Good morning. It’s Friday and it’s time for Fan Mail Friday once again, this is where we answer questions from sellers, just like you. So today, we had a seller that called and said he wanted to sell his mobile home in a park. In the initial conversation we had, he disclosed that the certification tag was no longer on the mobile home.
What is a HUD tag on a mobile home?
The HUD certification tag, it’s a little red tag, two inches by four inches, on the back of the mobile home, that is the HUD certification, or also known as the HUD tag. You cannot sell a house without the HUD tag being present, pure and simple. All right. So like I said, the HUD tag is a little red tag, it’s metal, it’s aluminum, it’s red, and it has serial numbers on the back of it, which shows the certification number for that particular mobile home. All right.
Can you get a replacement for that tag?
The short answer is no, you cannot, but you can contact the Institute of Building Technology and Safety and they will issue a label verification in lieu of a new HUD tag. That’s the only thing you can do to basically do that, since HUD does not reissue tags
Now, where can you find the information you need to get the label of verification?
There is another item inside of every mobile home, it’s called a data plate. Since the one on the outside was metal, you’d think they would call that the data plate, but that’s the way it is. The data plate is an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, it’s got a map, the United States on it and it’s usually located inside the electrical panel, in a closet in the bedroom, or in a kitchen cabinet. Most of them that I’ve seen have been inside the electrical panel. All right. What that does, is it basically, shows you what the wind zone was, the snow load, and the roof load that that mobile home can handle, when it was manufactured. So, you got to find that data plate.
Now, what if the data plate is gone, as well?
Well, then you’re in a real situation because now, you don’t have any information about this home. But you may want to go to the manufacturer in that case, if you can find out any kind of thing, if you have anything, any information at all, that helps you tell who manufactured it, what the model number was, when it was built, all that kind of stuff. You may go to the manufacturer and they can give you the information for the data plate and at that point, then you can go to the Institute of Building Technology and Safety and have a letter of verification done. The other alternative is to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles, get the VIN number off of that, and then go back to the bank.
If you can locate this, through the Department of Motor Vehicles information, if you can locate the original bank that financed the original purchase of the mobile home, they may have that information, as well. If you don’t have that, then basically, Rapid Home Deals cannot buy it because I’m looking to turn around and sell it. Then, you’re basically limited to selling it to a private buyer who’s going to live in the house and who doesn’t mind not having all that information. So, unfortunately, couldn’t do any business with that fellow this week.
But as always, if you know somebody who’s looking to sell their home, have them call Rapid Home Deals at (352) 446-8559, or go to our website, www.rapidhomedeals.com, and we’ll see you next Friday.