Ask this question online and page one of Google is four Q&A threads — two on JustAnswer, one on Avvo, one on an operator forum. Above them sit insurance brokers who will happily sell you a policy but never address whether you can compel your residents to buy one.

That is a strange gap, because the underlying risk is obvious to anyone who has run a community. A resident owns a home worth $60,000 sitting on your land. It burns. They had no coverage, no savings, and no way to clear the wreck. You now have a destroyed structure on a homesite you cannot re-let, belonging to someone with nothing to collect from, and — as FEMA has put in writing — no public assistance coming, because you are a commercial enterprise expected to insure against exactly this.

About 35% of manufactured home owners carry no homeowners insurance at all. The national rate across all homeowners is 7.4%. That is a gap of nearly five to one, and it is your gap as much as theirs.

So can you require it? The honest answer is that one state expressly says yes and constrains how, one state expressly says no to a narrower version of it, and the remaining forty-eight are silent — which means the clause lives or dies on general contract law and on how carefully you drafted it.

General information for operators, not legal or insurance advice. We found no case law in any state on whether an operator-imposed insurance mandate is enforceable against a resident-owned home. That is a real gap, not an oversight — take advice before you add the clause.

Key takeaways

• Oregon is the only state that expressly authorises it, and only for liability insurance, capped at $100,000, with the landlord barred from being named additional insured.
• California expressly prohibits requiring liability insurance as a condition of using common facilities, unless alcohol is served.
• Everywhere else is silent. No statute permits it, none prohibits it, and no case law exists either way.
• A third-party policy is probably not a "fee" — but charging a compliance fee, taking a commission, or force-placing coverage almost certainly is, and in Florida an undisclosed charge is permanently uncollectible.
• You cannot force-place. Federal force-placement rules apply to mortgage servicers; a landowner with no lien has no equivalent authority.
• Park-owned home rentals are a materially easier case — several states route them to the general landlord-tenant act, where renters insurance requirements are conventional.
• 35% of manufactured home owners are uninsured, against 7.4% of homeowners nationally.

The short answer

You can probably require it in most states, as a term of the lot rental agreement, if:

• The requirement is disclosed before tenancy and appears in the written agreement and the rules
• You do not charge for it, profit from it, or place it yourself
• You do not demand additional insured status
• The requirement is reasonable in scope and amount
• You can actually enforce it through a lawful termination ground

Every one of those conditions is doing work. Get any of them wrong and the clause is unenforceable in a state where the statutes void unreasonable terms — which is most of them.

Oregon: the only express authorisation

ORS 90.527 is the single clearest piece of authority in American law on this question, and it is worth reading closely even if you never operate in Oregon, because it shows what a legislature considered reasonable.

A landlord "may require a tenant in a manufactured dwelling park to obtain and maintain renter's liability insurance only if" the requirement appears in both the statement of policy and the written rental agreement. Then the constraints:

Two things to notice.

It authorises liability insurance, not property coverage on the home. Liability protects against the resident injuring someone or damaging something. It does not rebuild the home or clear the wreck. If your actual worry is the uninsured burnt-out structure, Oregon's statute does not solve it — and Oregon's silence on property coverage is not obviously permission.

The reciprocity condition is unusual and telling. The legislature's view was that an operator demanding coverage should carry it too. That is a fair-dealing instinct that a court in a silent state might well apply without a statute.

Everywhere else is silent — and California says no to one version

We checked the manufactured housing statutes of California, Florida, Washington, Arizona, Colorado and New York. On requiring a resident-owner to insure their own home, all six are silent.

Florida's Chapter 723 mentions insurance exactly once across the entire chapter — in a flood disclosure noting that homeowners' and renters' policies do not cover flood damage. Colorado's list of prohibited lease provisions covers waivers, possessory liens, opportunity-to-purchase waivers, mandatory arbitration and confessions of judgment. Insurance is not among them. Arizona's statute mentions insurance only as a landlord cost that can justify a rent increase, and adds that a rental agreement "may include conditions not prohibited by this chapter or other rule of law" — which is permissive by omission.

