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How much does it cost to level a trailer house?

Work out what releveling a trailer house actually costs, from the pier count rather than a guess at the house. A manufactured home sits on a grid of stacked piers, and the crew jacks the steel frame back to level and re-shims that stack, so the bill is built from how many piers they touch and how many of them have to be rebuilt. Put in the pier count, the labor per pier, the parts and the access work, and see the single visit. Then put in how often your ground makes you do it, and see the decade.

§ 01 Your numbers

Change anything. The answer updates as you type.

What the crew charges to show up, bring the jacks and set up, before anybody touches a pier. The default is ours and editable.
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Ask two things about this line. First, whether it is credited against the work if you go ahead, which many crews do and some do not, because an uncredited call fee on three competing quotes is three fees to compare a job you have not bought yet. Second, whether it covers the inspection: a proper look means somebody under the home with a level and a notepad, coming out with a pier-by-pier count, and that count is the number every other box on this page depends on. A crew that will quote you a whole-house price without going under the home has not measured anything.
The single most important box on the page, because this job is priced per pier. The default is ours and it is a placeholder: get the real count from whoever goes under the home.
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A manufactured home rests on a grid of stacked piers under its steel frame, spaced along the main beams, and the count follows the size rather than the address. A small single wide may sit on twenty-odd; a large double wide runs well past forty, because it has two frames and a third row of supports down the marriage line where the two halves meet. Not every pier is out. A crew that finds a settled corner may jack a dozen and leave the rest alone, which is a much smaller bill than a whole-house relevel, so ask how many they are actually touching rather than accepting a round number for the house.
What the crew charges for each pier they lift and re-shim. The default is ours and editable, and your local rate is the one that matters.
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This is the rate to get in writing, because it is the number that turns an unknown pier count into a bill you can check. Some crews quote per pier outright; others quote a day rate or a flat house price, and if yours does, divide it by the pier count they gave you and compare that against this box. A flat price is not automatically worse, but it is unreadable until you know what it implies per pier, and it is the shape that hides a small job priced as a large one.
Piers where the block stack, the pad under it or the shims on top have failed and have to be replaced rather than adjusted. The default is ours and editable.
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Re-shimming a sound pier is minutes. Rebuilding one is a different job: the stack comes down, the footing pad underneath gets looked at, and it goes back up. That is where the parts on this page live, and it is also the box that tells you something the leveling itself does not. A pier that has sunk into the ground has a drainage problem under it, and cracked blocks and rotted wood shims mean water has been sitting where it should not. Replacing them fixes the symptom on a schedule your gutters and grading set.
Blocks, a footing pad, hardwood or steel shims, and the time to take the stack down and build it back. The default is ours and editable.
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Ask what goes back in, because the parts are cheap and the labor to reach them is not, which makes this a poor place to save forty dollars. Wood shims rot and compress and are what a lot of these homes were set on originally; hardwood or steel plate shims last longer. A pier that has sunk wants a wider footing pad under it rather than the same pad reset in the same hole, since spreading the load is the part of this job that changes the outcome. If the quote does not say what the rebuilt pier is made of, it is not a specification.
Resetting, tightening or replacing the straps and ground anchors that hold the home down. The default is ours and editable, and zero it if none of yours need attention.
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Anchors and leveling are separate systems that fail together, which is why the crew is already under there. Jacking the home moves the frame, so straps that were tight can end up slack and slack straps do nothing in the wind. Anchors themselves corrode, pull loose in soft ground, or were never installed to the standard the county now wants. In much of the country this is not optional: tie-down requirements are set locally and enforced at inspection, and an insurer can take an interest as well. Ask the crew to check the anchors while the jacks are in place rather than booking a second visit for it.
Taking the skirting off to get under the home, repairing what is torn, and putting it back. The default is ours and editable.
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Nobody reaches a pier without getting under the home first, and on a skirted home that means panels off and back on, sometimes with a few of them replaced because vinyl skirting goes brittle with age and does not always survive being removed. While it is open, the vapor barrier is worth looking at: the sheeting across the ground under the home is what keeps the crawl space dry, and a torn one is a fair part of why the wood down there is soft. This box is small and it is the one most likely to be quietly excluded from a low quote, so ask whether the skirting is in the price or extra.
What your county or your park charges, if either requires it. The default is ours and editable, and plenty of readers should zero it.
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Whether releveling needs a permit varies by jurisdiction and by what else is being done: adjusting piers is frequently treated as maintenance and left alone, while replacing anchors or altering the support system can be treated as a setup change and inspected. Your county's fee schedule is public, so this is a phone call rather than a guess. If you are in a park, ask the office too, because parks often carry their own rules about who may work under a home and what has to be reported, and finding that out after the crew has arrived is the expensive order to do it in.
This box is NOT in the total, because the total is the check you write for one visit. It is here because one visit is not the real cost of owning this problem.
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Piers settle because the ground under them moves, and the ground carries on doing that after the crew drives away. How fast depends on what your home is standing on and what water does around it: expansive clay that swells and shrinks with the seasons will push a home out of level far quicker than sand or gravel will, and a downspout dumping beside a pier is a schedule of its own making. Some owners never touch it after the initial set; some are back every couple of years. Use your own history if you have one, because it is worth more than any average, and if this is your first relevel, ask the crew what they are seeing under there. That is the answer this box wants.
Estimated cost
$2,860
  • Service call and setup$350
  • Jacking and re-shimming the piers$1,350
  • Piers rebuilt, parts and labor$510
  • Anchor and tie-down work$300
  • Skirting, vapor barrier and crawl access$250
  • Permit or inspection$100
  • Total$2,860
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$1,500 to $4,000 is the ordinary shape of this job: every pier checked, a large share of them jacked and re-shimmed, some fraction rebuilt with new blocks and pads, the anchors looked at while the crew is under there and the skirting off and back on. Look at what share of the total the rebuilt piers took. If a lot of piers had failed rather than merely settled, the home has a water problem as well as a leveling problem, and only one of those was in this quote.

