Manufactured Housing Community Feasibility Study

Questions buyers ask

Who prepares a feasibility study for a manufactured housing community loan?

An independent consultant whose findings a credit officer can rely on because the author has no stake in whether the loan closes. Loan Analytics prepares manufactured housing community studies for SBA 7(a) and 504 lenders, lenders under USDA's Business and Industry guarantee and banks lending without a guarantee, and Daniel Smith, MAI is the signatory on each community study. The work separates pad income from home income, tests collections and turnover, sets the community against its competitors and against the other housing a resident could choose, prices the utility and road obligations, and builds debt service coverage on rents in place. It then places the request against this page's SBA record of 302 loans under 7(a) for $269.7 million and 13 under 504 for $12.7 million, approved FY2017 to FY2026.

Does a lender require a feasibility study to finance a mobile home park?

Not by a fixed rule in every case. Our 2026 fee survey reads the SBA's rules as leaving it to the agency's discretion: it can ask for a study when the business type or the market around a park needs explaining. Separately, a lender's credit policy may demand one for start-up businesses and for special-purpose property. For this class the record gives a lender its own reasons to ask: a 7(a) cancellation floor of 13.4%, a book that fell from 70 approvals in FY2021 to 5 in FY2024, and a shared industry code that keeps the SBA totals from describing communities alone. Ask your lender at the outset whether a study is a condition of the loan, and we will scope ours to meet that condition.

How much does a manufactured housing community feasibility study cost?

Each fee is quoted by Loan Analytics once we have read the scope request, so this page prints no fixed fee. The ranges that follow come from the 2026 survey Loan Analytics published on this site, which gathers what other providers post: $5,000 to $12,500 for an SBA study of a single site in a standard special-purpose class, between $10,000 and $25,000 for complex assignments, multi-site or phased construction among them, and from $7,500 to $18,750, sometimes more, when the study must meet USDA's standard in 7 CFR Part 5001. The survey does not name manufactured housing communities in any tier, so where a community study falls depends on its scope: one stabilized community, a portfolio of parks, or an expansion that adds pads and homes.

Can the feasibility study fee be included in the loan?

In most cases, yes, by the account in our 2026 fee survey. The survey counts eligible 504 soft costs as project cost financed within the debenture, and for 7(a) loans it places closing costs and outside report fees among eligible uses of proceeds. A community buyer therefore seldom pays for the study apart from the loan: the fee rides inside the sources and uses of the park loan. The survey adds that a study ordered by the lender from an independent third party is handled like an appraisal, as a report cost and not as agent compensation. For a community loan near the 7(a) median of $445,750 or the 504 median of $836,000, ask the lender how it will carry the fee before the study is ordered.

How long does a manufactured housing community feasibility study take?

Scope sets the timeline, and our reply to each scope request states it for that community; this page does not. This site's fee survey names the things that add length: additional sites, a ground-up build whose ramp starts at completion, USDA's enumerated factors, and rural markets where comparables must be checked on the ground. For a community, the slowest items are often documentary: reconciling the rent roll with deposits for both resident-owned and community-owned homes, and obtaining records on private utility systems. Include the lender's deadline with your request so the scope can be set against it.

How many SBA loans have gone to manufactured housing communities?

Among approvals from FY2017 to FY2026, 302 loans for $269.7 million came under 7(a) and 13 loans for $12.7 million under 504, all within the industry code that holds these communities. Over the full record from FY1991, the totals are 1,022 loans under 7(a) for $595.9 million and 47 loans under 504 for $35.2 million. Those counts include other lessors of real estate that share the code, such as land and ground lessors, so they measure more than community lending and are not a count of communities financed. In years when the industry code is missing for too many loans the yearly figure is a floor, and FY1991 is not measured at all.

Is the SBA still making loans to mobile home parks?

Very few. Approvals under 7(a) in the class went from 70 in FY2021 and 62 in FY2022 to 32 in FY2023; FY2024 had 5, FY2025 had none and FY2026 had 4. Under 504 the last approvals were the 4 of FY2023. The table does not record why, so a borrower should confirm that a lender will take the application before ordering a study. Once an SBA lender is ready to proceed, the study weighs more than it did at the FY2021 peak, because the reviewer has almost no recent approvals in the class against which to judge the request.

Has SBA lending to manufactured housing communities recovered from a drop before?

It has, in this record. After the FY2007 high of 62 approvals, 7(a) lending in the class fell to 40 in FY2008 and 37 in FY2009, then came back to 49 in FY2011 and 53 in FY2015. After 23 approvals in FY2019, the count rose to 43 in FY2020 and 70 in FY2021. The fall since FY2023 is deeper than either: FY2025 is the only measured year with no 7(a) approval in the class. The table cannot say whether lending will return, so a study should not assume it will, and it should show the loan works on the community's own evidence.

What is the typical SBA loan size for a manufactured housing community?

For FY2017 to FY2026 approvals, the 7(a) median is $445,750, with a lower quartile of $215,625 and an upper quartile of $1.1 million. The 504 median is $836,000, with quartiles of $717,000 and $1.0 million. State medians print only where a state has 30 loans: $849,000 in Texas and $638,750 in California. The size bands show where the money gathers: the 99 loans in the 7(a) middle band total $57.5 million, while the 40 loans in the highest band with any loans carry $133.7 million. A study should state which of these comparisons its request belongs to, and why.

Which states have the most SBA manufactured housing community loans?

