For starters, you might assume selling this type of home is just like selling a traditional home—it isn’t, and you’ll need to adjust your approach accordingly. Here’s how to sell a manufactured/mobile home and how it differs from your usual real estate deal.
What is Chattel?
Understanding what type of loan you have on your manufactured home is an important step towards successfully selling your home. One of the most popular loans generated for mobile homes is called a chattel loan. These loans are where only the home is the collateral. There is no land tied into the home’s ownership. Typically, these homes are on a leased lot (mobile home park) or on land that they either own or are leasing from someone.
Real Estate or Real Property (Lender’s Definitions)
If you own the land under your manufactured home, the home sits on a qualifying foundation, then your loan may have been put under traditional mortgage financing. If this is the case, then selling both won’t be much different from selling a traditional home. However, if you don’t own the land your home is on, and you’re selling just your mobile home, this changes the selling process. Comparable sales can be an issue, at times, when selling your mobile home as real property.
If you own your manufactured home, and it is secured to the land, but you want to sell just the home and build on your current property, there are ways this potentially can be done. It requires several more steps in the process, and getting professional advice is helpful in this situation.
Knowing which type of ownership your home is under is the beginning of knowing the steps you will need to take to sell your home.
Mobile Home Purchasers is a company that purchases manufactured homes and can help you navigate this process. We can help determine the steps you will take to sell your manufactured home. In the past 15 years, we have purchased over 1500 homes and have helped many others sell their homes by answering questions about the selling process.
If you have questions and live in the upper Midwest, you can email us at chriss@mhpurchasers.com or travisb@mhpurchasers.com. We are happy to do what we can to help you navigate your research.