Home types

A modular home is built in sections in a factory, then assembled on a permanent foundation and held to the same local building codes as a site-built house. That makes it a different thing from a manufactured home (built to the federal HUD code on a steel chassis), a mobile home (the pre-1976 term), a CrossMod, a kit home or a panelized build. The names get used interchangeably, but the differences decide what you can finance, where you can put it, and what it will be worth in 20 years.

These guides untangle the taxonomy: what each build type actually is, how the types compare head to head, and what that means when you're choosing a home from the directory.