Fresno Fire Damage Rules: The Contract and the Title

Part One: What the Home Legally Is

Section 18551 of the Health and Safety Code was added by Assembly Bill 887, chapter 1160, in 1979, effective 1 January 1980, and has been amended several times since. It governs the placement of manufactured homes, mobilehomes and commercial modulars on foundation systems.

A manufactured home in California can be installed either as a fixture or improvement to real property, so as to become real property, or as chattel. Those are two different legal objects sitting on the same patch of ground.

What Makes the Difference?

Installation on a foundation system under sections 18551, 18551.1 or 18555, evidenced by a recorded document. Units installed that way are not subject to registration by HCD. At the point of installation acceptance the unit becomes a fixture or improvement to the real property to which it is attached, and once the certificate of occupancy is recorded the unit is real property, is subject to local property taxation, and future title transfers are by deed. No HCD title is issued.

The Document to Look For

HCD Form 433A, titled Installation of a Manufactured Home on a Foundation System. The owner, dealer or contractor submits it to the local building jurisdiction when applying for the building permit for the permanent foundation, and it is recorded at the county recorder's office once installation and occupancy are approved.

A recorded 433A is generally required by a mortgage lender, by a title company, or by both, and it is needed for certain title endorsements. A preliminary title report should reveal whether one was recorded.

If There Is No 433A

Then the home is personal property. Mobile and manufactured homes not secured to the land with a permanent foundation, or where no 433A has been recorded, have titles issued and tracked by HCD, similar to those for automobiles.

The equivalent documents are an HCD Certificate of Title, or on older units a DMV pink slip and registration card. Enforcement agencies verifying a conversion obtain a title search printout from HCD's Registration and Titling Program and compare it against the surrendered documents, to establish that the registered owner holds the home free of liens or encumbrances.

Where Do Liens on the Home Show Up?

On the HCD record rather than in the county records. A title search may indicate a recorded legal owner or a junior lienholder, and where it does, evidence has to be provided that they have been dealt with. This is the part that catches people: a clean county title search says nothing about whether the home sitting on the land is encumbered, because the home is not part of that record at all.

Transferring a Personal Property Home

HCD withholds the registration or transfer of registration of any manufactured home or mobilehome subject to local property taxation until the applicant presents a tax clearance certificate, or a conditional tax clearance certificate, issued by the tax collector of the county where the home is located.

So a sale involves the county tax collector as well as the recorder, and the certificate is a precondition rather than a formality.

What About Inherited Homes?

The trap worth knowing about. Because a home without a recorded 433A is personal property, a transfer upon death document recorded at the county recorder's office is not sufficient to effect a title change at HCD. Families complete what looks like a full transfer through the recorder and find the home itself has not moved. Establishing early which route the home takes avoids a great deal of unwinding later.

We publish no title determinations, ownership positions or lien findings for any individual property. HCD's Registration and Titling Program, the county recorder and the county tax collector hold those records, and where an estate is involved a California lawyer is the right reader.

Taxation Follows the Same Line

Homes with a recorded 433A are subject to local property taxation in the same manner as site-built homes, at the same rate, with values increasing by no more than two per cent a year under Proposition 13 inflation factoring unless there is a change in ownership or new construction.

Homes without a recorded 433A that are subject to local property taxes are also assessed under Proposition 13. Mobile homes originally built and first sold before July 1980 may be subject to an HCD licence fee or to local property taxes depending on the circumstances, while manufactured homes are always subject to local property taxes.

Part Two: What the Land Is Allowed to Become

The Williamson Act, formally the California Land Conservation Act of 1965, sits at Government Code section 51200 and following. Cities and counties enter voluntary contracts with landowners who agree to keep land in agricultural or open space use, and in return the land is assessed on what it earns as farmland rather than on what it would sell for.

The California Department of Conservation oversees the programme, and roughly 10 million acres statewide are enrolled. Participation is optional for local government, and most agricultural counties take part.

How Long Does a Contract Last?

