No, You Cannot Necessarily Put Your Manufactured Home on Just Any Tract of Land.
Manufactured homes cannot be placed just anywhere. This fact often brings about bones of contention, but it’s the cold reality. If you are considering manufactured homes for purchase, keep in mind that you’ll need to have a carefully selected location planned out in addition to a purchasing budget and some basic knowledge about what floor plan and size of manufactured home you desire. You should also plan to erect your manufactured home upon a permanent foundation. Besides the practical consideration of doing this making your home better protected against the elements, it also means that you’ll enjoy more, and more amenable, financing options while also having far better chances of your home appreciating in value over time.
When you’re looking into places that might accept manufactured homes, you should first know whether you want to own your own land or rent it. As with using a permanent foundation for your home’s base, putting it on land that you own that gets you better financing options and better chances of the home appreciating in value over time. So if you can buy your own land and erect upon a permanent foundation, you’ll make yourself royalty among owners of manufactured homes!
But, let’s say that you need to rent the land where you’ll put your home. If these are your circumstances, you have some parameters that you must carefully consider.
If you’re not buying or don’t own your own land, take all pains to investigate all of the land owner’s rules and lease terms. These terms include permissible rent increases. There are rental communities which can demand that you to move your house out of their community if it’s at least a particular age at the time you make a move to sell it. Also, there are those manufactured home parks that have very particular rules concerning important living matters such as the landlord’s right to access the interior of your home, parking restrictions, children’s behavior (or presence), the use of clothes lines, and others. There are rental parks that have rules about the type, appearance, and size of allowable manufactured homes, too. Don’t buy a manufactured home that you plan to locate on rented ground until you have thoroughly considered all of a prospective location’s rules and regulations.
Even if you do own your own tract of land or plan and have the means to purchase one, you still need to first check for all zoning laws or restrictive covenants that may impinge upon someone’s ability to put manufactured homes on their private lots within the community or area. Even if these laws or covenants don’t stop you from putting up your home there, it’s in your best interests when it comes time to sell the house for it to be in harmony with the neighborhood; you’ll attract more prospective buyers, sell the home faster, and get more money for it.
It might seem unfair, but in this world in which we’re living it’s in your best interests to hold off looking into manufactured homes to buy before you are very certain about the land deal. It doesn’t do you any good to find a “perfect” manufactured home that you would love to live in only to then discover that you’ve got nowhere to put it, or at least nowhere that you really desire to put it. Since it’s clearly in your best interests to own the land outright where you would like to put your house, if you don’t own that land already check into your financing options before making your purchases of both land and house. Make sure that you have land for your house before you commit to buying that house!