News Articles Blog

Just like all real estate, there is no doubt that the economic decline has impacted values in manufactured home communities.   However, condo parks have been harder hit than the broader community because financing for manufactured homes in condominium-classified parks completely disappeared for the last couple of years.   Except for hard money loans, private financing or VA loans, money simply dried up.   Investors shied away from any loan that was not FHA-insured which also included Reverse Mortgage or Home Equity Conversion Loans.   And it’s a vicious cycle.  Without loans, the sales market becomes stagnant and without sales, appraisers can’t find comparative values to provide a reasonable worth for your home

Fortunately, back in July Congress passed sweeping legislation that removed the condo exclusion, but it wasn’t until May that the Mortgagee Letters were released paving the way for financing opportunities.   However, the hard work has just begun.   Before a single loan can be originated, the park itself must receive approval from Housing and Urban Development.   This is no small feat and even once all the documentation is presented to the local overseeing HUD agency, the wait time for approval is 6-8 weeks.

There are many anxious lenders and homeowners that are excited about the new lending possibilities and the fact this will ultimately add more vibrance to the park community as well as increase the value potential of your home.   Yet, this is still a time to proceed with caution and not make any decisions until your management or HOA has expressly declared that the park has received approval.   The reason this is so critical is that over-anxious lenders are often encouraging a quickstart of the loan process by getting an appraisal.   This can have serious repercussions in a volatile market when the shelf-life of an appraisal is approximately two months.   Since most lenders don’t have an in-house underwriting department and the waiting line for an file evaluation is sometimes 3-6 weeks, your appraisal could be old before you start.

In addition, even once the park receives approval, there is another rigorous checklist for manufactured homes themselves.   First and more importantly your home must be newer than June 15, 1976.   No matter how beautifully renovated your home is or how updated its appearance, there are no exceptions.   The home must also be in its original location—so if the home was moved from another park, FHA will not insure the loan. The home must also be titled as real property and cannot be located in a flood plain.     Additionally, the home must be on a permanent foundation which must not only meet the local jurisdictional guideline but the HUD Permanent Foundation Guide For Manufactured Homes and an engineer must testify to this fact.   However, please don’t run out an install a foundation system prematurely.   This can generally be incorporated within the scope of the loan and should be the very last step of any loan process.   There is no sense spending several thousands of dollars on a foundation only to find out there are other issues that will complicate the loan.

When choosing a lender, carefully evaluate your options.   Ask specifically for referrals from other manufactured home owners.    You want a lender who understands that manufactured homes have specialty requirements and knows those requirements backwards and forwards.  And when choosing a foundation specialist or engineer for the certification, make sure you are working with one who will not charge you for a “failed” report and will your interests by not obligating you to a foundation retrofit or repair until the loan has the approval greenlight.

www.themanufacturedhomelendingsource.com and www.onthelevelcontractors.com

Park communities represent the most popular setting for manufactured homes. For loan purposes, lenders generally require that the owner of the home also own the land upon which the home sits. Until recently the park also had to be classified as a owner-owned Subdivision or a Planned Unit Development in order for manufactured homes to qualify for FHA-insured loans.

Many mobilehome parks and manufactured home communities began as land lease developments but as residents desired a greater control over their living situation and costs associated with their residences, many parks converted to resident ownership. Most of these used the process of the condominium conversion. Unfortunately, because of the classification, this property type was ineligible for FHA-insured loans including Reverse Mortgages or HECM. Fortunately, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) granted authority to add individual manufactured housing units located in condominium projects to HUD for FHA insurance but the process from Congressional authority to actual loan processing is still unraveling. (more…)

What’s the Difference Between a Personal Loan and a Mortgage Loan?
Manufactured homes are an interesting animal to be sure.   It is the only form of housing that can either be classified as Personal Property or Chattel (like a car) or Real Property (like a regular site-built home) and how the distinction is determined can be confusing.   To be considered real property, the owner of the manufactured home must also own the land upon which the home sits.   Even when the homeowner owns the land, he/she may choose to title each separately—the home as personal property and the land as realty.   However, if one wants to secure an FHA-insured mortgage loan, the home and land must be conjoined as a single entity as REAL PROPERTY.  There is the old joke with lenders that you’ll pull your “trailer” out in the middle of the night and haul it down the street and the will be left holding the bag. The truth is that until the home is titled as real property, your manufactured home will be treated just like a car in the eyes of a lender. (more…)

