Mobile Home Refinance Calculator

Year-by-year comparison

How the two loans track against each other. The current loan column assumes you do nothing; the new loan column assumes you refinance today.

How this calculator works

Your current payment is derived from the balance, rate, and remaining term using the standard amortization formula, the same one used on the main payment calculator. Amortization simply means each fixed payment covers that month's interest first, with whatever is left reducing the balance, so the loan clears exactly at the end of the term. Compare the figure it shows against your statement; if they differ noticeably, check your remaining term.

Break-even is total upfront cost divided by monthly savings, the convention published by Chase and Freedom Mortgage among others. Where this calculator differs from most is what happens next. It also simulates both loans to payoff and reports the change in lifetime interest separately, because those two numbers can point in opposite directions.

On the conversion path, the lot rent you stop paying is counted as monthly savings. That is money leaving your budget every month for land you do not own, so when it disappears it is a genuine saving, and it is usually the largest single figure in the whole calculation.

Refinancing a chattel loan is harder than it should be

Worth knowing before you start making calls: this market barely exists. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found that under 4% of chattel loan originations were refinances, against 31% for manufactured home mortgages and 44% for site-built homes. Even in years when rates dropped sharply, chattel borrowers largely could not take advantage.

That is not a reflection on you or your credit. It is a thin lender market with few products in it. Expect to make more calls than a site-built homeowner would, and expect some lenders to tell you they simply do not write these loans.

It is also the strongest practical argument for the conversion path. Moving your home to real property does not just get you a better rate, it moves you into a market where refinancing is a normal thing that happens rather than a rarity.

What converting to real property actually involves

Three things have to be true: you own the land, the home sits on a permanent foundation meeting HUD's requirements, and the title has been converted from personal property to real property through your state's process.

In practice that means foundation work, an engineer or inspector sign-off, permits, and retitling paperwork. The order and the specifics vary by state, which is also why you will not find a credible national price for it. Costs swing on your site conditions, your home, and local requirements.

So this page does not publish a figure. Get a written quote for your home and your lot, enter that number above, and let the math tell you whether the payback works on your timeline. If the break-even lands well inside how long you plan to stay, the conversion usually pays for itself through the rate drop and the eliminated lot rent together.

A worked example

Take a $65,000 balance at 9.5% with 15 years left, which is a fairly typical chattel situation. The payment is about $679 a month.

Path one, a straight chattel refinance at 8% over a fresh 15 years with $3,000 in costs. The payment falls to roughly $621, saving about $58 a month. Break-even lands around 4 years 5 months, and because the term did not stretch, lifetime interest drops by roughly $10,000 too. Modest but real.

Path two, converting to a mortgage at 7% over 30 years, with $18,000 of conversion cost and $520 a month of lot rent eliminated. The payment drops to about $432, and with the lot rent gone the monthly difference is roughly $766. Break-even arrives in about 2 years despite the much larger upfront cost.

Here is the catch the simple math hides. Stretching a loan with 15 years left into a new 30-year term means paying interest for another 15 years, which adds roughly $33,000 in lifetime interest even though the monthly number looks so much better. Whether that trade is worth it depends on whether you need cash flow now or the lowest total cost later. The calculator shows you both so you can decide rather than guess.