Mobile home owners ask me about living trusts more than almost any other group, and for good reason. They have heard, correctly, that a trust avoids probate. What surprises them is that a mobile home does not go into a trust the way a house does.
The reason is that California has two different ways a mobile home can be titled. The correct transfer depends on which one yours uses. Use the wrong one and the transfer does nothing, usually without anyone noticing until the owner has died.
So the first job is to find out what you actually own.
Step 1: Find out which kind of home you have
| Registered home (personal property) | Converted home (real property) | |
|---|---|---|
| How it is titled | Certificate of Title issued by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) | Deed recorded with the county, like a house |
| How it goes into a trust | Paperwork filed with HCD | Recorded deed to the trustee |
| How common | Most California mobile homes | A smaller group |
Registration moved from the DMV to HCD around 1980, so some older homes still carry DMV paperwork (the old "pink slip"). Those homes are still treated as registered homes.
How a home becomes real property
Conversion takes more than a foundation. In the usual case, the owner pulls a building permit and installs the home on an approved foundation system. After the building department issues a certificate of occupancy, it records a notice with the county recorder. This notice is HCD Form 433A. The home's HCD title is then surrendered and the registration cancelled (Health and Safety Code section 18551). At that point the home is legally part of the land and moves with it by deed.
Some situations follow different rules, such as homes in resident-owned parks and homes on land held under a long-term lease. If your paperwork does not match the simple picture, ask before you file anything.
Three ways to tell which kind you have
- Look for a recorded 433A. Ask the county recorder for any 433A recorded against your property. If there is none, your home is almost certainly a registered home. If there is one, check that it is the most recent. HCD also uses Form 433A to report that a home has been removed from its foundation, and removal turns the home back into personal property.
- Check the HCD decal. A decal starting with "L" means the home is on local property tax, billed by the county. A decal starting with "A" means you renew your registration with HCD every year and pay a fee "in lieu" of property tax.
- Look at your bills. A converted home is taxed on the same county bill as the land. An unconverted home on local property tax gets a separate county bill for the home alone. An "A" home gets a renewal notice from HCD.
Two common misunderstandings
A foundation does not make a home real property. California law allows a home to sit on a foundation and stay personal property. A home can be on a solid foundation for decades and remain a registered home if the notice was never recorded and the HCD title was never cancelled.
Paying county property tax does not make a home real property either. Homes first sold new on or after July 1, 1980 are put on local property tax automatically, but they are still personal property unless converted. Plenty of owners pay a county tax bill for years and believe they own real estate. They own a taxed mobile home, and the difference decides how it transfers.
Step 2: Put the home in the trust
If your home was converted to real property
This is the easy case. You record a deed transferring the property to yourself as trustee. The deed moves the land and the home together, and HCD is not involved.
If you own the land but the home is a registered home
This is the mistake I see most often. You have two separate titles, and each has to be transferred separately:
- The land goes into the trust by a recorded grant deed.
- The home goes into the trust through HCD.
If only the deed is recorded, the trust owns the dirt and not the home sitting on it. The gap tends to show up at the worst times. A sale suddenly needs two closings in two systems. A refinance stalls because a real estate lender cannot take a lien on the home. At death, the successor trustee finds that HCD still lists the deceased owner and does not recognize the trustee. The family then has to use the HCD death-transfer process or probate, the very thing the trust was meant to avoid. The reverse mistake, transferring the home but never deeding the land, creates the same problem.
The HCD paperwork for a registered home
California law lets a trust be the registered owner of a mobile home (Health and Safety Code section 18080.1). HCD publishes an instruction sheet titled "Changing Ownership into the Name of a Trust" for each type of home:
- Form RT 804.6 for a home on local property tax (the "L" decal)
- Form RT 804.7 for a home on yearly registration (the "A" decal)
- Form RT 804.8 for an older home still holding a DMV pink slip
Get the current sheet for your home. It controls, and HCD updates its forms. As of HCD's March 2024 versions, the packet for an HCD-titled home includes:
- The original Certificate of Title, signed by every owner named on it, with the trust's name entered in the new owner area and a signature as trustee. If the title is lost, HCD has a duplicate application with a $25 fee.
- The original registration card, or a duplicate application ($25).
- For "L" homes only, a tax clearance certificate from the county tax collector, with the trust shown as the applicant. A tax bill does not substitute for it. "A" homes do not need one.
