Can Your Mobile Home Deal with Mother Nature at Her Worst?

 By Catherine Powell

Mobile homes have been around for a long time and with good reason.  When it comes to affordable housing, a mobile home is hard to beat.  In north Florida, the average price of a single-family home is currently $240,000.  The average price of a manufactured (aka mobile) home is right around $81,000, which is 1/3 the price.  If you live in a mobile home, you know it was manufactured in a factory only to be trucked to your lot after the fact.  What you may not know is that when it comes to securing a mobile home against storm damage, you need to weigh the variables that differentiate manufactured homes from typical single-family dwellings.

The ABC’s of Mobile Home Insurance

By Catherine Powell

Image courtesy Public Domain Pictures

Many mobile home owners think that insuring their property is identical to homeowner’s insurance.  I like to point out the fact that while the two are similar, there are a number of subtle differences that they need to note before purchasing insurance.  To make life simple for all you mobile and modular home owners out there, this week I’ll cover the ABC’s of mobile home insurance.

Making Mobile Home Insurance More Manageable

By Catherine Powell

Image courtesy of flickr

Until a few decades ago, mobile homes were treated like the stepchildren of the real estate industry.  The homes themselves were not built to withstand hurricane-force winds, they were treated as personal property (like a motor-home) rather than real estate, and they were far less energy efficient than comparable homes.  Fortunately, today this is no longer the case.  Modern mobile homes are engineered to withstand winds of up to 110-mph and can be built as energy efficient as traditional homes.  It’s also possible to finance a mobile home as real estate, provided the home and land are both purchased or owned by the homeowner. That being said, there are a few differences when it comes to insuring mobile homes.