Explained in plain words

Bonded Title for a Manufactured Home

A bonded title is the state's way of saying: 'We will title this home to you, backed by a surety bond, so if the real owner ever appears, the bond — not the state — pays.' It is the branch built for homes with no producible title. It is also not available everywhere, not for every year of home, and never the first step: agencies expect the record search and the duplicate route to fail first.

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Where it works, with the numbers

Georgia: bond at 2x average retail value (per Georgia Department of Revenue values), $5,000 minimum. The packet: Form MV-1, the MV-46 bond, the notarized MV-46A affidavit, a law-enforcement inspection (T-22B), and a title-history report — filed at the County Tag Office. Hard stops: the owner must be a Georgia resident, and 1985-or-older homes cannot be bonded at all.

North Carolina: bond at 1.5x appraised value, $100 minimum; bond held 3 years, held three years, with an inspector's report — and exclusions for abandoned and parts-only homes.

Arizona and Michigan run bond routes through their own inspection-and-notice processes; the checker carries each state's version.

Where it does not exist

Texas is the loudest no: its housing department issues no bonded title and uses ownership affidavits, chain-of-title documents, title commitments, and court orders instead. Florida, South Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, and Oregon showed no verified bonded program in our October 2026 dataset — their routes are duplicate-by-owner or court order. Any company selling you a 'bonded title' for a Texas home is selling paper the state will not take.

The order of operations

Search the record first. Try the duplicate route. Document both. Only then buy a bond — a bond purchased before the search is money spent on a step the agency may not let you take.

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Included in the $39 Manufactured Home Playbook

  • Your state's titling packet, walked through form by form — duplicate, transfer, deceased-owner, and conversion routes
  • The conversion workbook: eligibility, the affixture paperwork, and what converting unlocks on the loan side
  • The park-lease red-flag decoder: the clauses that decide what a park can do to you, in plain words
  • Rent-hike response letters, ready to copy: the objection, the exemption-facts request, the short-notice letter
  • The park-sale and closure organizing timeline, keyed to your state's statutory clocks
  • The seller-transfer kit and the chattel-vs-mortgage routing worksheet

See the $39 Manufactured Home Playbook

One payment, yours to keep. Everything inside →

General information about how the process works in your state — not legal advice. For a contested eviction, a park-sale fight, or a title dispute with a lienholder, a local attorney or legal-aid office is the next step.