Mobile Home Listings & News

Tax technicality sparks conflict:
Rule costs some mobile home owners homestead tax exemption


A newly enforced technicality in the appraisal office has some mobile home owners unhappy and a lot lighter in the pocket. Bowie County resident Kevin Stroud said he got quite the shock when he opened up his tax bill. He said he was accustomed to paying about $40 a month in property taxes, but instead got a whopping bill of more than $500. “They’re saying I’m less of a citizen because I chose to buy a house trailer,” Stroud said. Delores Baird, with the Bowie Central Appraisal District in Texarkana, said it’s not a pleasant rule to enforce.
According to the tax rule, if someone declared his mobile home as personal property, the home and the land on which it sits are taxed separately. The homestead tax exemptions are applied to the mobile home, but the land is fully taxed. Stroud owns five acres of land north of New Boston, which he bought when he came out of the Army in 1990. He receives the homestead tax exemption and the disability exemption afforded to disabled veterans. When he realized his home and land were taxed separately, Stroud went looking for answers. He said he was told recent legislation stipulated if someone has property and it doesn’t have a permanent home built on it, the mobile home was recorded as personal property and taxed accordingly.

“I said, Man, this is Texas. We have homestead rights here,” said Stroud. Baird said when a mobile home is recorded with the Department of Transportation, it can be declared as personal property or real estate. Listing a mobile home as personal property means it cannot be carried on the tax form with the land on which it sits. Baird said she doesn’t know how much of an uproar to expect from manufactured home owners. She said though she doesn’t agree with the law, there’s nothing she can do.

“All I can do is follow the law,” she said. Baird said mobile home residents can fill out additional paperwork to declare the home as real estate so it can be coupled with the land on taxes. Those taxes also have to be collected before a mobile home can be moved, she said.

Stroud said he is in the middle of filling out all the required paperwork to declare his home as real estate. Baird said the appraisal office doesn’t have all the manufactured homes in the county split out from the land just yet. She is grateful for residents’ patience. “Most people understand it’s not our fault,” she said.

Stroud does. He just wants others to have information he says they deserve.