Mobile Home Title Clearance

What is a mobile home and how does it differ from a modular home?
Upon its manufacture, a mobile home is considered a vehicle as it is intended to be transported over highways to its destination. It may be easier to visualize a mobile home as a complete box with axles and wheels attached. A mobile home will require minimal assembly before it can become an actual residence. Therefore, a mobile home is given a certificate of title, which is issued by the state Department of Motor Vehicles. In order to properly convey one’s interests in a mobile home, the certificate of title must be properly transferred to the new buyer. Additionally, many states including North Carolina and Georgia allow for a procedure that makes a mobile home become a permanent fixture on the realty and thus, terminates the certificate of title.

Conversely, a modular home is not complete upon its manufacture. A modular home arrives to its site on flat bed trucks in several pieces and is then assembled at the site. A modular home does not have wheels and axles and therefore, it is never issued a certificate of title. For title purposes, a modular home is treated much like a traditional brick and mortar home.

What is a MSO or Manufactured Statement of Origin?
A Manufactured Statement of Origin or MSO, also known as a Manufacturer’s Certificate of Origin or MCO, is an official document issued by the manufacturer of a mobile home. It may be considered the mobile home’s “birth certificate”. This document includes a description of the vehicle (i.e. the year model, make of the mobile home, model name and/or number, weight, etc.)

What should you or your financial institution be concerned with having a clean mobile home title?
If a mobile home title is not clean, it can hinder a sale or foreclosure and can amount to many thousands of dollars in litigation fees in order to properly clear the title. In addition, if there is a lien on the property and proper title conveyance never took place, if a bankruptcy is filed, then the lien can be stripped from the property. Having a lien properly perfected against the real property and not against the mobile home, can force a lienholder to incur the added expense of having the mobile home removed from the real property in order to enforce its security interest in the real property.

There are several situations that arise that necessitate the need for a lawsuit in order to properly protect the interests of a lienholder in a mobile home. For example, prior liemholders may claim priority over your security interests, previous owners may claim ownership to the mobile home or that a fraudulent conveyance took place, or in states that do not possess detailed mobile home title clearance procedures, you may have to file a lawsuit to clear a title of a prior lienholder has gone out of business and the lien release is unobtainable.

Our firm handles mobile home title clearance actions as well as mobile home replevin actions in North Carolina, Georgia and West Virginia. We offer years of specialized experience to assist you with most effectively handling mobile homes in your real estate portfolio and mobile home title disputes.