Land-Lease Manufactured Home Communities:What to Expect

Land-lease manufactured home communities are specifically designed for manufactured homes.  Here you will own your manufactured home, but lease the land on which your home is sited.  Many land-lease communities offer a wide variety of conveniences and facilities, such as club houses, playgrounds, pools, storage areas, and grounds maintenance.  Many have very active resident groups that form clubs and take trips.

Living in a modern manufactured home community is akin to living in a small town where everyone knows their neighbors and where everyone has something in common: they love the manufactured home lifestyle. There is a sense of security and safety living in a close knit community where residents tend to be concerned and protective of the health and welfare of fellow residents.

If you plan to live in a land-lease manufactured home community (formerly known as a “mobile home park”), one of the first things you will want to do is contact the management office and check on availability of sites for your new manufactured home.  The community can inform you about what size home can fit on the sites that are available, and this will impact your decisions about the home you select. The community may also have some aesthetic requirements for the homes in the community, such as roof pitch, roofing material, siding, etc.

You’ll also want to review the guidelines for the community to ensure that they fit your lifestyle. The guidelines of a community are designed to ensure a pleasant environment for all residents and to help maintain the community in a way that protects your home investment.  Some communities may have restrictions on the number and sizes of animals that you can have in your home.  So if you have a pet, you’ll want to know the communities policy regarding pets.

Next, if the community has an available site for your home, you’ll need to apply for residency in the community. Once your application for residency has been approved, a prospective resident must sign a rental agreement that will spell out the terms of residency, the amount of community fees that will be paid monthly, a list of rules and regulations for the community, a description of any physical improvements that will need to be made to your home in connection to the installation of your home, and any services that will be provided.

Lastly, you’ll need to coordinate moving your home into the community with the community management. This will include date, time, transportation route, and coordination of dealer and/or contractors needed to install your new manufactured home.

If you have decided that today’s manufactured home is the realization of your dream of homeownership, perhaps you might want to explore the possibility of siting your dream home in a well maintained manufactured home land-lease community.

(Photo credit: http://www.manufacturedhomeloans-oregon.com/Index.html)