Can I sell a manufactured home together with the land it sits on?

Before anyone talks about price, listing or closing, one fact has to be pinned down: does the Department of Motor Vehicles still hold a certificate of title for the home, or was that title surrendered when the home was made part of the land? Every later step follows from the answer, because Virginia gives a manufactured home owner one road from the first status to the second.

the provisions of this section constitute the only manner by which a manufactured home owner may convert a manufactured home to real property.

Va. Code 46.2-653.1 (apart from the tax provisions the section cross-references, and for their purposes)

Outside those tax provisions, then, a titled home becomes real property only through that section's steps; how long it has sat on the lot is not one of them. Titling can be required early, too: under Va. Code 46.2-653, in its section on permits for moving oversize manufactured homes, the owner of a home "of this sort" bought in or brought into Virginia for use here applies to DMV for title within 30 days.

Because this is a titling question, the definition that matters is the one in Title 46.2, the part of the Code that holds the DMV titling sections quoted here. Title 36 words its own definition slightly differently, so the two are not interchangeable.

"Manufactured home" means a structure subject to federal regulation, transportable in one or more sections, which in the traveling mode is eight body feet or more in width or 40 body feet or more in length, or, when erected on site, is 320 or more square feet, and which is built on a permanent chassis and designed to be used as a dwelling with or without a permanent foundation when connected to the required utilities, and includes the plumbing, heating, air conditioning, and electrical systems contained therein.

Va. Code 46.2-100

If the affidavit of affixation is on file, the statute settles how the home is sold. It is conveyed only as real estate, which means it goes with the land in the deed rather than on a separate DMV title.

The proof is in the land records of the circuit court for the locality where the land lies. The records a title search reads are the same records where that affidavit would have been filed. For Carroll County parcels that is the Clerk of the Circuit Court at 605-1 Pine Street, A230, in Hillsville, and how a deed itself gets recorded there is laid out in where to record a deed in Carroll County.

Two neighboring questions have their own answers. Virginia's Residential Property Disclosure Act applies to transfers of residential real property of one to four dwelling units, and whether its statement is needed on a particular sale is covered in does Virginia require a seller disclosure. How a lender or an appraiser treats the home is the lender's call; the wider financing question is taken up in whether land can be bought with a regular mortgage.

The open questions about a manufactured home on land are answered by records, and no single office keeps all of them.

The placement question has its own page: can a manufactured home go on land here. A title question found late, after a buyer is already under contract, is one of the ways a sale stalls, and other reasons are discussed in why some land listings sit for years. When the land and the home are ready to go to market, the process is on the sell your home page.