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How much does a double wide cost?

Work out what a double wide costs to live in, not what the dealer quotes for the home. A double wide is delivered as two halves and married together on a site, and that site is a separate transaction: your own land, land you are buying, or a rented lot in a park. Put in the dealer's price, the ground, the haul and set, the foundation, the utility connections and the permits, and see the whole check, with the home on one line and everything that turns it into a place to live on the others.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

This is the fork the page turns on, so answer it before you look at any dealer's price. The home and the ground under it are two different purchases from two different sellers.
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A double wide is the dwelling purchase where the building and the land can come apart, and which way you answer this changes the arithmetic rather than just a line in it. On land you already own, the ground costs nothing more and the whole check is the home and the site work. On land you are buying, the ground is a one-time cost and it joins the total. On a rented lot in a park, the ground is not in the purchase at all: it is a monthly bill that starts when you arrive and carries on for as long as the home is there, and no quote you are handed will show it. That last path makes the purchase look smaller and the decade look larger, which is why it gets its own box below rather than a footnote.
The headline figure on the quote, for the home on its own. The default is ours and editable, and your dealer's figure is the one that matters.
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Ask what is inside this number before you compare it with anything, because two quotes rarely draw the line in the same place. Some dealers quote the home at the factory gate and leave the haul, the set and the finish work to you; others quote a turnkey number that swallows several of the boxes below. Ask which lines are already in the figure and zero those boxes rather than paying for them twice. Then ask what the options did: the floor plan is the frame, but the upgrades your salesperson walked you through are frequently a five-figure line inside a number presented as one price.
What the parcel costs you. This line is added only on the land-I-am-buying path above, and is ignored on the other two. The default is ours and editable.
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Price the parcel for what it will take to make it a site rather than what the listing says, because raw land and a buildable lot are different objects at different prices. A parcel with a road to it, power at the boundary and a passed perc test is most of the way there. One without is a set of jobs that land in the boxes below: a driveway that can carry a truck and a crane, a power run measured in poles, and a septic system the county has to approve before it approves anything else. If the perc test has not been done, the honest answer is that the land is unpriced rather than cheap.
What the park charges each month. This is NOT in the total below, because the total prices the purchase and this is a bill that keeps arriving. It is here so the number is in front of you.
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Lot rent is the line that makes the park path look cheap and the decade look expensive, and it deserves two questions rather than one. First, what does it include: some parks fold water, sewer and rubbish into it, and some bill each of them beside it. Second, and this is the one that costs people, what stops it going up? Ask what it was three years ago rather than what it is today, and read the lease for the clause that governs increases. Your home does not move when the answer disappoints you: relocating a double wide is a five-figure job in its own right, which is what makes the rented lot a weaker negotiating position than a lease implies.
Hauling both halves to the site and marrying them together. The default is ours and editable, and it is one of the lines a turnkey quote may already contain.
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This is the line that separates a double wide from a single wide, and it is why the two are not one page. A double wide travels as two sections on two trucks and arrives as two halves of a house, so somebody has to crane or jack them onto the foundation, pull them together, seal the marriage line down the middle, and finish the roof and the floor across the seam. That is a crew, a crane and a day, priced against your distance from the factory and against how hard your site is to back a truck into. A tight lot, a soft approach or a slope moves this number more than the mileage does.
What the home sits on: piers and footings, a slab, or a permanent perimeter foundation. The default is ours and editable.
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This box is a lending decision disguised as a construction cost, and it is worth understanding before you pick the cheaper option. A home on piers and anchors is treated as personal property in many places, which points you at a chattel loan: shorter term, higher rate. A home on a permanent foundation, with the wheels and axles gone and the title retired into the land, can be treated as real property, which opens ordinary mortgage products and the rates that come with them. The permanent foundation costs more here and can cost less over the loan. Price both and ask your lender which one they are looking at, because that answer decides more money than this box does.
Water, sewer or septic, power and gas, from the boundary to the home. The default is ours and editable, and this is the box with the widest spread.
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This line is small on a finished lot and large on a bare one, so it is the box to price properly rather than accept a placeholder for. On a lot with a water meter, a sewer stub and power at the boundary you are paying for connections and a short trench. On raw land you may be paying for a well and a septic system, each a serious job with its own permit, its own inspection and its own capacity to fail a test and rewrite your plans. The order matters too: a septic permit turns on a perc test, and a failed perc test can rule out the parcel rather than raise this number.
What turns a delivered home into a finished one. The default is ours and editable.
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These read like accessories and behave like requirements. Skirting closes the gap between the home and the ground, and it is usually mandatory rather than cosmetic: it keeps animals and freezing air out of your plumbing, and the park or the county typically requires it within a set window after you arrive. Every exterior door needs steps or a landing that can pass an inspection, and there is more than one door. Central air is frequently an option rather than an inclusion, and retrofitting it later costs more than checking the quote now.
What your county charges to allow the home and to sign it off. The default is ours and editable, and your county's fee schedule is public.
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This is the smallest box on the page and the one that can stop the project, so treat the figure as the least interesting thing about it. The permits usually run in a sequence, and each one gates the next: zoning has to allow a manufactured home on the parcel, the septic permit turns on a passed perc test, the setup gets inspected, and the certificate that lets you move in comes last. Call the county before you sign a dealer's contract rather than after. The fee is public and modest; the answer to whether they will permit your home on your parcel at all is the part worth having in advance.
Estimated cost
$183,500
  • The home, as the dealer quotes it$90,000
  • The land, if you are buying it$60,000
  • Delivery and set$9,000
  • Foundation or pad$9,000
  • Utility connections$8,000
  • Skirting, steps, decks and air conditioning$6,000
  • Permits and inspections$1,500
  • Total$183,500
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$100,000 to $200,000 is the ordinary shape of this purchase: a home, the ground under it, and everything it takes to turn the two into an address. Look at what share of this total the home was. If the site work is running close to the home, that is normal rather than a red flag, and it is also the half of the check where a second quote is most likely to move the number, since the dealer has one price and the trades have several.

