5 Facts Homeowners Need to Know

New Manufactured Home Tie-Down Requirements for 2025

If you own a manufactured home—or you’re planning to buy, move, refinance, or sell one—there are some important new rules coming that affect your tie-down system and your ability to get HUD or FHA financing. These changes take effect November 1, 2025, and they apply to manufactured homes nationwide, including here in Arizona.

To keep this simple, here are the five key facts every homeowner, buyer, seller, and installer should understand.

1. The new rules officially begin on November 1, 2025.

Starting on this date, any manufactured home installation, relocation, or foundation work connected to HUD or FHA financing must follow the updated mobile home tie-down requirements.
This includes:

• New manufactured home installations
• Relocated or re-leveled homes
• Homes being sold and needing a foundation certification
• Homes being refinanced with FHA loans

If a home doesn’t meet the new anchoring requirements, it won’t pass an engineering inspection, and the loan won’t move forward.

2. Why the rules changed: even “low-wind” areas need stronger anchoring.

For years, many parts of the country—Arizona included—were considered “low wind zones.” Older codes allowed for simple diagonal tie-downs because those areas weren’t expected to face extreme wind pressure.

But updated weather studies showed something different:
Even low-wind states experience sudden downbursts, microbursts, and high-gust events strong enough to move a manufactured home that isn’t properly anchored.

HUD updated the regulations to make sure homes have better protection against modern wind conditions. In plain terms:
the weather is changing, and the anchoring systems needed to keep homes safe have to change with it.

3. The biggest change: vertical anchors are now required.

This is the part homeowners and installers need to pay close attention to. The old system relied mostly on diagonal tie-downs, which help keep the home from sliding sideways. The new HUD code adds vertical anchoring, which holds the home down from underneath.

Here’s what that means for each home type:

• Double-wides and triple-wides:
  Require 4 vertical corner anchors plus the usual diagonal tie-downs.
• Single-wides:
  Require 6 vertical anchors total — 4 on the corners and 2 along the sides.

Single-wides need more anchoring simply because they’re lighter and narrower, and they can’t spread wind pressure across a wide frame the way bigger homes can.

These new requirements apply whether you use a Xi2 tie-down system, auger anchors, soil anchors, or concrete footers. The system itself must support vertical load resistance, not just side-to-side stabilization.

4. Why vertical anchors matter: they stop lifting, not just sliding.

Diagonal tie-downs are good for keeping a home from shifting.
Vertical anchors do a different job—they keep the home from lifting, rocking, or tipping when wind gets underneath it.

Think of vertical anchors like extra hands holding the home down tightly to the ground. When a strong gust hits, the wind force goes into the anchors instead of into the home.

This is especially important in places like Arizona, where sudden wind bursts can be extremely strong even if the area isn’t considered a high wind zone.

5. Engineering certifications will be simpler—but stricter.

After November 1, 2025, engineers will have a much clearer checklist:

• Does the home have the correct number of vertical anchors?
• Are they placed exactly where they should be?
• Are the components rated and approved?

If those items aren’t correct, the engineer cannot issue a HUD/FHA foundation certification letter. No anchor compliance = no financing approval.

For homeowners, this means fewer surprises. For installers, it means following the updated manuals from manufacturers like Tie Down Engineering and ensuring the installation meets the 2025 HUD code.