Can You Buy Property Before You Buy a Mobile Home?

ou’re thinking about buying a mobile home, and you’re picturing your dream home in your mind. Large bedrooms, luxury countertops, the works. 

But, wait a minute. Have you taken a minute to think about the land under your mobile home? 

Homebuyers looking into mobile homes have to consider whether they’ll buy one on private land, or one in a land-lease community. However, for many homebuyers-to-be, that begs the question of whether they can buy the land before they buy a mobile home. 

In this blog post, we’ll go over some of the basics of buying a mobile home on private property, the implications of buying land for a mobile home, and how that impacts when you should buy the land. 

Like we mentioned earlier, you’ll come across many mobile homes that sit on private property. This is compared to manufactured homes in communities, where you’ll have your own home in a community of other manufactured homes. You can read more about the benefits of mobile home communities in the MHVillager.

There are also benefits to owning a mobile home on your own private lan. For one – privacy. You can have as much land as you want, and provided you meet local zoning ordinances you can install your own fence, deck, patio, or other outdoor extensions to your mobile home to your desired specifications. 

Of course, this means you can take charge of your landscaping, too. Want to plant a row of bushes right outside your home? Most likely, if you own your mobile home on private property, there’s no one to ask but yourself…or maybe your significant other if you don’t want to end up in the doghouse. 

Yes. You do not have to buy a mobile home and land together, though many choose to go this route. You are also able to buy the mobile home and land in separate transactions. 

MHVillage offers a couple of different ways to go about finding a mobile home on land. First, you can search for manufactured homes for sale on private property using our “location type” filter. For those homes, you’ll work with the seller to facilitate the transfer of ownership for both the land and the home. 

Or, you can also look for homes on MHVillage that must be moved onto your own land, in case you have land that you already own, using that same “location type” filter. 

If you currently own a mobile home that can be moved to a new site, you could also buy land that you can move your home to. While this isn’t as common these days, as many manufactured homes rest permanently on their home site, it’s still very possible to have a mobile home moved. 

For some, it may be preferable to buy the mobile home separately from the land if they don’t buy them together. Here are a few possible scenarios:

Now, it’s time to answer the question we titled this blog after: can you buy your own private land before you buy the mobile home? 

The answer is yes. You could easily buy the land in a separate transaction if you wanted. This also means you’d give yourself additional time to prep the land for siting a mobile home. 

Land preparation involves a few things. First, you’d need to ensure that it’s properly graded according to federal, state, and local regulations. 

This involves making sure it can properly move drainage away from the home site, as well as verifying you have access to well and septic or city water and sewer, electricity, and internet access and phone service. If your land doesn’t already have a driveway, you’ll need to have one built or installed as well. 

You may need to undergo some excavation work to get all of your utilities in place, and the land must also have a foundation installed. 

So, it may actually be beneficial to have your own private land before you buy a manufactured home.