Lintel
Statute 42 U.S.C. 5403(i) Closes 11 July 2027 Read 17 August 2026 Evidence register The argument

One provision, eleven months

The certificationwindow.

Every state must certify by 11 July 2027 that its own law treats a manufactured home built without a permanent chassis identically — financing, title, insurance and taxes named expressly. A state that misses the date must prohibit the home.

Those four words are the layer the 1974 Act left to fifty states, and this is the first time federal law has put a date on them. This page is the ledger: what is owed, by whom, by when, and what has actually been published. It is not a forecast and it keeps no score.

Read 17 August 2026 · nothing on this page is a prediction · every claim carries a register row

What is owed, and by when

Two obligations carry statutory dates and both belong to the states. Every obligation that belongs to a federal agency carries no date at all — which is the asymmetry the argument turns on, not a gap in this table.

ObligationWhoseBy whenRead 17 August 2026Rows
Certify that state law treats a chassis-free home identically — financing, title, insurance, manufacture, sale, taxes, transportation, installation Each state 11 July 2027 none published E-197
The same certification, where the legislature meets biennially Each state 11 July 2028 none published E-197
Recertify annually that new law has not broken the certification Each state annual, date set by the Secretary no date set E-197
Prohibit the manufacture, installation or sale of a chassis-free home, on failure to certify Each state on the missed deadline not triggered E-198
Publish and maintain the list of states that are up to date HUD not stated not published E-197
Issue revised construction standards for a home built without a permanent chassis, through the consensus committee HUD no date in the statute not proposed E-201
Establish the distinct label, data plate and invoice notation HUD no date in the statute not proposed E-202
Amend a selling guide that still requires a permanent chassis Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac not required to unamended E-204
State how a chassis-free home is insured or purchased FHA not required to "under evaluation" E-205

Why there is no list of states here. The obvious version of this page has fifty rows. Which legislatures meet biennially — and so have until 2028 — is a claim, and this project has not opened a source for it. So the two deadlines are stated and not one state is allocated to either. When the Secretary publishes the list the statute requires, this table gains a column and that row stops being empty.

E-200

Two ways to certify, and they are not the same

A state can satisfy the certification by extending the definition it already has, or by defaulting the chassis-free home to real property. Both certify. Only one changes how the house is financed, and nothing on this page predicts which a legislature will reach for.

Extend the definition

Add the chassis-free home to the definition already in state law. The statute names this route itself — an attestation that the state has amended "the definition of 'manufactured home' in the laws and regulations of the State". Fast, free, and where that definition sits in a titling statute, it re-enacts the classification.

E-199

Default to real property

Certify parity by making the chassis-free home real property on installation. Most states already have the machinery — three-quarters have written a conversion statute, which is a procedure for doing once what a definition could do by default.

E-120

The measurement that settles it is not how many states certify, which will be most of them. It is how each one does, and nobody is recording that.

What this page cannot tell you yet

Whether a chassis-free home can be financed at all is open, and it is not a research question — it is a question four named institutions could each answer in a paragraph. Both Enterprise guides still define an eligible manufactured home as one built on a permanent chassis, and the statute requires the new home to carry a label that is expressly different from the one those guides recognise.

E-202E-204E-205E-206

The one thing already settled is narrower than this site used to claim: for a home certified to the Enterprises' design standards, site-built comparable sales are already required rather than merely permitted. That is a wider comparable pool, not valuation by type — the distinction correction C-050 exists to keep.

E-207

A draft, published because nobody else has

No model certification language has been published by anyone, and HUD's authority to issue model guidance has not been exercised. So there is a draft here — a state act that certifies parity by classifying the permanently installed home as real property, chassis or no chassis, rather than by extending a definition that sits in a titling statute.

It has not been reviewed by counsel in any state, and its central reading is the thing most likely to be wrong. Parity requires the chassis-free home to be subject to the same law as the chassis home — so a state that moved only the chassis-free home to real property may have failed the certification it was making. That is why the draft moves both, which is a much larger bill. If parity is read narrowly instead, the draft is bigger than it needs to be, and that reading would be the better news.

Read the draft — HAP-13 Rev 0.1, markdown

E-197E-199E-120