How to Start a Mobile Home Repair Business

How do you start a mobile home repair business from zero to your first paying job?

Check your state's installer rules first, then register the business and bind liability. Learn releveling on your own home or a friend's, buy a jack kit, and door-knock one park.

This trade has an unusually short runway. You do not need a shop, a crew, or a second vehicle. You need to be able to crawl under a home, read where it has settled, and put it back on plane without cracking drywall or racking a door frame. Everything else on this list exists so you can legally take money for that.

• Find out which licensing world you live in before you spend a dollar, because it decides whether you need a credential at all. HUD administers manufactured home installer licensing in 15 states. Texas and Florida run their own programs. Everywhere else, ordinary state contractor rules apply to the repair work.
• Register an LLC, get an EIN, and open a separate business checking account. Registration and licensing paperwork runs $100 to $500 depending on the state.
• Bind general liability before your first jobsite. Handyman policies average about $67 a month, roughly $809 a year, and a first year budget of $500 to $1,500 is realistic. Tell the agent you do roof and plumbing work even though it raises the rate 30 to 50 percent, because a denied claim is worse than a higher premium.
• Buy the leveling kit first, not the fancy tools. A 20 ton hydraulic bottle jack is $130 to $220 new, and a complete basic leveling setup with jacks, a water level, shims and blocks runs $200 to $350.
• Practice on a home nobody is paying you for. Level a relative's single-wide, pull the skirting, look at the pier spacing, find the marriage line. The first paid double-wide is a bad place to learn what a shimmed pier feels like.
• Read 24 CFR 3285.402 once, all the way through. It is the anchoring rule you will be measured against: Wind Zone II and III homes need longitudinal ground anchors at the ends of each transportable section, a vertical tie at every diagonal tie location, and anchors driven to full depth.
• Pick three mobile home parks within 20 minutes and introduce yourself to the managers by name. Park managers field the complaint calls and hand out the phone numbers.
• Photograph the first job from under the home, during, and finished. Sagging floor before and level floor after is the only marketing that closes the second job.

How much does it cost to start a mobile home repair business?

A lean one-person start runs $2,000 to $10,000, mostly tools and a used van. A mid-range setup with a newer van, better tools and full insurance runs $15,000 to $25,000.

The single biggest line is transportation, and it is the one you can most easily overspend on. A dependable used work van is $7,000 to $15,000. If you already own a truck that can pull a small trailer, day one is tools and paperwork instead: a $200 to $350 leveling kit, $2,000 to $5,000 of hand and power tools, and $100 to $500 of registration and licensing.

Be careful with the insurance math. General liability looks cheap at $55 to $67 a month, but the moment you list minor plumbing, light electrical and roof repairs on the policy, the rate runs 30 to 50 percent above a painting-and-assembly handyman. Commercial auto is the line new operators forget entirely, at $1,200 to $3,500 per vehicle per year for contractors. Then add inland marine, because general liability covers tools only at the jobsite address listed on the policy, not the $2,000 to $5,000 of gear sleeping in your van.

What licenses, certifications and insurance do you need to repair mobile homes?

It depends on the state. HUD runs installer licensing in 15 states, Texas and Florida run their own, and California lets unlicensed work only under $1,000. Carry liability regardless.

There is no single national mobile home repair license, and any guide that says otherwise is guessing. The requirements split three ways. HUD directly administers the manufactured home installation licensing program in 15 states: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. In those states you complete a HUD-approved training program, meet the training and insurance requirements, and submit form HUD 307 under 24 CFR 3286.207. Other states run their own installer programs. And in every state, ordinary contractor licensing still applies to the repair work whether the home is manufactured or stick-built.

