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What Is Manufactured Home Insurance? – Forbes Advisor

What Is Manufactured Home Insurance?


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If disaster strikes, manufactured home insurance can provide financial protection for what’s likely your most important investments—your home and your possessions.

Manufactured home insurance provides a financial safety net if your home and belongings are damaged by unforeseen events, such as a fire. It also provides personal liability protection if you’re sued.

What Is Manufactured Home Insurance?

Manufactured home insurance is a contract between you and the insurance company that specifies how you’re compensated for theft and damage. It offers many of the same protections as homeowners insurance and renters insurance.

Manufactured home insurance reimburses you up to your policy limits if your home or other structures, like a shed or fence, are damaged by a problem covered by your policy. It also covers your belongings. Manufactured home insurance can also shield you from the cost of lawsuits if you’re found liable for injuries or property damage to others and you’re sued.

Manufactured Home vs. Mobile Home Insurance

Manufactured homes and mobile homes are virtually the same thing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulates both types of homes.

The key difference between the two is that HUD defines a mobile home as a factory-built mobile home created before June 15, 1976. Anything built after that date is considered to be a manufactured home.

Despite that difference, people often use the terms interchangeably. That is why manufactured home insurance is sometimes called mobile home insurance.

Does Standard Home Insurance Cover Manufactured Homes?

Standard homeowners insurance doesn’t cover a manufactured home. There are eight types of home insurance policies. To insure a manufactured home, you need to purchase what is known as an HO-7 policy, which is specifically designed to protect these types of homes.

What Is Covered by Manufactured Home Insurance?

A standard manufactured home insurance policy covers these types of dwelling:

  • Modular homes
  • Single and double-wide manufactured homes
  • Single and double-wide mobile homes
  • Sectional homes
  • Trailers

A standard manufactured home insurance policy typically includes the following coverage types.

Dwelling Coverage

This pays for repairs to your manufactured home structure, unless the cause of damage is listed as an exclusion in your policy. Dwelling coverage also applies to attached structures, such as decks and garages.

Other Structures Coverage

This portion of a manufactured home insurance policy pays to repair or replace structures that aren’t attached to the home, such as sheds or fences.

Personal Property Coverage

If your belongings are stolen or damaged by a problem listed in your policy, you can make a claim under personal property coverage, including:

  • Accidental discharge or overflow of water or steam
  • Aircraft, including self-propelled missiles and spacecraft
  • Explosion
  • Falling objects
  • Fire or lightning
  • Freezing
  • Riot or civil commotion
  • Smoke
  • Sudden and accidental damage from artificially generated electrical current
  • Sudden and accidental tearing apart, cracking, burning or bulging
  • Theft
  • Vandalism or malicious mischief
  • Vehicles
  • Volcanic eruption
  • Weight of ice, snow or sleet
  • Windstorm or hail

Coverage amounts for belongings are usually a percentage of your dwelling coverage

There are insurance limits for specific items under personal property insurance. For instance, stolen jewelry may be capped at $1,500, so you might want to buy extra insurance if you own high-value items.

Personal Liability Insurance

If you accidentally injure someone, personal liability coverage covers claims for that individual’s medical expenses, lost wages and pain and suffering. It also reimburses others if you accidentally damage their property. Liability insurance also pays for your legal costs if you’re sued for accidental injuries or property damage you cause to other people (if it’s unrelated to a car accident).

Medical Payments Coverage

Medical payments coverage pays medical bills for non-family members accidentally injured on your property, regardless of fault. The coverage is usually $1,000 to $5,000 and meant for bills for minor injuries.

Medical payments coverage typically pays for “reasonable and necessary” medical expenses within a year of the accident.

Additional Living Expenses Coverage

Additional living expenses coverage—sometimes known as loss of use coverage—reimburses extra day-to-day living costs if you have to live somewhere else while your manufactured home is being repaired. These costs can include hotel accommodations, restaurant bills and pet boarding.

Add-On Coverage for Manufactured Homes

Optional manufactured home insurance choices can include:

  • Riders for jewelry and other expensive items, to fully insure their value.
  • Replacement cost coverage, which reimburses you for the full cost of replacing belongings, rather than a payout for the depreciated value of your items.
  • Trip collision coverage, which pays out if your mobile home is damaged during a collision with another vehicle while the house is being transported from place to place.

Optional coverage types, such as trip collision coverage, might be included as standard parts of some manufactured home insurance policies.

What Is Not Covered by Manufactured Home Insurance?