- The Multi-Purpose Transfer Form (HCD RT 476.6G), signed by each trustee. The current form includes a Designation of Trust section. HCD's older standalone Designation of Trust form (HCD 476.6B) does not appear on the current instruction sheets for HCD-titled homes, so check with HCD before sending it.
- The fees. HCD lists a $35 transfer fee. For "L" homes it also lists a registration fee of $23 per section and a park purchase fee of $5 per section, which is not due if you own the land. "A" homes may owe renewal fees if the registration expires within 60 days. There is a $25 fee if the lender on the title changes.
What about property taxes?
Moving a home into your own revocable trust is not a change in ownership under Revenue and Taxation Code section 62(d), so it does not trigger a property tax reassessment. An "L" home keeps its existing tax base. An "A" home stays on yearly registration. The trust simply replaces you as the registered owner.
One thing to know about the future: when the owner dies, a home on the local tax roll is generally treated as changing ownership, and the county may reassess it unless an exclusion applies (for example, a transfer to a spouse). The family should expect to file a change-in-ownership statement with the county assessor.
If there is a loan on the home
On an HCD title, the lender appears as the "legal owner," and you may need the lender's help to complete the transfer. On the loan itself, a federal law called Garn-St Germain generally stops a lender from calling the loan due because you moved your home into your own revocable trust, as long as you remain a beneficiary and keep living there. The law applies to loans secured by a residential manufactured home. I still suggest telling the lender before you file, because their cooperation may be needed to get the transfer done.
Transfer-on-death options
A living trust is the most complete tool, but California offers two transfer-on-death (TOD) arrangements for a mobile home. Which one you can use depends on the kind of home you own, and neither one works for the other kind.
For a registered home: the HCD TOD beneficiary designation
Under Health and Safety Code section 18080.2, an HCD title can be issued in your name followed by "transfer on death to" and your beneficiary's name. The statutory fee is $25. While you are alive, the beneficiary has no rights, and you can sell or refinance the home without that person's signature. At your death, the beneficiary applies to HCD and the home transfers without probate.
The limits matter:
- Only one owner and one beneficiary are allowed. A couple who hold title together cannot use it.
- There is no backup beneficiary. If your beneficiary dies before you, the home goes to your estate.
- It does nothing if you become incapacitated, because it only operates at death.
- The beneficiary takes the home subject to any loan or lien.
- A will cannot change it. Under section 18102.2, you change or cancel the designation only by selling the home or applying to HCD for a new title. If your will leaves the home to your daughter but the title names your son, your son gets the home.
For a converted home: the revocable TOD deed
For a converted home, California's revocable transfer on death deed (Probate Code section 5600 and following) lets you name a beneficiary who receives the property at your death. You can revoke it while you are alive. The formalities are strict, and a deed that misses any of them fails:
- It must be on the statutory form, signed and dated.
- Two witnesses, present at the same time, must sign, and a notary must acknowledge your signature.
- It must be recorded within 60 days after it is notarized.
- To revoke it, you must record a revocation (signed, witnessed and notarized the same way), a later TOD deed, or a deed transferring the property to someone else. A will cannot revoke it.
- The beneficiary takes the property subject to liens of record, and the deed gives you no help if you become incapacitated.
Do not use this deed for a registered home. The statutory form itself warns that it can transfer a mobilehome only if the home is a fixture under section 18551, meaning a converted home. California's TOD deed law is also scheduled to end on January 1, 2032. Deeds signed before that date stay valid, but the option may not be there forever.
A word on joint tenancy
You can hold an HCD title in joint tenancy, and the survivor takes the home at the first death without probate. I rarely recommend it as a plan. You are making a present gift of ownership to the other person. That person's creditors can reach the home, no one can sell it without every joint tenant's signature, and survivorship overrides your will and your trust. It also only postpones the problem, because when the last joint tenant dies the home is again in one name with no plan attached.
If your home is in a mobilehome park
In a park you own the home and rent the space under it. The Mobilehome Residency Law (Civil Code section 798 and following) governs that rental. Your tenancy is legally separate from ownership of the home, and a trust does not own or pass on the tenancy itself.
Retitling your home into your own revocable trust while you live in it does not change your rental agreement. I am not aware of any rule that requires park approval for that step. As a courtesy, I suggest telling management so their records match your title.
