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Although the name "mobile" implies that these houses will move around, they usually are placed in one location - often a rented lot - and left there for the life of the structure. However, they do retain the ability to be moved, and this is in fact required in many areas. Behind the cosmetic foundation-work normally fitted at installation to hide the base, there are strong road-going trailer frames, axles, wheels and tow-hitches.
The two major forms of mobile homes are single-wides and double-wides. "Single-wides" are sixteen feet or less in width and can be towed to their site as a single unit, whereas "double-wides" are twenty-four feet or more wide and are towed to their site in two separate units, which are then joined together. Triple-wides, although rarer, are also manufactured.
Mobile homes are not self-propelled vehicles containing housekeeping space inside them: Such vehicles are more properly referred to as motor homes or RVs.
This form of housing goes back to the early years of automobiles and motorized highway travel, and derives from the travel trailer, a small unit with permanently attached wheels often used for camping. Larger units intended to be used as dwellings for several months or more in one location came to be known as house trailers, a term now considered to be somewhat derisive.
The original focus of this form of housing was its mobility, and units were initially marketed primarily to persons whose lifestyle was necessarily mobile, such as construction workers. However, largely beginning in the 1950s, mobile homes began to be marketed primarily as an inexpensive form of housing designed to be set up and left in a location for long periods of time or even permanently installed with a masonry foundation. Many persons who could not afford a traditional site-built home or did not desire to commit to spending a relatively large sum of money for housing began to see mobile homes as a viable alternative for long-term housing needs, and the units were often marketed as an alternative to apartment rental.
However, the tendency of the units of this era to depreciate rapidly in resale value made loans using them as collateral far riskier than traditional home loans, and terms were generally limited to less, often far less, than the thirty year term typical of the general home-loan market, and interest rates were generally higher, often considerably so. In other words, mobile home loans resembled in many ways motor vehicle loans far more than traditional home mortgages.
The rise of the mobile home brought with it complications to a legal system which had not been set up to contemplate it. At first, mobile homes tended to be taxed as vehicles rather than real estate, which often resulted in very low property tax rates for those who lived in them. This led to moves by taxing jurisdictions to reclassify them as real property for taxation purposes.
However, rapid depreciation often resulted in their occupants paying far less in property taxes, even with this change, than had been anticipated and budgeted for many homeowners to pay. The ability to move many mobile homes into a relatively small area very rapidly often resulted in strains to the infastructure and governmental services of the affected areas, sometimes resulting in inadequate water pressure and sewage disposal and highway congestion. This led most jurisdictions to take steps to limit the number of mobile homes within them, most often by placing limitations on the size and density of developments that could be made utilizing them.
As noted above, early mobile homes, even well-maintained ones, tended to depreciate in value over time more like motor vehicles rather than appreciate in value, as is more typical with site-built homes. The arrival of mobile homes in an area tended to be regarded with alarm, particularly by the owners of more valuable real estate who often feared, with some reason, that their property values could become depressed.
This combination of factors has led most jurisdictions to restrict even further by zoning regulations the areas in which mobile homes can be placed, as well the number and density of mobile homes permissible on any given site. Often other restrictions, particularly minimum size requirements, limitations on exterior colors and finishes, and foundation mandates were enacted as well. There are many jurisdictions that do not allow any future mobile homes, and others have strongly limited or forbidden entirely all single-wide models, which tend to depreciate more rapidly in value than modern double-wide models.