Be sure to check your policy for what isn’t covered. These are some common exclusions:

  • Animals owned by you
  • Basic wear and tear
  • Discharge of pollutants
  • Earthquake
  • Flood, mudslides and sinkholes
  • Foundation problems like settling, shrinking, building or expanding
  • Intentional loss
  • Mechanical breakdown
  • Neglect
  • Nuclear hazard
  • Ordinance or law
  • Pests like rodents, insects and vermin
  • Power outage
  • Sewer or drain backup
  • War

Why Do I Need Manufactured Home Insurance?

Manufactured home insurance isn’t required by law, but you may need the insurance if a mortgage lender or mobile home community requires coverage. Even if you’re not required to buy coverage, manufactured home insurance may make sense for you because it helps protect one of your biggest investments (your home).

Without manufactured home insurance, you would have to pay to repair and replace your home if it’s damaged by a fire or another issue covered by a policy.

Manufactured home insurance also goes beyond that protection. A policy’s personal property coverage helps if your belongings are stolen or damaged. Personal liability coverage covers accidental injuries and property damage that you or other members of your household do to others and legal costs if someone sues you.

For those reasons, manufactured home insurance can be a wise decision to make sure you and your home are properly protected.

How Much Does Manufactured Home Insurance Cost?

Manufactured home insurance costs as little as $300 per year but can reach up to $1,000, according to Trusted Choice, a resource for independent agents and insurance shoppers.

What Affects Manufactured Home Insurance Costs?

A home’s age, size, location and construction play a role in manufactured home insurance costs.

Insurance companies look at whether your home is in a high-crime area or susceptible to hurricanes. Other factors that can impact the cost include:

  • The model year of the manufactured home.
  • The park class, if you’re in a mobile home park.
  • Burglar, fire and smoke alarms.
  • The cost to rebuild the manufactured home.
  • How long you’ve been with the insurance company.

How to Save on Manufactured Home Insurance

The best way to save on manufactured home insurance is usually to shop around and compare quotes from different companies. Each insurer has its own formula for setting rates, so the key is to find the company that will offer you the best deal based on your circumstances.

You could also cut costs by purchasing a perils-only policy, which covers only causes of damage to your home structure that are specifically named in the policy. The advantage of this type of policy is that it’s typically cheaper than a standard manufactured home policy. The risk of purchasing perils-only coverage is that if your home is damaged by something that isn’t named as a peril, insurance won’t cover the damage.

You can also ask your insurer about home insurance discounts. For example, insurance companies often offer a price break to people who bundle their manufactured home insurance policy with other types of insurance coverage, such as auto insurance.

Discounts might also be available for installing safety devices, such as fire alarms, or paying your policy term in full rather than in installments.

Which Companies Offer Manufactured Home Insurance?

It’s easy to find manufactured home insurance. Sellers include:

  1. 21st Century Insurance
  2. Allstate Insurance
  3. American Family
  4. American Modern
  5. Farmers
  6. Foremost
  7. Geico
  8. Liberty Mutual
  9. Progressive
  10. Safeco
  11. State Farm
  12. USAA (available only to military members, veterans and their families)

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How to Find the Best Manufactured Home Insurance

The best manufactured home insurance for you will provide the coverage you need at an affordable price. Doing a little extra work now can save you money in the months and years to come, as well as ensure you have sufficient protection for your home and belongings.

Shop Around

When you buy insurance, one of the best ways to save is to get quotes and compare rates. You’ll likely get a range of quotes, and you will want to weigh them all before deciding which policy makes the most sense for you.

Buy Enough Insurance to Replace Your Home

You want to buy enough manufactured home insurance coverage so that you can replace your home if it’s destroyed—for instance, by a fire or tornado. Your home insurance company can help identify the right amount of dwelling coverage.

Assess the Mobility of Your Manufactured Home

Unless you purchase additional coverage, manufactured home insurance likely does not cover your home when it’s being transported somewhere. If your home isn’t going to be moving, you might not need this extra coverage. But if you plan to transport the home, it’s wise to think about buying the extra protection.

Consider Additional Coverage for Natural Disasters

Standard manufactured home insurance policies don’t cover flood damage, so it’s smart to think about buying flood insurance to fully protect your home, especially if you live in a region prone to hurricanes and flooding. You can buy flood insurance from the National Flood Insurance Program or through a private insurance company.

Earthquake insurance is also available but tends to be very expensive.

Increase Coverage for High-Value Possessions

You also might want to purchase riders that boost coverage. A scheduled personal property endorsement is an optional add-on that provides more coverage for high-value items. For instance, if you have expensive jewelry, you can buy an endorsement to make sure it is fully covered if it’s stolen.



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