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.

THIS JOB IS PRICED PER PIER, AND THE PIER COUNT IS THE BOX THAT DECIDES YOUR BILL.
A manufactured home does not sit on a foundation in the way a site-built house does. It sits on a grid of stacked piers under its steel frame, and releveling means jacking the frame and re-shimming that stack, pier by pier. So the labor scales with how many piers get touched. At our defaults, 30 piers at $45 is $1,350 of the $2,860 total, which is close to half the check coming out of one multiplication. That is why a whole-house price quoted by somebody who has not been under your home is not a quote. Get the count first, then the rate, then compare.
The total is one visit. The interval box is why one visit is the wrong number to plan around.
Piers go out of level because the ground beneath them moves, and that ground keeps moving. Nothing in a releveling job changes what the soil does, so the honest way to hold this cost is as maintenance on a schedule rather than a repair that ends. The calculator keeps the interval out of the total, because the total has to stay comparable with the quote in your hand, and puts the arithmetic beside it instead: at our defaults, $2,860 every four years is $715 a year and $7,150 across a decade. If your ground moves faster than that, the decade figure moves with it, and the money that actually changes the schedule is spent on drainage rather than on jacks.
A rebuilt pier is a message about water, and the calculator prices the pier rather than the message.
There is a real difference between a pier that needs re-shimming and a pier that needs rebuilding, and this page charges for it in two separate boxes because the second one is telling you something. Blocks crack, wood shims rot and compress, and a footing pad sinks into ground that has stayed wet. Those are drainage symptoms showing up as a leveling bill. Rebuilding the pier is the correct repair and it will not stop the cause, so the gutters, the downspout runs, the grade falling away from the home and the vapor barrier under it are what decide whether the interval box above gets longer or shorter. That work is not on this page, and it is frequently the cheaper half of the problem.
The service call, the anchor line and the skirting line are fixed costs, and on a small job they dominate.
Jack a dozen piers rather than thirty and the labor line falls by two thirds while the service call, the anchors and the skirting do not move at all, which is why the page also prints an all-in figure per pier. At our defaults the job comes to $2,860 across 30 piers, or about $95 a pier once everything fixed is spread over them, against a $45 headline rate. Read that as the reason a very small relevel can feel poor value per pier and a large one can look cheap per pier, and as the number to use when one crew quotes per pier and another quotes flat.

