Zippy Raises $20M Series C for Manufactured Housing Finance

Ben Halliday and Jordan Bucy spent 4 years helping restore a manufactured-home community before building Zippy. Their banking backgrounds had prepared them to understand a financial problem that property renovations could leave untouched: a household could want the home and still struggle to find a suitable lending process.

Zippy, the manufactured-housing lender and servicer they founded in 2021, now has a $20M Series C investment from Saluda Grade. Announced on October 14, 2026, the investment and strategic partnership brings the asset-backed credit firm into Zippy's expansion beyond a reported 27-state footprint, with new products and additional distribution planned.

The relationship also puts credit and capital-markets expertise alongside the company's technology and lending operations. For manufactured housing, the commercial opportunity reaches from helping someone buy a home to giving institutions a clear enough record to finance the loans behind those purchases.

What the Series C funds

Saluda Grade made the entire $20M investment through its growth equity strategy. The firms describe work together on credit, capital markets, balance-sheet management and product development, with Zippy planning to broaden community, retail and wholesale distribution. The announcement identifies no additional investors in this round and discloses no valuation.

Zippy also reports more than $600M in capital commitments secured during 2026. That figure describes a different capital category from the Series C equity investment; the announcement does not establish how much has been drawn or how much represents completed loan purchases. Keeping the figures separate gives readers a more useful picture of a lending business whose own corporate financing sits alongside the capital needed to fund housing assets.

Saluda Grade's stated investment approach helps explain the fit. The firm works with nonbank originators and combines asset-based credit strategies with growth equity and capital-markets support. Its involvement gives Zippy a partner familiar with the institutions that may ultimately finance the assets its lending operation produces.

An expansion across distribution channels also changes the work inside the company. Community operators, retailers and wholesale partners can introduce different borrower journeys, making consistent documentation and underwriting increasingly valuable as the routes into Zippy multiply.

How community ownership shaped Zippy

The founders' relationship with manufactured housing began as property owners. FirstBank's February 2023 investment announcement describes a community renovation lasting 4 years, during which Halliday and Bucy saw the lending challenges facing buyers. They left careers at JPMorgan and established a business focused on that financing experience.

Zippy's current leadership includes co-founder and CEO Ben Halliday, co-founder and President Jordan Bucy, and CTO Ryan Gray. Gray is responsible for technology strategy and engineering execution. The official leadership roster also includes investment, finance, product, servicing and risk executives, reflecting the range of work carried by a company that originates and services loans.

For a buyer, Zippy offers an online application process supported by licensed loan originators. Its website describes lending for new and pre-owned manufactured homes, with products and approval subject to availability and underwriting. The human support matters because a clear screen can still leave a household with questions about the financing it is being asked to accept.

The property story gives the business a specific starting point. Halliday and Bucy had already invested time in making a community more livable; a lending relationship could help residents complete the purchase that physical improvements alone could not arrange.

The institutional relationship after closing

A March 27, 2026 Form 8-K from Forum Markets shows how Zippy's loans can reach an institutional buyer. Through a subsidiary, Forum entered a revolving forward-flow purchase program with a conditional aggregate commitment of up to $150M over 5 years. Eligible loans had to meet requirements covering credit scores, loan-to-value ratios, size, term and geographic concentration.

The filing describes an initial commitment period of up to $15M through June 30, 2026, and an initial purchase of 31 loans for approximately $1.44M. Those are historical program details, useful for understanding the mechanism rather than measuring today's funded volume. Zippy Loans remained responsible for servicing the purchased assets under a separate agreement.

That continuing role connects the buyer's experience to the investor's information needs. Loan ownership can change while payment collection, recordkeeping and questions about the account remain active responsibilities. For a specialist originator, servicing can carry a commercial relationship for much longer than the application that began it.

Zippy's proprietary platform spans applications, underwriting, documents and servicing, according to the companies. Standardized information across that lifecycle can help make an asset understandable to another institution. This is the operating logic of the model; the sources reviewed provide no basis for a claim about superior credit performance or lower losses.

More sellers enter a continuing lending operation

Manufactured housing puts the relationship between the physical product and its financing in plain view. A seller can have a home ready for a household whose purchase still depends on a lender's process, capacity and product fit. Zippy's expansion plans place its technology inside that practical relationship across more communities and sales channels.

The Series C strengthens the organization taking on that work, while Saluda Grade's role extends into the financing relationships around it. There is room for software to improve coordination between sellers, applicants and institutional capital without pretending that the risks and obligations of a loan disappear into a digital interface.

As Zippy adds distribution, the founders' original community experience travels with the business. Each new seller introduces another household making a consequential purchase, and another account that the servicing team may be handling years after the home sale is complete.