Title Search for a Manufactured or Mobile Home

Manufactured housing trips up buyers, lenders, and occasionally closing agents for one structural reason. The home and the land it sits on can be two entirely separate pieces of property, tracked in two different places. Order a search of the land and you may learn nothing about the home. Order a search of the home and you learn nothing about the land.

Two records, two systems

The parcel behaves like any other piece of real estate. It has a deed, a legal description, a chain of title, and whatever liens and easements were recorded against it, all at the county recorder’s office.

The home, when it left the factory, was titled more like a vehicle: a certificate of title carrying a VIN or serial number, issued and tracked by a state agency, with liens noted on the certificate rather than in the county index. That is personal property, and a county records search does not reach it.

When the home becomes real property

Most states provide a way to convert a manufactured home into part of the real estate, usually requiring that it be permanently affixed, that the owner of the home also own the land, and that the certificate of title be retired or surrendered with an affidavit of affixation or a similar instrument recorded. The terminology and the requirements vary considerably by state.

Once that is done, the home is included in the real property description, and a land records search reaches it the same way it reaches a house. Until it is done, the two remain separate, and a lien recorded on the certificate can survive a sale of the land entirely unnoticed.

What that means for your file

• Buying. Establish which situation you are in before closing. Ask for the recorded affidavit of affixation if the seller says the home was converted, and read it rather than accepting the assurance.
• Lending. Both records need checking where the home is meaningful collateral, and where conversion has not happened the personal property lien search is the one that protects you.
• Land only deals. A current owner search of the parcel is straightforward, as it would be on any vacant lot, and it stops at the dirt.

Whether a particular home has been legally affixed is a determination that turns on state law and the recorded documents, so it is a question for counsel or the closing agent, not something an abstractor concludes.

When in doubt

Send us the address, the county, the owner’s name, and, if you have it, the home’s serial or VIN number, and say whether the deal covers the land, the home, or both. We will tell you which searches actually apply before anything is ordered. Order online when you know the scope, or ask us first, and our products page lays out the depths available on the real property side.