The defaults are ours and they are placeholders rather than a survey. Every 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. Several of these boxes have a spread wide enough that our default may be nowhere near your job: a partial relevel of one settled corner and a whole-house relevel with a third of the piers rebuilt are the same form and a different order of number. Replace them with a quote and a pier count from somebody who has been under the home. The arithmetic is the part this page is for.

This page prices the leveling and it stops there. It does not price what a home that has been out of level for years may also need: doors and windows that no longer close square, cracked drywall at the corners, a split marriage line where two halves have parted, plumbing that has been pulled at the joints, or floor framing that has gone soft where the crawl space stayed wet. Some of those settle back once the frame is level and some do not. If any of them are in play, they are separate quotes from separate trades, and the leveling crew is the wrong person to ask about all of them.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to level a trailer house?
It depends on a count rather than on the house, which is why this page asks for the count first. Releveling is priced per pier: the crew jacks the steel frame, re-shims the stack under each pier that has settled, and charges for each one they touch, so a partial relevel of one sagging corner and a whole-house relevel are very different bills for the same address. Put your own figures in the form above and you get the ledger. At our defaults, 30 piers jacked at $45 each with 6 of them rebuilt comes to $2,860 including the service call, the anchor work, the skirting and a permit. Change the pier count and watch how much of the total moves with it, because that is the box your quote should be built from too.
How often does a mobile home need releveling?
As often as the ground under it makes you, which is the honest answer and also the useless-sounding one, so here is what drives it. Piers settle because the soil beneath them moves, and expansive clay that swells wet and shrinks dry moves a great deal more than sand or gravel does. Water is the other half: a downspout emptying beside a pier, a grade that falls toward the home rather than away, or a torn vapor barrier keeping the crawl space damp will all put you back on the schedule sooner. Some owners never relevel after the initial set. Others are back every two or three years. The calculator takes your interval and shows the decade rather than pretending there is a national figure, because at our defaults the difference between a four-year cycle and an eight-year one is $7,150 against $3,575 over ten years, and drainage work is what moves you between them.
How do I know if my trailer house needs leveling?
The home tells you before anybody goes under it. Doors that stick or swing open on their own, windows that have got hard to slide, gaps opening where the wall meets the ceiling, cracks running diagonally from a door corner, a floor that feels springy or slopes noticeably underfoot, and on a double wide a marriage line that has started to part down the middle of the house. A marble on the floor is the old test and it works well enough to be worth doing. What it will not tell you is how many piers are involved, and that is the number the bill is made of, so the diagnosis worth paying for is somebody under the home with a level who comes back out with a pier-by-pier count rather than a price for the house.
Can I level a mobile home myself?
The parts are cheap and the arithmetic is simple, and that is what makes this look more approachable than it is. You are lifting a dwelling on jacks, working underneath it while it is up, and every pier you adjust changes the load on the ones around it, so it is a whole-house job done in small increments rather than a corner you can fix in isolation. Get it wrong and you can rack the frame, split the marriage line or put a load somewhere the home was not built to carry it, and the repairs on that list cost more than the crew would have. There is also a paperwork answer worth checking before the practical one: many parks require work under a home to be done by an approved contractor, and some counties treat changes to the support system as a permitted alteration. Ask both before you buy a jack.
Does leveling fix the cracked walls and the sticking doors?
Partly, and it is worth knowing which part before you expect too much of the bill. Once the frame is level again, doors and windows that had gone out of square often come back, and floors stop sloping because the thing making them slope has been corrected. Drywall cracks and torn tape do not repair themselves and are cosmetic work afterwards. What matters more is what has already been strained: on a double wide, a marriage line that has parted may need pulling back and resealing, and plumbing joints that have been slowly stretched can leak once things move again. So level first, because the rest is hard to judge while the home is still moving, then look at what is left and price that separately.

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