The Family Trailer = A Dream Come True (Headaches included!)
Four years ago, our family purchased a park model trailer in a campground. It sits on a lake in rural southern New Jersey near a national forest that you wouldn’t believe existed this close to New York City and Philadelphia.
Because park model trailers are legally considered both motor vehicles and homes, there were some hassles in the purchasing process. I solved them the long way and got pretty stressed out in the process; read on for my story, and for some easier fixes if you ever find yourself in this spot.
Our trailer sits in the massive and beautiful New Jersey Pinelands.
“Apple Pie Hill in Wharton State Forest” by Famartin is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Different Campground Structures: Lease or Own the Land?
Different campgrounds have different ownership / leasing setups. Some places will lease you a lot for your trailer, or lease you a lot and a trailer. Some places even have weird 99-year leases that are designed to feel like you own the land (you don’t!). Then there are campgrounds where you purchase a parcel of land just like you would if there were a house on it, and you either buy the trailer that comes with the parcel of land, or put your own park model trailer on it. If you buy a park model trailer in this third kind of camp ground, you’ve made yourself a prudent investment, but you now also have the hurdle of having to get both the trailer and the land titled/registered in your name.
Campgrounds often have access to semi-private lakes for fishing, swimming, kayaking, and general hanging out.
If you love RV’s and trailers like I do, then you’d enjoy The Driftwood RV Center, my local spot. If we ever sell our park model, we’re going to buy a cool old RV off their back lot and start exploring.
Old-school RV’s are totally cool, but they don’t appreciate in value like the land under a Park Model Trailer that you own.
A House with a VIN - double the headaches
The park model trailer’s VIN presented the biggest stumbling block. Trailers in campgrounds have a sort of double set of regulations: the land is subject to local and state laws and real estate taxes. The trailer is considered a vehicle and subject to titling requirements like any other vehicle or trailer. Actually in my case, there is a triple set of regulations, because our campground is a condo association, with rules about lot upkeep, etc.
I’m going to keep reminding you as I tell this story: It was worth it!!! If you saw our family bass fishing, loading up surfboards and heading to the beach, or kicking it at the firepit with friends in the evening, you’d definitely agree.
The Delaware Bay faces west, so the sunsets are spectacular!
Park model trailers need titles just like other vehicles
Our trailer is quite old as far as such things go (a 1988 model) and, though it’s in good shape overall, the VIN plate on this interior is pretty dinged up. We couldn’t get all 17 characters off the VIN plate; some were gone altogether, and others were unclear: 7, 1, or L, etc. Without a VIN, we couldn’t get a copy of the current title from the DMV, and the current owner had lost their copy of the title. We were in a tricky spot: we were scheduled to close on a purchase of land that had a trailer on it that we weren’t able to title in our name. If you think of a trailer like a vehicle, then not having title in your name is just as bad an idea as not having car title in your name. Read here for some scary stories of what can happen when you don’t have a clean title.
Related Article: Title Washing Is Illegal, Dangerous, And More Common Than Car Theft
I darn near had a heart attack when our real estate agent said to me “Just go to the DMV and tell them that you have a VIN with fewer than 17 characters.” I’ve registered enough cars in my life to know that the DMV wants a VIN with exactly 17 characters and will politely (or otherwise!) ask you to leave the desk if you try to discuss otherwise. Our agent was a lovely person, but clearly they knew more about land and real estate than motor vehicles.
With any vehicle, you better have the VIN right if you want to have smooth sailing at the old DMV!
“Waiting at the Bronx DMV” by Beyond My Ken is licensed under GFDL
How to recover that all-important vin
I put on my trusty coverall and climbed under the trailer, hoping to get the VIN off another plate that we figured was somewhere down there. No dice, just a dirty coverall and lots of worrying about running into a local snake or spider.
We started doing VIN searches, trying different combinations of the characters that we had, hoping to stumble by luck on our trailer’s VIN. We abandoned this idea because it was too risky to try and get the DMV to issue title to a trailer whose VIN we weren’t absolutely certain of.
By the way, if you ever key information connected to a vehicle’s VIN then get a VIN Check Report, from us. Cheap, reliable and easy!
Then a potential solution dawned on me: the home insurance policy! Here’s some more of the weird legal middle ground of a park model trailer. It has to be titled at the DMV, but insurance policies are more similar to home insurance than vehicle insurance (even though our trailer is insured by American Modern, which insures boats and specialty vehicles.) We got the insurance info from the sellers, called the insurance company to transfer the policy into our names, and sure enough the insurance company had the VIN. Bingo!
Now we had a VIN to take to the DMV. We showed proof of sale documents to establish me as the new owner, and the trailer title was transferred to my name. The trip to the DMV was long; the clerk didn’t know what to do and brought in their supervisor. The whole process took weeks, multiple phone calls, hours of online research, and a good bit of lost sleep.
Come to find out, that part of our struggle could have been avoided.
Dirt Legal Can Help
If you have a vehicle that you’re having a hard time titling, or you just don’t want the hassle of going to the DMV to title any vehicle, then consider using our Title Recovery Service. You provide a bill of sale and your photo ID. If you can take a picture of the VIN, send that picture as well. If the VIN is incomplete or non-standard in some way, then you might need a VIN inspection, but we’ve helped with lots of those too. We take care of everything, and you don’t have to go to the DMV, or take any of the other time consuming and stressful steps that I did. We make it quick and easy!
Jim Fiorile grew up in south Jersey and spent his youth strapping a pontoon boat to the top of his 5-speed Hyundai hatchback. He counts among his proudest accomplishments the fact that he has never financed a car or darkened the door of a dealership. When he isn’t writing or chasing his kids around, you can find him in the basement tinkering with his e-bike.