Down Payment Assistance

Very common question in this day and age, “I’m a first time homebuyer, can I get down payment assistance?“ For manufactured homes there are no standard assistance programs like CalHFA or other similar programs for traditional mortgages. On occasion there are local area programs, but these are few and fraught with funding issues. So what advantages would a manufactured home hold for first time home buyers?

Three big areas, downpayment, closing costs and mortgage insurance. Downpayment can be as little as 5% of the purchase price (which can be a gift), and since the purchase price is normally at least 50% less than a similar condo/townhome this means less dollars required. A $200,000 manuf. home purchase only requires $10,000 for downpayment.

Most of the closing costs can be rolled into the loan making the cash outlay required by the borrower much lower. This does have a minor impact to the monthly, but for most first time homebuyers, it’s the initial cash outlay that is the largest hurdle not an extra $10 or $20/month.

On traditional mortgages a loan of greater than 80% of the purchase price requires mortgage insurance, sometimes rolled into the interest rate, but it’s still a requirement. For manufactured homes there is no mortgage insurance just the interest rate based on borrower’s qualifications.