To Cert or Not to Cert? Our Opinion—Not So Fast

I am a female manufactured home contractor specializing in manufactured home foundation repair. It’s not the most glamorous job in the world and mainly consists of crawling underneath the darkside of people’s homes, often in claustrophobic tight conditions and in poor air circulation environments. Some manufactured homes are set in a pit to give an attractive low profile curb appeal, much like a site built home. Others are installed above ground and some even on full basement. On the subset types, there’s not a lot of room for the configuration of the female form to navigate easily from one end of the home to the other. While trying to do the military crawl underneath, my bottom inevitably pops up and then when I try to balance out, my head often jerks up and whamm—straight into the I-beam. My male co-workers find this particularly funny and when they hear my yelps as my body parts bang and clang against metal, I hear uncontrollable laughter. Fortunately YouTube has yet to find me underneath the dank and dirty world that is the manufactured home contractor’s domain. Believe me, we see it all, spiders, snakes, rats, centipedes, scorpions, dead carcasses (cats, rats, bunnies, and yes even a coyotes) not to mention standing water, sewer leaks, falling insulation, splitting marriage lines, overextended screw jacks, shifting or compromised supports. I have yet to find any buried treasure but we frequently find several cases of empty beer cans which may be the reason many of the homes we work on seem to be set up off kilter right from the beginning. (more…)

By Bob Downs

When planning travel in Europe or around the world many travelers overlook the cost of cell phone use abroad. Many travelers don’t realize that the cell phone standards and the equipment that most of us use in the USA are incompatible with the GSM (Global System for worldwide Mobile communication) 900/1800 standards used abroad. If your phone does work overseas, depending on your service, you can wind up paying expensive roaming rates plus other hidden charges like VAT taxes and mobile termination fees. One company helps to make cellphone use more affordable, Roberts Rent-A-Phone. With their new lower rates Roberts Rent-A-Phone provides more affordable travel cell phone rentals at everyday rates lower than their competitions discounted rates. Also, they do not add Vat taxes, connection charges, mobile termination charges etc. (more…)

Finding the right lender

Fair or unfair to manufactured home borrowers, most lenders view manufactured homes with derision. We’ve all heard the term —trailer trash—well that’s how most lenders continue to characterize the manufactured home loan. Without owning the land, the manufactured home is pigeon-holed into a high percentage rate personal property loan. Even when the home sits on real property, the stigma persists in the minds of lenders that a homeowner will pull up his 5th wheel, hitch up the home, pull up stakes, and disappear down the road in the middle of the night - leaving the investor, high and dry. Although the portrait being portrayed treads on the side of ridiculous, the real concern for the lender is not only dismissing the above stigma, but how a simple classification of titling can significantly alter an investor’s mentality from “trailer” to legitimate dwelling. (more…)

Proving your home is a HUD Home

Manufactured home loans are very unique in that in order to qualify for a loan, the lender has to qualify more than just your ability to repay the loan and the fact that your home is a good risk based on the value. Manufactured homes have their own checklist of requirements, one of which is proving the home is a HUD home. And the best proof is the THE HUD TAG or LABEL that is attached to the rear of each section of the home. Unlike the textile tag on pillows and mattresses that says DO NOT REMOVE and everyone does anyway. This is the one label you should not remove. (more…)

Our Motorcycle Accident Lawyers Identify the Most Common Causes of Multi-Vehicle Motorcycle Accidents.

What our motorcycle accident lawyers often find in jury selection is that the ordinary juror has the misperception that motorcycle riders are risk takers, and so they come into the case with the initial bias toward the assumption that negligence on the part of the motorcyclist is most likely the cause of the accident. However, according to the extensive research conducted by our motorcycle accident attorneys the most common cause of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents is the inattention and negligence of the other driver, most commonly an auto driver. (more…)

Most lenders view the manufactured home loan as a “nuisance” loan. No matter what kind of manufactured home you have (even if it has tile roof and drywall interior), you’re going to be lumped into the “trailer” category in the mind of the loan officer. This is just a “loser loan” for him. A lot of work, and not enough commission! Plus there are so many compliance hoops to jump through and the compliance checklist is often daunting to the novice. And for the typical lending office, very rarely do the support staff know what they are doing. The processors don’t even understand the vocabulary much less the fine details, appraisers sometimes submit their data on the wrong form and even underwriters often fail to manage the file properly. (more…)

Background

Gordon manufactured two styles of fiberglass boats: one for water-skiing and pleasure, the other designed specifically for bass fishing. Both boats were manufactured on the same production line, switching between the two models as orders and demand shifted.

Problem

Business was booming. Obviously, that’s the goal of any business so long as you can fill orders promptly. They were selling boats as fast as they could make them, about two boats per eight-hour shift. So they added a second shift running from 4:00 pm until midnight. At first, this second shift was unable to finish two boats per shift but caught up after several weeks. Nonetheless, production was still not meeting demand. (more…)