Have you ever driven through a mobile home park throughout the greater Sarasota Florida area and noticed a mobile home that looked shorter and smaller than all the others in the park?
After seeing this unique mobile home, have you ever wondered what it was and how it got into the mobile home park in the first place?
Enter the world of park model mobile homes!
Park model mobile homes are unique properties in that they are always the same width as a single-wide mobile home and are shorter in length than any other home you normally see.
Most park model mobile home dimensions are around 12-14 feet in width and 28-32 feet in length.
Park-model mobile homes are primarily designed for long-term or permanent placement at a destination where a mobile home or an RV is allowed. Park models and mobile homes are considered recreational but can also be long-term regular dwellings. This is a relatively new phenomenon and it is just starting to gain popularity among other factory-built homes.
Park model mobile homes require different building specs in the United States. They must remain under 400 square feet to qualify as a vehicle under most federal and state laws. Like traditional mobile homes, park-model mobile homes also have steel tie-down straps to satisfy local zoning or mobile home park regulations.
Aloha Mobile Home Park
Some people may mistakenly call a park model a manufactured home but this is incorrect due to the fact that park models are licensed as RV’S. A park-model mobile home is neither an RV nor a manufactured home. This type of home is built according to the RV industry code but usually in the same factories that produce manufactured homes, so the same rules for quality and modern design are applied.
The Recreation Vehicle Association (RVIA) defines park model RV as a unique trailer-type RV that is designed to provide temporary accommodation for recreation, camping, or, seasonal use. RMPVs are built on a single chassis, mounted on wheels, and have a gross trailer area not exceeding 400 square feet in the set-up mode.
Park model mobile homes are different from the traditional single or doublewide mobile homes that one normally sees during their travels throughout most mobile home parks.
These homes offer the same cost-efficient benefits as traditional mobile homes, only they carry with them several differences that are worth highlighting.
Park model mobile homes are traditionally much shorter in length than regular mobile homes with an average length being around 32 feet long. These homes are usually just as wide as traditional single-wide mobile homes with a twelve-foot width.
Park model mobile homes do have a different type of registration associated with them than the traditional single-wide and doublewide mobile homes in that they have a physical license plate that goes with them instead of that of a registration sticker. The reason for the actual license plate is that park model mobile homes are much smaller in weight and size than traditional mobile homes and, as a result, can be transported in a far smaller truck than what would be needed for traditional mobile home transport.
While these homes are shorter in stature compared to their mobile home counterparts, they certainly do not come up “short” in features as these homes can have the exact same level of niceties as the homes one is used to seeing in a mobile home park.
It is not unusual to see high-end cabinets, countertops, central AC, and vaulted ceilings in these types of homes.
Many times you will not find park models in the mobile home section of a mobile home park but, rather, in the RV section.
The reason for this is that these homes have physical license plates on the front of them and not the traditional registration stickers one sees in the windows of traditional mobile homes. Instead of the license plate being put on the actual home it will usually be required to be placed in the front window of the property.
With the requirement for license plates as a way to identify the property, most parks will then group them into the RV and fifth wheel sections of a park as these units both have license plates instead of window sticker identification tags.
In our research, park models are usually considerably cheaper in price than a single-wide home usually coming in at 30-40% lower in cost.
The registration fees are cheaper due to the fact that the home is shorter and they are much easier to move than traditional mobile homes due to the fact they weigh considerably less than a single wide mobile home.
Much like mobile homes, park model pricing varies across the board from a brand new, top-of-the-line model in the $70,000 + range to fixer uppers under $10,000. What we have seen at The Mobile Home Dealer is that due to the size of a park model mobile home, many times they are not deemed as desired by many owners and as such there are quite a few more deals to be had on a park model than on a traditional mobile home.
Although we usually do not see park models being present in traditional mobile home parks as they are more prevalent in the RV park arena, park-model mobile homes offer just as many features as single-wide mobile homes do for less money.
If you are looking for a low-cost, high-quality home with all of the bells and whistles and can go without some additional space then we strongly suggest you consider a park model mobile home for your next mobile home purchase.
This is Mark Kaiser with The Mobile Home Dealer and we help mobile home Buyers and Sellers get to a better place in life.
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