Texas licenses through TDHCA. The Installer (I) license runs on a two year term with 8 hours of continuing education before renewal. Renewal is $350, or $525 if you let it lapse 90 days or less, or $700 past 90 days, and a license expired a full year cannot be renewed at all. Florida licenses through DHSMV: $200 total to apply, $50 application plus $150 license, renewing at $150 by October 1 with a $50 late fee after that, on an October 1 to September 30 cycle. Florida applicants must be 18 or older, complete a department-approved installation course of at least 8 hours, and pass an exam with a fee capped at $100. Florida also requires a $5,000 performance bond and liability coverage.

California is the state that catches people who think small repairs are exempt. Under AB 2622, effective January 1, 2025, an unlicensed person can take a job with a total contract price under $1,000, up from the $500 threshold that stood since 2005, and only if no employees are hired and no permits are required. The advertisement has to say you are unlicensed, and CSLB caps down payments at 10 percent of the contract price. Go over that line without a license and it can be charged as a misdemeanor. One relevel or one skirting job clears $1,000 easily.

• The credential that actually means something in this trade is a manufactured home installer license, federal via form HUD 307 or state via TDHCA or DHSMV. The Manufactured Housing Institute runs a self-paced route to it.
• Small cosmetic work often needs no license anywhere. Anything touching the foundation, anchoring, electrical, gas or structure almost always does. Confirm at the state and county level before you quote.
• General liability averages $55 to $67 a month, roughly $660 to $809 a year, and 41 percent of buyers pay $35 to $55 a month. Budget $500 to $1,500 for the first policy year.
• Commercial auto on the work van: $1,200 to $3,500 per vehicle per year for contractors, averaging around $260 a month.
• Inland marine, also called contractor's equipment coverage, is the trade-specific add-on. It covers hand tools, power tools and materials in transit or in temporary storage, which is where your gear actually lives.
• Surety bond where the state requires one. Florida mobile home installers post a $5,000 performance bond and carry liability coverage not to exceed $100,000.

What should you charge for mobile home repair jobs?

Single-wide relevels run $450 to $700, double-wides $750 to $1,200, water heater swaps $1,100 to $1,900, and skirting jobs average $2,400. Price by job, never by the hour.

Published ranges in this trade disagree, and you should know that before you anchor on one. Angi puts a basic single-wide relevel at $450 to $600 and a double-wide at $750 to $900. HomeGuide quotes $600 to $1,200 single-wide and $1,100 to $2,500 double-wide for the same work. Both are real, because they are measuring different jobs: one is a routine shim-and-plumb on accessible piers, the other includes access work, pier replacement, and homes where the crawl space is 18 inches of mud. Planning figures that include access work run $600 to $1,400 per pier. Quote from what you see under the home, not from a table.

Take a real one. Maria calls on a Tuesday with no hot water in a 1998 single-wide, and the tank is a 30 gallon electric listed for manufactured housing, sitting in the utility closet. You quote $1,450, mid-range for the $1,100 to $1,900 most of these jobs bill at. You buy a Richmond mobile home unit at $720 instead of the $971.49 Rheem Professional Classic, and about $95 in fittings takes the tank and components to $815, inside the $350 to $1,000 the published job breakdowns allow for that line. Add $40 in fuel and old tank disposal and your cost is $855 against $1,450, leaving $595 on roughly four and a half hours door to door, about $132 an hour before overhead.

Now look at where the margin actually hides. Roof-overs bill at $4 to $10 per square foot installed while TPO membrane costs you $1.80 to $3.50 per square foot in material. A 14 by 70 single-wide is 980 square feet, so that roof bills $3,920 to $9,800 against $1,764 to $3,430 of membrane, before fasteners, edge metal and your labor. Skirting runs the other way: vinyl panels retail at $8.97 to $20.59 each, so the material on a full perimeter reads like a few hundred dollars, while the finished job bills $1,500 to $5,000 and averages $2,400, because the money is in the ground track, the corners, the vents and the access door.

Two habits protect you. Charge a diagnostic fee on floor and plumbing calls, because a soft spot in a mobile home floor can be a $450 single room subfloor patch or a $2,450 whole-home replacement and you cannot tell from the doorway. And write scope exclusions into every relevel quote: rotten piers, a bent frame member, and buried anchors are change orders, not surprises you absorb.