The park rules matter most after death. Civil Code section 798.78 covers what happens, and it speaks of heirs, joint tenants and personal representatives. It does not mention trustees, so a successor trustee should expect to work through the same rules even though the statute does not say so. In general terms:
- Your heirs may sell the home in place, on its space, only if the rent, utilities and maintenance that come due after your death are kept current. If they are not, the park can require the home to be removed, which wipes out most of its value.
- Before a sale, the home may need repairs, or replacement, to meet health and safety standards.
- A family member who wants to live in the home must qualify under the park's screening rules, like any other buyer.
- Rent keeps accruing while the family decides. Each month of delay is a month of rent on a home no one is living in.
What happens if you do nothing
If you die with the HCD title still in your name, your family does not automatically face a full probate. Health and Safety Code section 18102 provides a simpler HCD transfer on Form RT 475.2 for heirs or will beneficiaries. It becomes available 40 days after death and applies regardless of the home's value. It has conditions: the person who owned the home must not have left other property that requires probate, and the heir must certify under penalty of perjury that no probate has been opened and that there are no unsecured creditors, or that they have been paid or discharged.
When those conditions are not met, for example when the owner left other property needing probate, when heirs disagree, or when there is a lost title or unresolved lien, probate is the remaining route. In a park, rent keeps running the whole time.
The saddest version of doing nothing is the owner who did something, just not enough. Signing a trust and listing the mobile home on the trust's schedule of assets feels like funding it. It is not. A schedule is a list, not a transfer. If the HCD title (or the deed, for a converted home) was never changed, the trust does not own the home, whatever the schedule says.
Common mistakes
- Recording a deed into the trust for a home that is still HCD-registered. The deed does not move the home.
- Deeding the land into the trust but never transferring the HCD title, or the other way around.
- Listing the home on the trust's schedule of assets and assuming the trust owns it.
- Recording a TOD deed for a home that was never converted. At most it transfers the land.
- Assuming a foundation or a county tax bill made the home real property.
- Trying to change an HCD TOD beneficiary in a will.
- A couple holding title together trying to use the HCD TOD designation.
- Skipping the tax clearance certificate on an "L" home and stalling the HCD packet.
- Leaving a park home sitting after the owner's death while rent accrues.
Frequently asked questions
My trust lists my mobile home. Is it in the trust? Not unless the title was changed. For a registered home, the trust owns the home only when HCD has issued title in the trust's name. For a converted home, only when a deed to the trustee has been recorded. The schedule in your trust document does not transfer anything by itself.
Will putting the home in my trust raise my property taxes? No. A transfer to your own revocable trust is excluded from change in ownership under Revenue and Taxation Code section 62(d). Reassessment of a home on the local tax roll can come at death, as described above.
Can I skip the trust and just name a TOD beneficiary? If you are the sole owner of a registered home, yes, using the HCD TOD designation. It avoids probate, but it allows only one beneficiary, has no backup, and gives no one authority to manage the home if you become incapacitated. For a converted home, the equivalent is the revocable TOD deed, which has stricter paperwork rules.
My home is in a park. Can I still put it in a trust? Yes. The trust takes title to the home, and your space rental continues as before. The complications come at death, when an heir who wants to live in the home must qualify with the park, and the home can be sold in place only while post-death rent and charges stay current.
What if I cannot find my Certificate of Title? HCD issues duplicate titles and registration cards for a $25 fee each. A lost title is a paperwork problem, not a dead end, but fix it while you are alive to sign, not after.
I own the land and the home. Do I need anything besides a deed? Yes, unless the home was converted to real property. Without conversion, the deed leaves the home out of the trust. You need the deed for the land and the HCD transfer for the home.
A closing word
Mobile homes are where I see the widest gap between what an owner thinks the plan says and what the title actually says. The fix is usually an afternoon of paperwork once you know which kind of home you have.
If you would like me to look at how your home is titled and get it into your trust, or set up the TOD designation that fits it, call the Law Office of Robert M. Mansour at 661-414-7100.
This article is general information about California law, not advice about your situation. Forms, fees and procedures change, so confirm current requirements with HCD before filing.
Sources
Health and Safety Code sections 18080.1, 18080.2, 18102, 18102.2, 18551 and 18555; Civil Code section 798.78; Probate Code sections 5600 to 5698; Revenue and Taxation Code section 62(d); 12 U.S.C. section 1701j-3; HCD forms RT 804.6, RT 804.7 and RT 804.8 (Rev. 03/24), RT 476.6G, RT 475.2 and Form 433A; State Board of Equalization guidance on manufactured homes and change in ownership.