Mobile Home Escrow

Mobile and manufactured homes aren't treated like site-built real estate under California law, at least not automatically. Unless the home is permanently affixed to land you also own, title doesn't move through the county recorder the way a house deed would. Instead, it transfers through the Department of Housing and Community Development, which tracks manufactured home titles similar to how the DMV tracks vehicle titles.

That difference changes what escrow actually verifies before closing. Instead of a straightforward title search at the county, we confirm the home's registration status with HCD, and if the home sits in a mobile home park, we also account for whatever park approval or space lease requirements the new buyer needs to satisfy. Those park rules vary quite a bit from one community to the next, so we coordinate directly with the park management when that applies.

If the home is affixed to land that's being sold as part of the same deal, both the HCD title transfer and the standard county recording happen together within one escrow, which takes some extra coordination but keeps buyers and sellers from having to manage two separate closings.