California contains the one express prohibition, and it is narrow but instructive. Civil Code §798.15(i) requires the rental agreement to carry a notice stating that "homeowners may not be required to obtain liability insurance in order to use common facilities unless alcohol is served."

So in California you cannot condition clubhouse or pool access on the resident carrying liability cover. That is a specific rule about common facilities, not a general ban on insurance requirements — but it tells you the legislature has thought about operators using insurance as a gatekeeping tool and disapproved of at least one form of it.

Silence is not permission and it is not prohibition. It means the requirement is tested as a contract term and as a park rule, against the reasonableness standards every one of these statutes imposes. The 50-state operator's index maps where those standards bite hardest.

Is an insurance requirement a "fee"?

This is the sharpest legal question in the article, because several MH statutes restrict what an operator may charge beyond rent.

New York's RPL §233 provides that "no tenant shall be charged a fee for other than rent, utilities and charges for facilities and services available to the tenant." Florida §723.031(6) makes undisclosed fees, charges or assessments permanently uncollectible. California §798.32 bars charging for services not listed in the rental agreement without 60 days' written notice.

Our reading — and this is analysis, not a holding, because no case law exists on it: a requirement that the resident buy a policy from an independent insurer moves no money to you. It is a condition of tenancy, not a charge. On its face, it is not a "fee."

But three variants almost certainly are:

1. A compliance or administration fee for tracking certificates
2. Any commission, override or revenue share from a placement arrangement
3. Force-placed coverage billed back to the resident

Each of those is money flowing to or through you, and in Florida an undisclosed one is uncollectible forever, with non-payment unusable as a ground for eviction. If you want the requirement to survive, do not monetise it.

Additional insured, additional interest, certificate holder

Operators often ask for the wrong one, and the three are materially different.

Additional insured is what most operators want and the hardest to get on a personal manufactured home policy — many carriers simply will not do it. And Oregon expressly forbids requiring it, permitting only "interested party" status.

Additional interest is the practical answer. It is widely available, costs nothing, and delivers the thing you actually need: being told when the policy lapses. A certificate collected once at move-in tells you the resident had coverage on the day they moved in and nothing about today.

Park-owned homes are a different and easier case

If you own the home and rent it, the analysis changes completely — because in several states you are no longer under the manufactured housing statute at all.

RCW 59.20.040 states that "rentals of mobile homes, manufactured homes, or park models themselves are governed by the residential landlord-tenant act, chapter 59.18 RCW." Florida's §723.002 similarly excludes from Chapter 723 any tenancy where both the home and the lot are rented, routing it to Chapter 83.

That matters here because the general residential acts do not carry the MH statutes' enumerated-grounds eviction regimes or fee-disclosure rules, and requiring renters insurance is entirely conventional in ordinary residential tenancies.

One Washington note worth having right: RCW 59.18.060 does now include a renter's insurance disclosure duty — but it applies only to leases entered into after 31 December 2026. It is prospective, not current, and it is a disclosure obligation rather than a mandate.

So a mixed community may face two different answers on adjacent homesites. That is one more operational cost of holding park-owned homes.

Can you evict for a lapse?

Only through a lawful ground, and the route is narrower than a general breach clause suggests.

Florida is the strictest. §723.061(1)(c) reaches violation of the rules, the rental agreement or the chapter — but for a first violation the ground applies only where the violation is dangerous to residents or property. Otherwise you must give written notice with seven days to cure, and may evict only on a second like violation within twelve months. And §723.031(9) forecloses drafting around it: "no rental agreement shall provide for the eviction of a mobile home owner on a ground other than one contained in s. 723.061."

Washington requires a "substantial violation, or repeated or periodic violations, of an enforceable rule," with 20 days' notice.

Colorado routes termination through written park rules that are enforceable and necessary to prevent material damage or health and safety issues — not through the lease generally. An insurance covenant that lives only in the lease is a weaker hook in Colorado than one properly adopted as a rule.

California reaches "failure of the homeowner or resident to comply with a reasonable rule or regulation of the park that is part of the rental agreement" at §798.56(a)(4).

