Manufactured Home Foundation Certifications

As part of the process of buying a manufactured home, you may be required to provide a foundation certification. These certificates are required by HUD, VA, and FHA for all manufactured homes that exist on permanent foundations - what the industry calls ‘real property’ to distinguish it from home located in a park.

FHA or VA loan underwriters requires that the manufactured home has been placed on a permanent foundation according to HUD standards, though this requirement is becoming more common with conventional lenders, too. The reasoning is simple - they are providing the loan, so they have an ‘ownership’ position in the property. They would like to ensure that the property is structurally sound until their lien is released.

The issue in our region has been getting the certifications done in a timely manner. The Foundation Certification for manufactured homes is required to be performed by a Professional Engineer. They tend to be busy individuals and, frankly, the Foundation Certification is not a big money project so it tends to slip down the list of priorities.

That is why I have partnered with Manufactured Home Certifications, LLC . Their engineers can run all the calculations needed to generate the Foundation Certification. My role is to provide the date - the same responsibility I have to my clients - for them to generate accurate numbers.

That includes physically measuring the dimensions of the home, entering the crawlspace to document the type and spacing of the column supports, the marriage point connection for the structure if it is more than a single-wide manufactured home, and the type and spacing of the foundation anchorage if present.

All of this I can do in conjunction with a home inspection which speeds the turnaround of the Foundation Certification and keeps your transaction on track.

There are two ways to order a Manufactured Home Foundation Certification. First, you can go to the Manufactured Home Certifications scheduling site, type in the zip code, and locate the inspector you would like (preferably me!) The second way is either to call me or to go directly to my Homegauge site and order it directly. I’ll take care of the rest.