Manufactured Home Loans

Manufactured home loans are a little different than regular "stick built" mortgages. You must take into account the type of home, such as manufactured or modular. You must also consider whether the home is single, double, or triple wide. Then you must decide whether the home will be located on land that you own, or if it will be in a park where you lease the land. If your home is in a park, your financing options will become more limited.

One thing to keep in mind is that if your manufactured home is located in a park or on rented or leased land most lenders consider the home as "chattel". Chattel is a legal term which means personal property as opposed to real property which refers to land and the structures that are built on the land.

In recent years lenders have realized the popularity and affordability of manufactured homes. The guidelines have loosened and mortgage professionals including myself are now able to use some of the popular programs on these types of properties.

Many people, including some real estate agents, use the terms manufactured and modular to mean the same thing. However, they are different building standards.
A Manufactured Home is designed and constructed to the Federal Manufactured Construction and Safety Standards, which was created by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. For that reason, they are also called HUD manufactured homes.
A modular home is built to the Uniform Building Code (UBC), which is the same building code that all site built homes are built to. A UBC modular home is considered the same as a site built home by lenders, appraisers and insurance companies.
UBC modular homes are built to a higher standard than HUD manufactured homes. Therefore, UBC modular homes qualify for better financing rates and terms than HUD manufactured homes.

A HUD manufactured home comes with a title like a vehicle. Manufactured homes are transported in one or more sections on a permanent chassis. They display a red certification label on the exterior of each transportable section.
A HUD manufactured home can be converted to real property by having wheels, axles, and towing hitches removed and by being permanently attached to an approved foundation and a septic or sewage system.

Some manufactured homes are difficult to distinguish from site built homes because they may have an elaborate floor plan or perhaps they have been placed on top of a concrete basement. If unsure, it is important to make this distinction early on because it impacts the future value, may be more complicated to finance and many title insurance policies require an endorsement indicating the property is not a manufactured home.

Many lenders may look at a modular home on a foundation or basement as a traditional stick build home. You mortgage broker will be able to better determine the correct lender for you, if you do have a modular home on a foundation

For manufactured homes to qualify for FHA loans they must be HUD approved.

There are also investment loans for mobile homes.

If you are unsure whether a home is a modular home or manufactured, there are some fairly easy ways to tell:
If it has a steel frame or has a metal HUD tag on the outside it is a manufactured home or a doublewide.