Selling My Mobile Home is Harder than I Thought
Selling a mobile home can be difficult.
Mobile and modular homes are not looked at in the same way as a site built house. Mobile homes have a stigma that many people cannot get away from. Even though the technology of Mobile home construction has advanced a lot in the last twenty years, selling a mobile home has a number of challenges to overcome.
Financing
A mobile home looks good at the sales lot and even on the land it gets put on when you buy it, but there are things they didn’t tell you when you bought the house. If you buy a mobile home through a dealer, they have the bank resources to get you financed for the initial purchase, but a mobile home is still considered personal property, not real estate, so getting refinanced or getting a new buyer down the road financed to buy the house from you can be very difficult. Most banks don’t want the risk. Many buyers would have to get a personal loan or find a high risk loan company that will charge a lot to fund the sale. A cash buyer may be the only option you have, in which case, it will be hard to get your price.
Mobile home parks
Although there are still mobile home parks all across the country, many states (like Georgia) are trying to push parks out of business. Regulations have changed. For example, existing parks can stay, but new communities must be more like site built neighborhoods. Each lot must have its own septic systems, Water supply can only be shared by a limited number of houses and a lot size must be much bigger than most old parks allowed for, I.E. land/ home communities. If you have a mobile home in a park or if the house is older than ten years, you may not be able to move it out of the county. Check with your local building inspector.
Land/Homes that don’t qualify
I ran into this problem many times. Mobile homes that are set on their own piece of land should be financed like a regular house, right? Not necessarily. We have called 14 banks on one project, trying to get financing on one owner occupied mobile home on land and came up empty. Some community banks are willing to finance Mobile homes, but even they are few and far between. The biggest problem we ran into with a land/home sale was the title of the mobile home. Some banks will finance a land home package IF the house is put on a “permanent foundation” and the title (“titles” for a double wide) is “retired”. This will give the mobile home a status of a site built home for some banks which allow the house to qualify for financing. Age of the house can still be a factor. One idea may be to finance the sale of the house yourself.
Real Estate Problem Solver has solutions for this kind of problem. We buy and sell mobile homes in the Middle Georgia area. If you have a mobile home that won’t sell, give us a call. We may be able to help.
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