What this assumes, and where it could be wrong

Every one of these is a place the number could be off. They are here because you should be able to check our working, not because we are hedging.

THE DEALER QUOTES A HOME. A HOME IS NOT A PLACE TO LIVE.
This is the whole page. The figure on the dealer's lot prices a building, and a building on a truck is not somewhere you can sleep: it has to be hauled to a site, craned onto a foundation, married down the middle, connected to water and power and a sewer or a septic system, skirted, stepped and signed off by a county inspector. Those jobs are bought from other people, in other conversations, and none of them are in the number that made you walk onto the lot. At our own defaults, on land you are buying, a $90,000 home lands in a $183,500 check, which means $93,500 of it was the ground and the site work. Two dealer quotes compared against each other are two comparisons of the smaller half.
The fork at the top is tenure, and it changes the arithmetic rather than a line in it.
On land you already own, the ground costs nothing more and the check is the home and the site work. On land you are buying, the ground is a one-time cost and it joins the total, which is why the same home at our defaults moves from $123,500 to $183,500 when the parcel comes with it. On a rented lot the ground leaves the purchase entirely and becomes a bill: our default $550 a month is $6,600 a year and $66,000 over ten years, none of which is in the total above, because the total prices a purchase and rent is not a purchase. That is the honest way to hold it. It also means the park path is not simply the cheaper one: it is the one where the smaller check comes with a payment you do not control, on ground you cannot take with you, under a home that costs five figures to move.
The foundation box is a lending decision wearing a construction cost's clothes.
A double wide on piers and anchors is frequently treated as personal property, and personal property is financed with a chattel loan: shorter term, higher rate, and a payment that reflects both. The same home on a permanent perimeter foundation, with the axles removed and the title retired into the land, can be treated as real property, which opens ordinary mortgage products. The permanent foundation is the dearer line in the ledger above and can be the cheaper decision across the loan, and the gap between those two financing paths is capable of dwarfing the difference in the box. This page prices the foundation and not the loan, so ask your lender which classification they are underwriting before you let the cheaper pour win the argument.

This page prices getting the home onto the site, and it stops there. It does not price what the home costs you afterwards: the loan, the insurance, the taxes, the lot rent if you are on a rented lot, the heating and cooling of a building whose envelope is what the factory built, or the value it gains or sheds while you live in it. Those are real and several of them are large. The page answers the question people type, which is what a double wide costs, and the answer to that is a check you write once and a set of quotes you have to gather from more than one seller.

The defaults are ours and they are placeholders, not a survey. Every dollar figure on this page is a round number we picked so the form has something to draw before you touch it, and each one is labelled as ours on the input itself. The spread on several of these boxes is wide enough that our default is close to meaningless for your site: utility connections on a lot with a meter and a sewer stub and utility connections on raw land needing a well and a septic system are the same box and a different order of number. Replace them with quotes. The arithmetic is the part this page is for.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a double wide cost?
The home itself is a dealer quote, set against a floor plan, a size, the options and whatever your region will bear, so this page leaves that figure to your dealer rather than inventing one to stand in for it. What the page adds is the part the quote cannot show you. A double wide is delivered as two halves and has to become a house on a site, so the purchase is really the home, the ground under it, the haul and the crane set that marries the halves, the foundation, the utility connections, the skirting and steps, and the county's permits. Put your own figures in the form above and you get the whole check. At our defaults, on land you are buying, the site and the ground come to roughly the size of the home, which is the reason the page exists.
Is a double wide cheaper than building a house?
Usually yes on the building, and the gap is narrower than the two sticker prices suggest, because the lines this page adds are lines a house build also carries. The land, the foundation, the utility connections and the permits are site costs rather than home costs, and they arrive whether the dwelling was built in a factory or on your lot. What a factory home saves is the construction: a controlled line, a fixed plan, weeks rather than months, and no weather. The comparison worth running is total against total rather than quote against quote, so price this page against the cost to build a house calculator with the same parcel and the same site work in both. The other half of the comparison is financing, since a house on a permanent foundation is real property and a home on piers may not be, and that classification can move more money than the build method does.
What does it cost to set up a double wide on land I already own?
Zero the land line and the calculator answers exactly that: at our defaults the check comes to $123,500, of which $90,000 is the home and $33,500 is putting it on your ground. Owning the parcel is the honest way to buy one of these, because the ground under the home is the part that holds its value while the building depreciates like the manufactured product it is. Before you price anything, though, check that the parcel will take it: zoning has to allow a manufactured home there, some places set a minimum size or age, some subdivisions forbid them by covenant, and a septic permit turns on a perc test the land can fail. Those answers are free and they come from your county. Get them before you sign a contract for a home, rather than after.
Is lot rent included in the price of a double wide?
No, and that is the single most useful thing to know about the park path. The dealer sells you a home and the park rents you the ground it stands on, so lot rent is a separate agreement with a separate party and it appears in no purchase quote. It starts when you arrive and continues for as long as the home is there. Our default of $550 a month is $6,600 a year and $66,000 across ten years, which is why the calculator keeps it out of the total and puts it in a box of its own: folding a monthly bill into a one-time check would flatter the wrong path. Ask what the rent includes, ask what it was three years ago rather than what it is today, and read the clause that governs increases, because a double wide costs five figures to relocate and that is what makes a rented lot a weaker position than the lease reads like.

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