Manufactured homes accounted for 28 percent of all new single-family homes sold in 1999 in the United States, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute. The trend is continuing this year, as some 323 manufacturing plants across the country produce the floors, walls, roofs and various other elements that are assembled in hundreds of different floor plans and designs available in today's manufactured homes.

"There's very little difference between a site-built home and a manufactured home," said Robert T. Angel, president and chief executive officer of Dupar and Angel Manufactured Homes in Santa Rosa. "They still do at least 75 percent of the assembly of a stick-built home on site, but 25 percent of it is manufactured off-site. With a manufactured home, it's 90 percent off-site and 10 percent on-site. "But when they're done," he said, "you can't tell the difference."

With the median home price at $290,000 in Sonoma County, Angel calls manufactured homes the best buy in town. They offer the solution to providing affordable housing for the work force required to keep California's economy humming, he said.

Dupar and Angel has been reaping the benefits of the booming economy. The company had revenue of $55 million in 1999, making it the 11th-largest locally owned retail company In Sonoma County.

Our company's sales are pretty well spread throughout the state," Angel said. "We probably sell more in the North Coast area, which is here, but Central Valley would come in second. We're doing our own development in Central Valley now, putting in an entire neighborhood of manufactured homes."

He said he'd like to build a manufactured homes neighborhood in Sonoma County, too, "because this area certainly does need affordable housing," but such a project may be at least three to five years down the road. "The rest of the country is experiencing a glut of manufactured housing inventory," Angel said. "But in California, there's a crisis in affordable housing." His business is doing well, he said, because "only 35 percent of California families can afford the median priced home in this state. It's an ideal situation for manufactured housing." Dupar and Angel has been in the manufactured housing retail business in Santa Rosa since 1966. In January, the company merged with Pacific Home Sales Inc. in Visalia, which has done business from its flagship Visalia Home Sales outlet since 1955.

The consolidation of the two former competitors, which took the name Dupar and Angel, is expected to boost Dupar and Angel visibility and profits throughout California this year. "The merger makes us the largest manufactured housing retail company in California," Angel said. "Before the merger, we had 11 outlets in the state. Pacific brought in five more. Since then, we've opened another one in Corona and one in Mesa Dunes near San Luis Obispo." The merger also increased the company's number of employees to about 150 statewide, including 30 in Sonoma County. Plans call for continued growth through outlet acquisitions and homes sales, Angel said. Part of the company's growth strategy is a cooperative effort working with aging mobile home parks, where Dupar and Angel removes the mobile homes to replace them with manufactured homes, which then are sold to new buyers. However, Angel said, only 20 percent of his manufactured homes go into such planned communities. The majority - 80 percent - are placed on private property, either on city lots or in rural areas. "These people realize that you can pay $100 to $125 per square foot for a stick-built home or you can save money by paying $50 per square foot for a manufactured home," Angel said