Notice the pattern: put it in the rules, not just the lease. Most of these statutes hang termination on rule violations, and a rule properly adopted and uniformly enforced is the stronger instrument. The mechanics of that — cure periods, notice, uniform application — sit in the inspections and violation tracking guide, and the termination process itself in the delinquency and evictions guide.

We found no case, in any state, holding that an insurance lapse supports eviction. Treat it as arguable rather than settled.

You cannot force-place coverage

Some operators assume they can do what a mortgage lender does: buy a policy when the resident lets theirs lapse, and bill it back.

You cannot. 12 CFR §1024.37 defines force-placed insurance as "hazard insurance obtained by a servicer on behalf of the owner or assignee of a mortgage loan that insures the property securing such loan." The entire framework — notice requirements, timing, reasonableness of charges — applies to mortgage servicers.

A landowner who holds no lien on the home is outside it entirely. You have no statutory authority to place coverage on property you neither own nor hold a security interest in, and billing it back runs straight into the fee-disclosure rules above.

The exception that proves the rule: if you sold the home on a note and hold a recorded lien, you are a secured party, and your security agreement may give you insurance rights. That is a different relationship with different documents.

The availability problem is real

Before you write a requirement, ask whether your residents can actually comply. In several states that is a live question.

Coverage is being withdrawn from high-risk areas. The Treasury Department's Federal Insurance Office found that nonrenewal rates in the highest climate-risk ZIP codes ran about 80% higher than in the lowest, with average premiums in the highest-risk quintile at $2,321 — some 82% above the lowest. That is all-homeowners data, not manufactured-housing specific, but the direction is clear.

Age is the practical gate. Oregon's insurance regulator notes that homes built before 1976 predate the HUD code and "have building and safety conditions that are unregulated, thus posing potential additional risk to insurers." Insurers may lawfully write actual-cash-value-only policies on older homes, which "often does not pay enough to fully repair or replace what was damaged." A requirement that a resident carry replacement-cost coverage on a 1972 home may be impossible to satisfy.

State insurers of last resort are moving. California only brought manufactured homes into the FAIR Plan by statute: Insurance Code §10091(c)(1), as amended by Stats. 2025, ch. 476 (SB 525), now provides that basic property insurance "includes insurance for manufactured homes and mobilehomes under the same terms and conditions as basic property insurance sold for other residential dwellings" — effective 1 January 2026. Note what a FAIR Plan policy is: a named-peril form covering fire, lightning, internal explosion and smoke, with vandalism optional at extra cost. It is a floor, not a homeowners policy.

Florida Citizens does write manufactured homes, through mobile homeowners forms for owner-occupants, dwelling-fire forms for tenant-occupied homes, and a renters form.

The practical consequence: write the requirement so it can be met. Specify a minimum, not a product. Allow actual cash value where replacement cost is unobtainable. And build in a mechanism for a resident who genuinely cannot obtain coverage, because a rule that cannot be complied with is a rule that will not be enforced uniformly — which is how rules become unenforceable against everybody.

When an uninsured home is destroyed

This is the exposure the requirement exists to close, and the recovery position is weak.

Your route to clearing the site is the abandonment process, which is slow, notice-heavy and lienholder-dependent — the abandoned home guide sets it out. California's §798.61 at least allows a court to enter a judgment of abandonment, determine the charges owed and award attorney's fees. But a judgment is not money. Recovery depends entirely on the resident's solvency, and a resident who could not afford a policy generally cannot satisfy a judgment either.

We found no statute in Florida, Washington, Colorado, Arizona or New York that allocates demolition or debris-removal cost for a destroyed — as distinct from abandoned — resident-owned home.

So: you bear the removal cost, you lose the site revenue while it sits, and your recourse is a judgment against someone with nothing. That is the case for the requirement, and it is a strong one.

