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Updated about 4 years ago, 09/23/2020
Is this a mobile home or a single family house?
I just bought a single family house in Central PA (Cumberland County, near Harrisburg). The plan is to flip it. Bought it for $95k off market, planning to put in about $43k and sell for $190k.
We walked through twice and the seller told us there was no basement and no crawl space. Well, after we closed and brought our rehab team in, they discovered a small door in the back of the property (covered with siding, so it blends in). The door opens up revealing a small crawl space.
Now here's where it gets weird. In the crawl space, there's steel beams running across part of the structure, almost like it used to be a mobile home. After seeing the structure under the property, it appears that a long time ago it was a mobile home, and since then there's been additions added on. So PART of the house is on a block foundation. The other part, with the steel beams, is resting on cinderblock piers, which are resting on poured concrete piers. We couldn't see any of this initially because there's cinderblocks covered by siding around the perimeter of the house.
Note: the county classifies the house as "Single family detached". I checked other properties that are definitely mobile/manufactured and they are classified as "Manufactured".
So, it's not a MOBILE home anymore... the house is quite stationary. Our concern is the implications with selling. Do we need to worry about an inspector flagging an issue, or worse, do we need to worry about the future buyer being able to finance a house that a lender might classify as still a mobile home? Would this/should this affect comps?