Rural America may not be as far away as you think.
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At least 50 million of us live in it, and it takes up at least three-quarters of the country's real estate -- making rural housing a huge market.
According to the Housing Assistance Council, a Washington-based nonprofit, non-metro areas make up 75 percent of the country's landmass and 17 percent of its population. But if you go by other definitions, such as "non-urbanized," rural areas count for 98 percent of these United States and a third of the country's population.
What's more, rural locations are much closer to big urban areas than you might think. In Ohio, for example, most of the state's 88 counties are considered partially or entirely rural. Only Cuyahoga (Cleveland) and Summit (Akron) don't qualify at all.
In Texas, Denton, Johnson and Ellis counties -- all near Dallas -- are called rural by Uncle Sam, as is Montgomery County, north of Houston. And in California, all of San Bernardino County and most of Riverside County are rural by government standards.
Financing for rural housing is a complicated mix of private banks and federal funding. It mirrors nonrural areas in that there are two government-sponsored enterprises designed to increase the funds available to your lender. But they are not necessarily the ones that initially come to mind.
Farmer Mac is a much smaller version of its residential cousins Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, buying loans already made by local lenders on the so-called secondary market so they can have more money to lend out to people buying homes.
Then there is the Farm Credit System (FCS), which is similar in concept to the Federal Home Loan Bank System. FCS lenders, which don't take deposits, make home loans; however, their bigger business is in farm loans.
The farm mortgage is a fascinating hybrid of home loan and business loan. And while it is considered niche lending, it is a sizable niche.
Total farm mortgage debt stood at $315 billion in total credit as of 2013, the last year for which figures are available, according to the Department of Agriculture (USDA). That total is split between real estate and non-real estate debt (mostly equipment loans), with real estate being the bigger piece.
Farm mortgages also differ from their urban and suburban counterparts because of the size of farms: The land is often worth more than the improvements on it.
The biggest farm mortgage lenders are members of the FCS, which hold $85 billion in debt, according to USDA. Commercial banks, which hold $69 billion in real estate debt, are second, and insurance companies are a distant third at $12 billion.
USDA is also a residential lender through its Rural Housing Service and the Farm Service Agency. It also supports rural rental housing.
But just because some rural housing needs are taken care of by Farmer Mac and the FCS, that doesn't mean Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- by far the larger secondary market agencies -- are not players when it comes to the exurbs.
Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the two government-sponsored agencies have a "duty to serve" three traditionally underserved markets: rural housing; manufactured housing, a substantial part of which is rural; and affordable housing preservation. The regulatory Federal Housing Finance Agency is currently considering how to implement this duty to serve.
Manufactured houses, still known in some parts as "trailers," are a staple of many rural communities. They're built in factories and trucked to their final destinations, where they are either placed on permanent foundations or left on their trailers so they can be moved again. Production of these homes has undergone a sharp drop since the housing crisis, but the market has been recovering in recent years.
According to the Census Bureau, shipments of new units reached 70,500 in 2015. That's up from 54,900 in 2012, 60,200 in 2013 and 64,300 in 2014. But it is nowhere near the 1999 peak of 374,000 units. The average sales price as of September 2015 was $70,700, the bureau reports.
Manufactured housing is a split category when it comes to lending. A loan on a factory-built house (as opposed to an on-site, "stick-built" property) counts as a regular mortgage and is eligible for purchase by Fannie and Freddie if the borrower owns the land beneath it. If not -- and a large majority of such houses are located on rented trailer park slots -- the loan is categorized as a much higher-priced "chattel" mortgage.
In the last 20 years or so, specialized lenders called Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) have sprung up in many rural and tribal areas to promote economic development in low-income areas. And much of their efforts go toward housing.
The federal CDFI Fund, a unit of the Treasury Department, supports small lenders through annual grants that have totaled $1.4 billion to date. A second program, the New Markets Tax Credit, awards tax credits rather than grants.
In 2015 alone, the Fund said, its awards helped finance more than 25,000 units of affordable housing.
-- Freelance writer Mark Fogarty contributed to this report.