Chapter 15 of 20
Taxes and insurance
How manufactured homes are taxed and insured, and why both depend on the property classification.
1 min read
How your home is taxed follows how it is classified. A home held as personal property is typically taxed as personal property, often through an annual registration or a personal-property assessment. A home converted to real property is taxed as real estate, along with the land. Which is better for you depends on your state and locality, and the two can differ substantially.
Insurance works similarly. A manufactured home on a leased lot is usually covered by a specialised policy rather than a standard homeowners policy, and coverage terms, deductibles, and exclusions differ from what people expect from house insurance. A home converted to real property can often be covered by a conventional homeowners policy.
Insurers ask manufactured-home-specific questions, and the answers change your premium and sometimes your eligibility. Expect to be asked about the year built, the HUD label, the anchoring system and whether it meets the current standard, the wind zone, the roof condition and age, and whether the home is on a permanent foundation.
Get insurance quotes before you commit, not after. Discovering that a particular home is expensive or impossible to insure is much better news during due diligence than after closing, and on older homes, or in coastal wind zones, it genuinely happens.
Key points
- Tax treatment follows classification: personal property versus real property.
- Homes on leased lots usually need a specialised policy, not standard homeowners insurance.
- Anchoring, wind zone, roof age, and the HUD label all affect premium and eligibility.
- Get quotes during due diligence, some homes are hard to insure.
Watch out
Do not assume insurability. In coastal wind zones and on older homes, availability is a real constraint, and the answer can be no.