My wife and I were talking the other day, and she said that you can have a mobile home reclassified as a house if you do certain work to it. We’d like some information on that please.

Louisiana law allows owners of manufactured, mobile and modular homes to classify their residences as immovable, or real, property.

Similar statutes in other states require factory-built homes to be affixed to permanent foundations to be reclassified.

But Louisiana’s definition of “mobile homes” encompasses factory-built homes “with or without a permanent foundation,” and the law allows owners to later reclassify — or deimmobilize — their homes and return them to the category of movable property.

Under state Office of Motor Vehicles Policy 31, to immobilize your home, you must submit the following to the OMV:

The original title certificate or a manufacturer’s certificate of origin.

A bill of sale.

An affidavit declaring your intent to keep the mobile home permanently attached to the site, along with a description of the home.

A Vehicle Application Form, DPSMV 1799.

“Applicable sales tax, an $8.00 handling fee, and parish fee (if applicable) must be submitted with each file,” reads the policy.

To deimmobilize the home, the policy says, “an authentic act of de-immobilization must be recorded with the Parish Clerk of Court,” and it must feature “a declaration by the owner that he no longer intends the factory built home to be immovable.”

To apply for a title on an immobilized mobile home, owners must submit the following paperwork to the OMV:

A mortgage certificate from the clerk of court, if one is recorded.

A copy of the deimmobilization act certified by the clerk of court.

A release of any mortgages previously secured on the home and the land it sat on.

“A notarized bill of sale, if applicable,” the policy reads.

A DPSMV 1799.

Title, handling and applicable mortgage recordation fees, along with sales tax.

“An owner who purchased a factory built home that is already classified as immovable is not required to title and register the home prior to selling,” reads the policy.

“Once an act of de-immobilization has been recorded, however, the owner must dispose of (sell, trade, etc.) factory built home by the twentieth of the month following the month of filing the act of de-immobilization or else he must apply for a title in his name and pay all applicable fees.”

Online: www.expresslane.org.

The Informer answers questions from readers each Sunday, Monday and Wednesday. It is researched and written by Andrew Perzo, an American Press staff writer. To ask a question, call 494-4098, press 5 and leave voice mail, or email informer@americanpress.com

(mgnonline.com)