What Is a HO-7 Insurance Policy?
It's a homeowners policy built for mobile, manufactured or modular homes, covering the home and belongings like an HO-3.
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How Your Home Is Titled
If your home is titled as a vehicle with the state's motor vehicle agency, some insurers treat it differently than one titled as real property. Converting title to real property, where your state allows it, often opens up more coverage options and can lower what you pay.
Age of the Home
Older manufactured homes, especially those built before June 1976, are harder to insure because they predate federal HUD construction standards. Some insurers set an age cutoff. Others cover an older home but settle a claim at actual cash value instead of replacement cost, so check which one applies to you.
Tie-Downs and Anchoring
Insurers ask how your home is secured to the ground because tie-downs and anchoring affect how it holds up in high wind. A home anchored to current standards may qualify for better wind coverage or a lower premium, particularly in storm-prone areas.
Park Rules and Requirements
If your home sits in a park, the lease may set minimum coverage amounts, including liability limits, and may require the park be named on the policy. Check your lease for these terms before you buy. A policy that meets your needs might still fall short of what the park requires.
HO-7 Coverage Varies a Lot by Insurer
How your home's age, title and tie-downs are weighed changes what you pay and whether a claim settles at full replacement cost or less. Comparing quotes shows which insurers fit your home as it actually is.
What an HO-7 Policy Actually Covers
An HO-7 policy covers the home itself along with your belongings, much like a standard HO-3 policy does for a site-built house. That means the structure, attached features like a porch or carport, and personal property inside, from furniture to clothing to electronics. It also typically includes liability coverage if someone is hurt on your property, and loss of use coverage that helps pay living costs if the home becomes unlivable after a covered loss.
Wind and storm damage is where things get specific. Most HO-7 policies cover wind and hail as named perils, but in coastal or high-wind states, insurers sometimes exclude wind or require a separate wind or hurricane deductible. That deductible is often a percentage of your dwelling coverage rather than a flat dollar amount, so a 2% wind deductible on a $60,000 dwelling limit works out to $1,200 you'd pay before coverage kicks in. Your declarations page will show whether a separate wind deductible applies and what percentage it uses.
Flood damage is not part of an HO-7 policy, the same way it's excluded from a standard homeowners policy. Mobile and manufactured homes, especially those on leased land near water or in low-lying areas, can face real flood risk, and a separate flood policy is the only way to cover it. Earthquake damage is also typically excluded and would need its own policy or endorsement. If your home sits in a flood zone, the lender or park may already require flood coverage as a condition of financing or the lease.
How a claim gets paid also depends on choices you make when buying the policy. Replacement cost coverage pays to replace damaged property with new materials of similar kind, while actual cash value subtracts depreciation for the home's age and wear. As noted earlier, older manufactured homes sometimes only qualify for actual cash value settlements, which can mean a meaningfully smaller payout after a major loss. Some insurers offer an option to add replacement cost coverage back for an older home, at an added cost, so it's worth asking directly how a potential claim on your specific home would be settled before you decide a policy fits.
Getting Coverage for an Older or Harder-to-Place Home
Some manufactured homes don't fit neatly into what most insurers want to write. A home from the 1970s, one that's been moved more than once, or one sitting on leased land in a flood-prone park can all be harder to place. That doesn't mean coverage isn't out there. It usually means fewer insurers offer it, and the ones that do may ask more questions about the home's condition before they'll quote it.
A specialized insurer, one that focuses on manufactured and mobile homes specifically, often has more flexibility here than a general carrier. They're used to underwriting homes with older electrical systems, skirting instead of a permanent foundation, or a title still held as a vehicle. Some will insure a home a mainstream insurer turns down, though the tradeoff can be a higher premium, a higher deductible, or coverage settled at actual cash value rather than replacement cost.
An inspection sometimes factors in too. If the home hasn't been looked at in years, an insurer may ask for one before binding coverage, checking things like the roof's condition, the state of the tie-downs, and whether the skirting still does its job of keeping moisture and pests out from underneath. Fixing small issues before applying, a loose anchor strap, a gap in skirting, a roof patch that needs redoing, can be the difference between a standard quote and a decline.
None of this is static. An insurer that wouldn't cover a 1974 single-wide on leased land might still offer competitive terms on a 1995 double-wide on owned land with current tie-downs. The specifics of a given home move the outcome more than age alone does, which is why two homes built the same year can get very different quotes from the same company.
Before You Compare
Pull your declarations page or your lease. Check how your home is titled, whether the tie-downs meet current standards, and what wind deductible percentage applies. Those details decide which quotes actually fit your home.