How do you get your first mobile home repair customers?

Work parks, not the whole town. Introduce yourself to park managers, leave door hangers on a route you can walk, and get on Google Business Profile with photos of finished releveling work.

Your customers are geographically stacked in a way almost no other trade enjoys. A park puts every prospect you have on the same few streets, all built the same way, all aging the same way, all within a short walk of each other. One good job in a park is heard about by the neighbors before you have loaded the truck. That is why generic town-wide advertising is a waste of money here and boots in three specific parks is not.

Here is what a $300 flyer run actually returns. Spend the low end of the $300 to $1,000 first-year marketing budget on door hangers and fuel and you can walk 600 doors across three parks over a weekend. Nobody publishes a response rate for mobile home park door hangers, so run the math at a deliberately pessimistic half of one percent: 600 doors gives you three calls. If one becomes a single-wide relevel at $600, one a skirting repair at $850, and one a window replacement at $450, that $300 came back as $1,900 in booked work. The second pass through the same park always beats the first, because by then your truck has sat in it for a day and people saw it.

Park managers are the highest-leverage relationship in the trade. They get the calls about sagging floors and doors that will not latch, they need vendors who understand pier spacing and anchoring, and they often have several homes of their own to turn over between tenants. Bring a card, a certificate of insurance, and a straight answer about what you do and do not do. Do not promise electrical and gas work you are not licensed for.

There is also real public money moving through this trade. In December 2024 HUD announced 17 awards totaling $225 million under the PRICE program across 26 states, explicitly covering repairs and resilience upgrades for low- and moderate-income manufactured homeowners, with the largest single award of $38.1 million going to ROC USA for resident-owned communities in 12 states. Find out whether a PRICE grantee or a resident-owned community operates in your county and ask who does their repair work.

• Claim and fill out a Google Business Profile the first week. Search terms like leak detection and drain cleaning are the steadiest year-round traffic in home services, swinging under 25 percent across the year.
• Photograph under the home. Nobody else does, and a picture of a rebuilt pier says more than any review.
• Ask every finished customer for the neighbor's name. In a park, referrals travel two doors, not two miles.
• Get on the call list at the local mobile home parts store and any dealer that sells used homes. Dealers constantly need turn-key repairs before a resale.
• Say yes to the $150 valve replacements early. Those become the $2,400 skirting job in the fall.

What tools, equipment and software do you need for mobile home repair?

A 20 ton bottle jack, ABS pier pads, a water level or rotary laser, and a full hand and power tool set. Budget $2,000 to $5,000 for tools plus a used van.

The leveling kit is what makes you a mobile home contractor instead of a handyman, and it is startlingly cheap at $200 to $350 for jacks, pads, shims, blocks and a level. Several items below carry no publicly posted price because they sell through the mobile home parts channel or on dealer accounts, so get a quote at your local supply house rather than trusting a number from a blog.

What should the first 90 days of a mobile home repair business look like?

Weeks 1 to 2 are paperwork and insurance. Weeks 3 to 6 you learn releveling and quote free. Weeks 7 to 12 you should be booking three paid jobs a week.

The milestone that matters is not revenue in month one. It is whether you can walk under a home you have never seen, find the settled piers, and give a number in under 30 minutes without going back to your truck to think. Get that right and the booking rate takes care of itself.

What mistakes kill new mobile home repair businesses?

Quoting a relevel without crawling under first, installing a residential water heater instead of a manufactured-housing unit, coating a wet roof, and leaving roof and plumbing off your liability policy.

Almost every failure in this trade is a quoting failure, not a workmanship failure. The homes hide their problems under the skirting and behind the bottom board, and a number given from the driveway is a number you will eat.

