The Question Nobody Told You to Ask Before Showing or Listing a Manufactured Home

There is one thing worth checking before you show a manufactured home to a buyer or take it on as a listing. One date. One question. And skipping it can waste everyone's time, break a client's heart, and kill a deal that could have been avoided entirely with thirty seconds of research at the start.

Was the home built before June 15th, 1976?

Why That Date Matters So Much

June 15th, 1976 is the date the HUD Manufactured Home Construction and Safety Standards went into effect. Any manufactured home built before that date is classified as a pre-HUD mobile home and it does not qualify for traditional mortgage financing. That means conventional loans are out. FHA financing is out. USDA is out.

As Brittney Fleischman explains in the Mortgage Secrets Every Realtor Should Know series a buyer can get all the way through the offer process, the inspection, and into the loan application before discovering that the home they have fallen in love with cannot be financed through any standard mortgage product. At that point the damage is already done. The emotional investment is real. The time is gone. And the deal is dead in a way that could have been completely avoided.

What Listing Agents and Buyer's Agents Each Need to Do

For listing agents the responsibility is clear. Verify the build year before the property goes on the market. If the home was built before June 15th, 1976 that information needs to be accurate in the listing and disclosed upfront so buyers and their agents can make informed decisions before anyone gets attached to a transaction that cannot close with conventional financing.

For buyer's agents the question is equally simple and needs to happen before clients schedule a showing rather than after they have walked through and started picturing their furniture in the living room. Ask about the build date. Check the HUD certification label if the property is post-1976. Protect your clients from the emotional and logistical cost of discovering a financing barrier after the attachment is already there.

One Simple Date Can Save or Kill a Deal

The information is not difficult to find. The question takes seconds to ask. The consequence of not asking it is a client who cannot buy the home they wanted and a transaction that falls apart at a stage where falling apart is most expensive for everyone involved.

Follow Brittney Fleischman for more episodes of Mortgage Secrets Every Realtor Should Know and make sure the financing conversation happens at the right point in every transaction.

Sources

HUD.gov
ConsumerFinancialProtectionBureau.gov
FannieMae.com
MortgageNewsDaily.com
NAR.realtor