Texas is first, 33 loans and $33.3 million over FY2017 to FY2026. California is second with 30 loans and $26.3 million, then Minnesota with 24 loans and $7.5 million, New York with 17 loans and $22.0 million and Ohio with 15 loans and $9.2 million. By dollars the order differs: New York is third, and Louisiana, with 5 loans for $15.6 million, is fourth. Alabama, Alaska, South Carolina and Wyoming do not appear in the state table. Only Texas and California carry enough loans for the state table to print their medians and cancellation floors, so a study anywhere else leans on national figures and local evidence.

How often are SBA manufactured housing community loans cancelled or charged off?

On 7(a) loans the cancellation floor is 13.4% for FY2017 to FY2024 approvals, the charge-off floor is 1.2% for loans funded from FY2017 to FY2021, and 0.58% charged off within 5 years. Texas and California print cancellation floors of 12.1% and 10.0%. No 504 rate is reported, because each 504 cohort has fewer than 30 loans, and no state prints a charge-off floor. Every rate is a floor. For a lender the low charge-off floor sits beside a much higher cancellation floor, so the study's first task is to clear the items that could stop a community loan between approval and funding.

Should a park purchase use SBA 7(a) or SBA 504?

That choice belongs to the borrower and the lender, and the study is written to whichever program they settle on. The record shows how each has been used for this class: 302 7(a) loans against 13 504 loans from FY2017 to FY2026, a 504 range between a lower quartile of $717,000 and an upper quartile of $1.0 million, and no 504 loan in the size band where 7(a) placed 40 loans for $133.7 million. No 504 loan in the class has been approved since FY2023. A borrower weighing 504 for a large community should expect few precedents in that program, and the study should carry the comparisons its lender will want to see.

What does the study test when the community owns and rents out homes?

It treats the community as two businesses with separate records. Pads leased to residents who own their homes produce lot rent; homes the community owns produce full rent and carry repair, vacancy and replacement costs the lot-rent side does not. The study tests turnover and collections for each group from leases, the rent roll and deposits, and shows debt service coverage both with and without the home-rental income, so the lender sees what share of the debt depends on home rentals. That split is the study's own work, because nothing in the SBA record on this page divides a community's income that way.

Why does the lender care so much about water, sewer, electric and roads?

Because in many communities those systems are private, old and the owner's to maintain, as the study notes on this page say, and a failure lands on the borrower's cash flow rather than on a public utility. The study records who owns each system, its condition from inspection and maintenance records, whether residents are billed through submeters or the community absorbs the cost, and the capital budget to keep each one serviceable over the loan term. The appraisal addresses the same infrastructure, and a study that has already priced it gives the lender one consistent view of the collateral. Unpriced utility work is also the kind of item that can reopen a file after approval, in a class with a 7(a) cancellation floor of 13.4%.

Can the study use planned lot rent increases to support the loan?

Coverage should be shown on the lot rents in place, after expenses a lender will recognize; a planned increase belongs in a separate scenario, not in the base case. The study then tests whether the increase is achievable: how current rents compare with the competing communities, what a resident's housing alternatives cost, and whether any local rule limits increases or requires notice. For an SBA lender the conservative base case also answers the record on this page: with 7(a) approvals down to 5 in FY2024 and 4 in FY2026, a reviewer has little recent precedent to lean on and will read the base case closely.

Do the SBA figures on this page count only manufactured housing communities?

No. The class is defined by an industry code shared with other lessors of real estate, including land lessors and ground leases, so the 302 7(a) loans and 13 504 loans from FY2017 to FY2026 include loans to lessors that are not manufactured housing communities, and the files do not allow the communities to be separated out. Read each count and dollar figure as a measure broader than community lending and as a guide to the class's direction, not as the number of communities financed. Our studies cite these figures with that caution and rest the credit case on the community's own records and its local market.

What if my state has few or no SBA loans for this class?

Then the study supplies the benchmark the SBA record cannot. Below Texas and California, every state row lacks the loans needed for a median or a floor, and Alabama, Alaska, South Carolina and Wyoming do not appear in the table for FY2017 to FY2026. In those states the study relies on the community's rent roll and collections, the rents at competing communities and the local housing alternatives, and it adds the neighbouring states of the same Census division where their rows give useful evidence, such as Minnesota's 24 loans for a community in the Dakotas, or the 33 in Texas for one in Oklahoma or Arkansas.

Can Loan Analytics prepare the study for a USDA or conventional lender?

Yes. Our community studies serve SBA 7(a) and 504 lenders, lenders under USDA's Business and Industry guarantee, and banks making conventional loans. This site's fee survey prices USDA work on its own line: a community study written to 7 CFR Part 5001 falls in a published range whose floor is $7,500 and whose listed top is $18,750, with some studies above it, because that rule lists the factors the study must cover. Nothing in this page's SBA record describes USDA or conventional loans, so for those lenders the study is built wholly on the community's records and its market, and it states that limit.

What should I ask a feasibility consultant before ordering a study?

The fee survey on this site sets out questions worth asking in order. Which program's standard the study is written to, since a study prepared to the lighter standard cannot later be stretched to meet the heavier one. Whether the author is independent of the project and will sign an opinion, since an unsigned study reads as a market report. Whether the competing properties will be checked directly, one by one, rather than assembled from listings. And whether delivery fits the loan's timeline. For a community, add one more: whether the study will separate resident-owned from community-owned homes and price the private utilities, which are items a lender cannot see in the SBA record.

What should I send Loan Analytics to request a scope?

The community's location and number of pads, how many homes residents own and how many the community owns and rents, the current rent roll and recent operating statements, what is known about the water, sewer, electric and road systems, any local rule on rents, whether the project is a purchase, a refinance or an expansion, the program and lender if they are chosen, and the lender's deadline. If the community is in Texas or California, the study will also set it against that state's median and cancellation floor; elsewhere it will name the neighbouring rows and national figures it uses.