• Quoting a relevel from the driveway. A $600 job turns into a $2,000 job the moment you find crushed piers or a bent frame member, and by then you have already given a price.
• Installing a standard residential water heater or furnace. Manufactured homes need units listed for manufactured housing: gas water heaters are sealed-combustion and outside-vented, and the furnace is a downflow unit in a dedicated closet drawing combustion air from outside. That is why Rheem and Richmond sell a separate mobile home line and why Intertherm, Nordyne and Miller exist.
• Ignoring the anchoring rules. Under 24 CFR 3285.402, Wind Zone II and III homes need longitudinal ground anchors on the ends of each transportable section and a vertical tie at every diagonal tie location, driven to full depth. Reset the piers and leave the anchors wrong and you have made the home less safe, not more.
• Rolling roof coating over a damp or dirty roof. It peels within a season, and in a park where everybody talks, one peeling roof-over costs you the next ten.
• Buying insurance without listing what you actually do. Adding minor plumbing, light electrical and roof work pushes the rate 30 to 50 percent higher, and hiding it to save $20 or $30 a month is how a claim gets denied.
• Working over the license line. In California anything over $1,000 unlicensed can be charged as a misdemeanor, and almost every real job in this trade clears $1,000.
• Underpricing skirting because the panels are cheap. Panels are $8.97 to $20.59 each, but the job averages $2,400 for a reason: ground track, vents, corners and access doors are the labor.
• Cash and a handshake in the park. Write the scope, write the exclusions, take a deposit within your state's cap, and put change orders in writing before you do the extra work.

Is a mobile home repair business worth it?

Yes for a working solo operator. Three jobs a week at an $800 average ticket is about $108,000 gross in year one, and a second truck roughly doubles it.

Run the arithmetic honestly. Three paid jobs a week at an $800 average ticket, working 45 weeks, is $108,000 gross. Materials on a mixed book of relevels, skirting, windows and water heaters run roughly 25 to 35 percent, which leaves $70,200 to $81,000. Insurance takes $2,000 to $5,000 of that, general liability at $660 to $1,500 plus commercial auto at $1,200 to $3,500. Another $10,000 to $20,000 goes to fuel, phone, tool replacement and the van, so a solo operator who actually works finishes year one around $45,000 to $65,000, and it climbs in year two because referrals in a park compound.

The ceiling is set by trucks, not by demand. A second person on relevels close to doubles the jobs you can turn in a day, because most of the clock is jacking, blocking and crawling rather than skill. Six jobs a week at the same $800 ticket over 45 weeks is $216,000 gross. Past two trucks you are hiring, carrying workers compensation, and turning into a small contractor, which is a different business with different risks.

Demand is not the constraint. More than 22 million Americans live in manufactured homes, shipments were 103,300 units in 2024 with a mid-2025 annual rate around 106,000, and every one of those homes needs releveling, skirting and roof work on a cycle. The HUD Code rewrite that took effect September 15, 2025 brought 90 new or updated standards, the most extensive change in more than three decades, which means an aging installed base and a newer, differently built one both need people who know the difference.

The honest downside: it is physical, it is dirty, and a lot of it happens on your back in a crawl space. Customer budgets are real. FHA Title I limits for 2025 run $105,532 to $237,096 depending on loan type, but many of your customers are not financing anything, they are paying out of pocket, and that caps what you can sell in a single visit.

When is mobile home repair busiest during the year?

Spring brings the releveling wave as frost heave settles out. Summer is roof and skirting season. November through January is frozen pipes and water heaters. Leak calls run steady year round.

The spring pattern has a physical cause worth understanding, because it lets you sell the work before the customer knows they need it. In frost-susceptible soil, ground anchor augers must be installed below the frost line unless the foundation is frost-protected, precisely because of frost heave. Ground that swells over winter and settles in spring moves piers and anchors, doors stop latching, and floors develop a slope. That is why the phone rings for releveling in late winter and spring. If you work a cold-weather market, book relevel inspections in February and March before the calls start.

There is no published seasonality index specific to mobile home repair, so treat the calendar below as the shape of the year rather than a forecast. It is built from home services search patterns and the physical drivers of this trade.