-built homes can cost 35% to 73% as much as comparable site-built homes.
• Cavco held 17.2% of US manufactured-home production in the first quarter of 2026 and sold a record 20,842 homes in its 2026 financial year. July 2026 legislation removed the permanent steel-chassis requirement, and Cavco launched its first compliant chassis-free home two months later.
• India's outstanding individual home loans reached approximately ₹37tn ($390bn) in March 2025, equal to 11% of GDP. HDFC Bank's mortgage portfolio was approximately ₹8.9tn ($94bn), and 62% of its mortgage approvals by number went to economically weaker, low- and middle-income households in the 2026 financial year.
• HDFC Ltd had financed more than 10 million housing units since 1977, while over 95% of HDFC Bank's new-to-bank mortgage customers now open a savings account, supporting broader revenue growth.

Takeaway: Cavco could broaden the manufactured-housing market as design restrictions ease, while HDFC Bank could benefit from India's expanding mortgage market. The investment case depends on disciplined lending, improved profitability and wider regulatory and housing-system support.