Many first time buyers are completely unaware of the existence of manufactured homes. In this article, we’ll explore what manufactured homes are, and the trade offs between purchasing a manufactured home versus a site-built home. When buying a home, it’s important to be informed about your options!

What are Manufactured Homes?

Manufactured homes are built in a factory. That’s it. Contrast a conventionally built home and a manufactured home:

• Conventional homes are built on site: raw building materials are shipped to the site, and a home is constructed by a team of builders with different skills: framers, drywallers, electricians, plumbers, flooring specialists, etc. Construction is labour intensive, but the home can be customized to the individual tastes of the home owner.
• Manufactured homes are fabricated in a factory, placed on a trailer and shipped to a site. Factory fabrication allows economies of scale, and consequently manufactured homes typically offer more space or amenities for the same amount of money, but are much less customization. Manufactured homes are very popular for remote locations, where the costs of shipping materials and people can be prohibitively high.

Types of Manufactured Homes

Manufactured homes are available today at a wide variety of price points, ranging from very inexpensive, economy homes to high end homes that you probably won’t be able to differentiate from site built homes. Manufactured homes are often classified as:

• Mobile Homes – come in single wide, double wide and (rarely) triple wide. A single wide mobile home is typically 14’ wide and up to 66’ long, although they can range from 12’ to 18’ wide. A single wide mobile home is transported as a single entity, as it is capable of travelling down highways and roads. As the name implies, double wide and triple wide mobile homes are 2 or 3 times, respectively, the width of a single wide. A double wide is transported in 2 sections, each as wide as a single width and assembled into a seamless whole at the site.
• Modular Homes, also referred to as factory-built, system built or prefab (short for prefabricated) homes, are simply homes that are built off-site in a factory, rather than on-site. Modular homes are built in multiple pieces in a factory, and transported in multiple shipments. The homes are built to the standards of local municipalities, and modules can be arranged in different ways to produce homes of almost arbitrary shape, with multiple storeys. Modular homes are a popular alternative to conventional building when the site is in a remote area.

Ownership of the Site for a Manufactured Home

Mobile homes are most commonly placed on a rented site in a mobile home park. Mobile homes are intended to provide inexpensive housing, and renting the site minimizes the up-front cost.

Modular homes, on the other hand, will typically be deployed onto owned sites, using permanent foundations. It can be very difficult to tell the difference between a modular home and a conventionally built home!

Certification of Manufactured Homes

Used manufactured homes may only be offered for sale in British Columbia if they bear a certification label from an agency accredited by the Standards Council of Canada or a Silver Label issued by Technical Safety BC. If a certification label cannot be found, the homeowner must obtain a Silver Label, which requires electrical inspection and a Technical Safety BC inspection.

Municipal permits will also be required to connect the manufactured home to the electrical infrastructure and gas supply.

Advantages of Purchasing a Mobile Home

Mobile homes are a lower cost option to buying a conventionally built home. Furthermore, there are mobile home parks where you can rent a site, avoiding the cost of land. Mobile homes can open the door to home ownership to those who might otherwise never qualify to own their own home.

Mobile homes also cost less per square foot than conventionally built homes, allowing you to get more space for your money.

Mobile homes are, as the name implies, capable of being moved. It’s not particularly cheap, but it is doable, and this can be an advantage in some situations.

Disadvantages of Purchasing a Mobile Home

Depreciation is a major disadvantage of mobile homes. Like a new car, depreciation begins as soon as the mobile home leaves the factory. The reason is that mobile homes are considered to be your personal property, not “real property”. Real property is defined as land, plus improvements that are permanently attached to it. Since mobile homes do not have full foundations, they are not seen as permanently
attached to the land – and in any case, mobile home owners commonly do not own the land.

Financing mobile homes is also much more expensive because they are considered personal property. Banks will not treat a loan to purchase a mobile home as a mortgage; rather, they will consider it a personal loan or a “chattel loan”, which carry much higher interest rates.

Mobile homes are more susceptible to damage from natural disasters, such as earthquakes or hurricanes, because they are placed on a temporary foundation.

Summary

Manufactured homes can be broken down into mobile homes and modular homes.

Mobile homes are inexpensive, and can open the doors to home ownership to many people who might otherwise be forever stuck renting. However, they do have a number of disadvantages: higher financing cost, depreciation, and a higher risk of damage during natural disasters. Modular homes can be of very high quality, and provide flexible floor plans rivalling a conventionally built house. However, modular homes require far less labour on the building site, which can be a huge advantage in remote or difficult to access locations. Once installed, they are more or less indistinguishable from a conventionally built house.

Is a manufactured home with land right for you? On this page the MLS Listings are all Manufactured Homes with Land.

Check out our BC Properties for Sale pages. They are a great way to get to know different communities. Begin with the photo presentations highlighting each community. Then review detailed information and real estate Market statistics specific to that community.

Each city page also allows you to quickly access the BC Listings in that area, broken out by property type (houses for sale, duplex for sale, townhouses for sale, condos for sale and land for sale).