A minimum initial term of ten years, with a year added automatically on the anniversary date under section 51244 unless a notice of nonrenewal is given under section 51245 or the contract is cancelled under section 51250. That produces a rolling ten-year contract that never gets shorter while it is renewing. Contracts run with the land and are binding on all successors in interest, so this is not something that ends when the property changes hands.

The Two Ways Out

Nonrenewal. Either the landowner or the local agency may file. It cannot be filed during the first ten years of a contract. Once filed and recorded, the remaining term runs out, nine years where the original was ten, and the annual assessment increases gradually across that period until it reaches ordinary rates. There is no fee.

Where the owner gives the notice, the property is valued thereafter as if the restriction had been removed, and the greatest percentage increase usually falls in the first year. Where the county gives notice and the landowner protests, the restriction continues through the first five years of the nonrenewal period.

Cancellation. Initiated by the landowner and immediate. The board of supervisors must make specific findings under section 51282, and the owner pays a cancellation fee equal to 12.5 per cent of the unrestricted fair market value of the property, collected by the county on behalf of the state. Cancellation does not become effective until the fee is paid.

Can I Cancel Because Rebuilding Would Be Worth More?

Not on that basis alone. The courts have held that these contracts may not be terminated merely because development is desirable or profitable to the landowner, and cancellation is limited and scrutinised. That is the point of the programme rather than an obstacle within it, and how any particular petition would be treated is a matter for a California land use lawyer rather than for a buyer.

Farmland Security Zones

The stricter version. FSZ contracts generally carry a minimum initial term of twenty years, the nonrenewal period stretches to nineteen years rather than nine, and the cancellation fee doubles to twenty-five per cent of unrestricted fair market value.

Once acreage is designated for nonrenewal, the state ceases paying subventions to the local government, which is one reason counties do not treat these filings as routine paperwork.

Contract and Zoning Are Separate

Worth stating because owners conflate them. A Williamson Act contract is a tax and contract programme layered on top of the parcel's base zoning. The land still has an underlying zoning designation, and the contract restricts use separately from it.

So rebuilding a fire-damaged home on contracted land raises two questions rather than one: what the zoning permits, and what the contract permits. Both need verifying with the county, and an answer to one is not an answer to the other.

Your Options, Compared

Establish the two documents first. The 433A position and the contract position. Both are cheap and both change everything downstream.

Rebuild within the contract. Usually available for agricultural and residential use consistent with it, and a question for the county.

Sell with the contract in place. Ordinary, since it runs with the land, and a buyer prices it.

Cancel. Twelve and a half per cent of unrestricted market value, findings required, and not available merely because development would pay better.

Across Fresno and the Valley

Which of these two questions applies depends heavily on where the property sits. The older city neighbourhoods are covered under central and southwest Fresno, the north under north Fresno and Woodward Park, and the southeast under southeast Fresno and Sunnyside. Further pages deal with Clovis, the rural county and the wider valley.

Those outer areas include Sanger, Selma, Reedley, Kingsburg, Fowler, Parlier, Kerman and Firebaugh in Fresno County, with Madera, Chowchilla, Visalia, Hanford and Merced beyond it.

The full index is on our service area index.

Rules Questions

Is There a 433A on My Property?

A preliminary title report should reveal whether one was recorded. If not, look for an HCD Certificate of Title or older DMV documents.

Is My Land Under Contract?

The county holds the answer and the title report should show it. Acreage and agricultural use are the strongest signals to check.

Does a Contract Stop Me Rebuilding?

It restricts use separately from zoning, and residential use consistent with agriculture is generally contemplated. Verify both with the county rather than assuming either.

Primary Sources

California Health and Safety Code sections 18551, 18551.1 and 18555
HCD Information Bulletin 2006-05 (MH) and HCD Forms 433A and 433C
California Government Code sections 51200, 51244, 51245, 51250 and 51282
California Department of Conservation — Williamson Act programme materials
Lewis v. City of Hayward (1986) 177 Cal.App.3d 103