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

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.

Fortunately, FHA-insured loans are improving their visibility with many mortgage brokers. In many respects, they seem to rank among the only safe-havens for the manufactured home purchaser or borrower. Furthermore, HUD has created a model that both the lender and transaction coordinator can follow. The need for this type of application stems from the confusion over the fact that manufactured homes are the only type of housing that can be classified either as personal property or real property; and worse, there has been no national consistency for neither titling nor set-up requirements. In some states, manufactured homes were overseen by a transportation agency. Yet in other states – such as California – there exists has always been an authoritative MH housing agency, where others maintain little to no oversight. While HUD has jumped into the picture and requires a national standard for new home installation since January 1, 2009, existing homes are currently in “no-man’s land.”

A primary priority to a lender is that the titling of the manufactured as real property (meaning that the home and land are conjoined as one). This provides the lender – or investor – with security interest on the home. In some states (like California), the classification for a manufactured home as real property requires that the home be installed on a permanent foundation. In other states (like Arizona), the change of titling procedure is a paper-only transaction so there is no requirement for a permanent foundation. Where this becomes a problem is when a borrower needs an FHA-insured loan because HUD requires that the home be set on a permanent foundation. Thus, a licensed engineer must certify the foundation is in compliance with FHA guidelines, or what is commonly referred to as the HUD Handbook. So this begs the question why? The borrower typically proclaims, “When I bought my home, it was approved by the building department and everything has been signed off. Of course, my home will pass otherwise the building department wouldn’t have approved it!” However, building regulations vary from city-to-city and county-to-county, so underwriters, investors and government agencies need a national standard. The approval of a licensed engineer that the home meets the standards detailed in the PERMANENT FOUNDATION GUIDE TO MANUFACTURED HOMES seems to fit the bill.

These are the basics for your home to qualify:

• The manufactured must be a HUD home, which means it must be manufactured after June 15, 1976. If there are metal plates at the rear of the home that begin with a three Alpha letters like CAL, ARZ, ORE, that’s usually a good sign. If the HUD label is missing, usually a label verification letter from the Institute for Building Technology and Safety (IBTS) www.ibts.org giving the provenance of the home will suffice.
• The foundation system must meet the guidelines published in the Permanent Foundations Guide for Manufactured Housing, dated September 1996. A certification attesting to compliance must be obtained from a licensed professional engineer.
• The manufactured home must be classified and taxed as real estate. A long-term lease may also be acceptable in certain instances. States vary on how the real estate classification is accomplished so this is another important aspect to understand.
• The axles and tongues must be removed from the chassis.
• The manufactured home must have an adequate perimeter enclosure with appropriate ventilation.
• The manufactured home must not have been installed or occupied previously at any other site or location.
• Must have a floor area of not less than 400 square feet.
• Built and remains on a permanent chassis.
• The finished grade elevation beneath the manufactured home shall be at or above the 100-year return frequency flood elevation.

If you are in the market for a manufactured home loan and you own your land, it is in your best interest to work with a loan officer that specializes only in the manufactured home loan product. And if you need a professional engineer to evaluate the foundation, you’ll need one that specializes in manufactured homes as well because the HUD Handbook consists of over 400 pages of inconsistency.

If you want a lender that specializes in manufactured homes. www.mh-lending.com

If you want a professional engineer that specializes in manufactured homes www.onthelevelcontractors.com

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.

DO NOT REMOVE THE HUD TAG EVER!

When you go to find a piece of real estate, you can usually access it by address, assessor’s parcel number, legal description or all of the above. However, even if a manufactured home sits on a piece of realty and shares the features of the real property, it is still distinguished by its HUD label that is an affixed HUD seal (tag/label) located on the outside of the home.

Many people ask, if the home is on real property and is being assessed as real property, then why would a HUD tag be of continuing importance? Even when a manufactured home is converted to real property, it doesn’t remove the fact that the home is still a manufactured home. In other words, once a duck, always a duck even if it stops quacking. The provenance of any HUD home and its factory design and engineering requirements are traceable through the individual HUD number. For appraisal and lending purposes, code must follow code so appraisers and engineers certifying a home for a manufactured home loan need to specifically identify the HUD numbers in their reports and building departments utilize it as the format for the permit process because it allows the home to pre-empt the local building codes. If for any reason the labels are missing, appraisers will often reject the property and refuse to proceed until documentation is provided, building departments will refuse to issue certain and in some states a manufactured home may not be re-sold if missing a label. So let me repeat: DO NOT REMOVE THE HUD TAG EVER! However, if for unavoidable reasons the label must be removed from its permanent location, please safeguard it and keep it with your other important documents.

So what is the label?

The Certification Label (also know as a HUD tag) is a metal plate that is affixed to the outside of the manufactured home. The label number is stamped with a 3 letter designation which identifies the production inspection primary inspection agency followed by a 6-7 digit number which the label supplier shall furnish. If the home is a multi-wide unit, each unit must have a label. Although it is common for the numbers to be sequential, it is not necessarily so.

In the case of missing tags, HUD does not reissue new tags. However, the Department can issue a letter of label (tag) verification for units for which it can locate the necessary historical information. HUD will accept documentation from IBTS – Institute for Building Technology and Safety (Current HUD Contractor) verifying HUD labels were issued to the manufactured home if the tags are not affixed to the home at the time of appraisal. There is a fee for this and can be issued online as long as certain information can be verified.

Alternatively verification of the HUD label numbers can often be found on the interior of the home on a data plate. The Data Plate is usually found in one of four locations: on or near the main electrical panel, in a kitchen cabinet, in a bedroom closet or in a laundry room closet. The data plate has a map of the United States to let the consumer know the Wind Zone and Snow Load for which their home was built. The Data Plate will contain the following information: (a) the name and address of the manufacturing plant in which the home was manufactured, (b) the serial numbers and model designation, and the date the unit was manufactured, (c) a statement which references that the home was built in accordance to the Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards, (d) a list of the certification label number(s), (e) a list of factory-installed equipment, including the manufacturer’s name and the model designation of each appliance, (f) a reference to the Roof Load Zone and Wind Zone Load to which the home was designed, (h) and the name of the agency that approved the design. For a replacement copy of a missing data plate, one may be able to obtain it by contacting the In-Plant Primary Inspection Agency (IPIA) and the manufacturer. The IPIA is a third party inspection agency that works in conjunction with the Department to inspect manufactured homes during the manufacturing process to ensure that the manufacturer meets the Federal Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards. To obtain a list of inspection agencies, visit here:

With that it mind, DO NOT REMOVE the HUD TAG EVER!

And if you’re looking for a specialist for a manufactured home land-home package loan, contact www.mh-lending.com.