How to write the requirement

1. Adopt it as a park rule as well as a lease term. Most termination grounds run through rules.
2. Disclose it before tenancy — in the prospectus where one is required, and at application.
3. Specify a minimum coverage level, not a product or an insurer. Oregon's $100,000 liability figure is a reasonable reference point.
4. Ask for additional interest status, not additional insured. It gets you lapse notice and is actually obtainable.
5. Do not charge anything for it — no admin fee, no commission, no placement.
6. Allow actual cash value where replacement cost is unavailable, and provide a documented route for a resident who cannot obtain coverage at all.
7. Carry comparable coverage yourself. Oregon requires it; elsewhere it is what makes the requirement look reasonable.
8. Verify annually, and record it. A certificate collected at move-in proves nothing three years later.
9. Enforce it uniformly, or do not enforce it at all.

Point 9 is where these programmes usually die. An operator who requires insurance of new residents but not existing ones, or who notices one lapse and ignores three others, has not created a requirement — they have created a selective enforcement problem, and the same evidentiary trap that governs resident screening.

How RIOO fits

RIOO is a property management platform built natively on Oracle NetSuite, with the homesite as the record — which is what makes an insurance requirement operable rather than aspirational.

Each homesite carries the policy on file, its carrier, coverage level, effective and expiry dates, so a lapse is a dated event that surfaces as a task rather than a discovery after a fire. Because the requirement is recorded per homesite against the rule version in force when that resident signed, you can show what was required of whom and when — which is the uniform-enforcement evidence the statutes actually turn on.

Home vintage sits on the same record, so the residents for whom replacement-cost coverage is genuinely unobtainable are identifiable in advance rather than at renewal.

See how RIOO handles manufactured housing communities.

Conclusion

Roughly a third of manufactured home owners carry no insurance, against about one in thirteen homeowners nationally. When one of those homes is destroyed on your land, you clear it, you lose the site revenue, and your legal recourse is a judgment against someone who had no money for a policy.

Requiring coverage is a reasonable response. But it sits in a genuine legal gap: one state authorises a narrow version of it, one prohibits a narrower version still, and nobody has litigated the rest. The clause that survives is the one that is disclosed early, adopted as a rule, priced at nothing, demands only what a resident can actually buy, and is enforced against everybody the same way.

The one that fails is the one that showed up in a lease amendment last year, was never adopted as a rule, carried a $25 administration fee, and has been enforced twice.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. Can I require residents to insure their own manufactured homes?
In most states, probably — no statute prohibits it, and Arizona's expressly allows rental agreement conditions not otherwise barred. Oregon is the only state with express authority, and only for liability insurance up to $100,000. No case law exists either way, so the clause is tested as a contract term and a park rule.

Q2. Can I require the resident to name me as an additional insured?
Oregon expressly forbids it, permitting only "interested party" status. Elsewhere there is no authority, but many carriers will not add a landowner as additional insured on a personal policy. Ask for additional interest instead — you get notice of lapse, which is what you actually need.

Q3. Does requiring insurance count as a prohibited fee?
A policy the resident buys from an independent insurer moves no money to you and is probably not a fee. But charging an administration fee, taking a commission, or force-placing and billing back almost certainly is — and in Florida an undisclosed charge is permanently uncollectible.

Q4. Can I force-place insurance if a resident lets coverage lapse?
No. Federal force-placement rules apply to mortgage servicers. A landowner holding no lien has no equivalent authority over property it does not own. If you sold the home on a note and hold a recorded lien, that is a different relationship governed by your security agreement.

Q5. Can I evict a resident for letting insurance lapse?
Only through an enumerated ground, usually rule violation, with the statutory notice and cure period. Florida forbids eviction on any ground not in §723.061 and requires a second like violation within twelve months for most first offences. No case anywhere holds that an insurance lapse specifically supports eviction.

Q6. What if residents cannot obtain coverage?
That is a real risk in high-risk states and for older homes. Insurers may write actual-cash-value-only policies on pre-1976 homes, and coverage is being withdrawn from high-risk areas. California added manufactured homes to its FAIR Plan effective January 2026. Write the requirement so it can be satisfied.

Q7. Is it different for homes the community owns?
Yes, and easier. Washington and Florida both route park-owned home rentals to the general residential landlord-tenant act rather than the manufactured housing statute, where requiring renters insurance is conventional.