Well, the past two weeks have really been eventful. Just when I thought I had experienced about every housing type out there, I recently received new information I feel compelled to pass along. I have done appraisals on several hybrids, (manufactured housing with stick built additions), and they are not atypical for our area as several people have them.
About a year ago, I had to do an appraisal for one that was converted to a single family residential property. As a matter of fact, they even produced a letter from the County stating such and they were appropriately placed in the higher tax bracket. I completed the appraisal, attaching a copy of the letter and the property sold a couple of months later.
Well, in today's market, it's much more difficult to find financing on manufactured homes, let alone hybrids! I completed an appraisal for one such propery who had been told by 4 different lenders since June of this year, that refinancing the property would be "no problem!" However, in every single case, the final outcome was the loan was NOT approved. So, after being informed of this, I decided to contact the powers that be and found out that a Manufactured Home is always considered a Manufactured home no matter what re-classification may occur by the local Assessor's Office. It appears that once a Manufactured home is listed in the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac database, that it must always be considered a manufactured improvement regardless if the property added thousands of square feet of livable area! The only way that the manufactured property can TRULY be reclassified, is if it is removed from the property and the property owner has to sign an affidavit indicating such! I also was told that once a re-classification is completed in our county, it can never be reversed, so now the poor property owner who thinks that they are improving their property for the better are really hurting themselves by paying the higher tax and decreasing their financing opportunities.
I would love to hear about any experiences you have had with "Hybrids" that have been "Re-classified".
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