House or Vehicle? The Confusing Classification of Mobile Homes in Missouri

In Missouri, some mobile homes count as vehicles, others count as real estate.

Real estate agents and lenders don't always want to work with a home if they aren't sure if it counts as a house or a vehicle. So this has been causing problems.

Missouri Sen. Jane Cunningham is sponsoring a bill that would establish a process for reclassifying a mobile home as real property. Supporters of the bill say this would make it easier for people to get loans on a mobile home, and that most other states already have this legislation in place.

Right now, mobile home owners in Missouri can convert their mobile homes into real property by taking off the wheels and axels and affixing the home to a permanent foundation on land they own. The homeowners are then supposed to surrender the home's vehicle title to the government, but there's no established process to do this.

That's why local realtors and lenders are wary about dealing with mobile homes. It's not always clear whether the home still counts as a vehicle, or whether it's been transformed into real estate.

Members of the Mortgage Bankers Association of Missouri said that a measure such as Cunningham's bill would go a long way in relieving their worries.

This isn't the first year either that legislators have tried to pass this measure into law. Cunningham's bill passed both houses of the Missouri legislature last year, but Governor Jay Nixon vetoed the bill because of an unpopular amendment.

Cunningham says this year, they're trying to keep the bill clean so it can hopefully become law. The bill is supported by banking, realtor and manufactured housing associations in Missouri. Cunningham said she does not expect it to be a particularly controversial bill.

Because the mobile home must be affixed to land owned by the homeowner, this bill would only affect mobile home owners who live on their own property. Homeowners in mobile home parks would not be affected.

At the last census in 2000, there were 200,000 mobile homes in Missouri, according to the University of Missouri's Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis.

Source: interviews; MU Office of Social and Economic Data Analysis