Over the years of owning a mobile home, many homeowners have added features that transform their property from a basic structure into a personalized living space. Decks, porches, carports, sunrooms, permanent additions, and storage sheds become integral parts of daily life. When it's time to relocate, one of the most difficult decisions—and often one of the most expensive—involves determining what stays and what goes. Understanding what can be moved, what's legally allowed to move, and what makes financial sense can save you thousands of dollars and considerable heartache.

The Reality of Attached Structures

The fundamental challenge with porches, decks, and additions is that they were never designed to be mobile. Unlike your mobile home's chassis and frame, which were engineered for transport, these add-ons are typically built as permanent structures with foundations extending into the ground. Most have been customized to fit your specific home and site, making them difficult or impossible to relocate intact.

Transport companies universally require complete removal of all attached structures before moving your mobile home. This isn't negotiable—your home cannot safely travel down highways with a deck, porch, or room addition attached. The question becomes whether these structures can be dismantled, transported separately, and rebuilt, or whether they're essentially abandoned at your original location.

Decks and Porches: Dismantle or Leave Behind?

Wooden decks and porches present the most common dilemma. In theory, these structures can be dismantled, transported, and rebuilt. In practice, this rarely makes financial sense. The labor cost to carefully dismantle a deck while preserving the lumber typically runs $500 to $2,000 depending on size and complexity. Transportation costs for the materials add another $300 to $800. Reconstruction at your new location costs $1,500 to $5,000 or more, depending on whether the deck can use the same design or requires modification to fit the new site.

When you total these costs, you're often spending 75% to 100% of what a brand-new deck would cost, but you're working with used lumber that may have weathering, nail holes, or damage from dismantling. Additionally, many localities require new decks to meet current building codes, which may mandate features like specific railing heights, stair dimensions, or structural reinforcements that your old deck doesn't have.

Composite or Trex decking materials generally survive dismantling better than pressure-treated lumber and can be worth relocating if the deck is relatively new and high-quality. However, the hidden structural components—joists, beams, and posts—often sustain damage during removal that makes reuse impractical.

Metal or aluminum carports and awnings offer better relocation prospects. These prefabricated structures often bolt together and can be disassembled, transported, and rebuilt more economically than wooden structures. However, they must still meet setback requirements and building codes at your new location.

Permanent Room Additions: The Complicated Case

Room additions—whether sunrooms, extra bedrooms, or enclosed porches—present the most complex situation. These structures typically share electrical, plumbing, and HVAC systems with your mobile home, making separation costly and complicated. From a regulatory standpoint, permanent additions create classification problems that vary significantly by state.

In many jurisdictions, once you add a permanent room to a mobile home, the entire property may be reclassified as "real property" rather than "personal property." This reclassification affects everything from property taxes to moving permits. Some states, including California and Washington, have regulations that effectively prohibit moving homes once substantial permanent additions have been made.

Texas allows mobile homes with additions to be relocated but requires separate permits and inspections for the home itself versus the addition. If the addition must be demolished, you'll need demolition permits and potentially asbestos testing if the structure was built before 1980, adding $500 to $2,000 to your costs.

Florida has particularly complex rules about additions. If your addition was built without proper permits originally—surprisingly common in mobile home parks—you may face complications both at your departure location and arrival destination. Unpermitted structures can create title issues that prevent selling your original lot or setting up at a new location.

Legal and Regulatory Considerations

Before deciding whether to move attached structures, investigate three critical regulatory areas: local zoning and setback requirements, building codes and permits, and mobile home park or community rules.

Zoning regulations at your new location dictate how close structures can be to property lines, how much lot coverage is allowed, and what types of structures are permitted. Your old deck configuration might not be legally reproducible at your new site due to different setback requirements. This is particularly common when moving from rural areas with relaxed regulations to more urbanized areas with stricter codes, or vice versa.

Building permits are required for nearly all structural work. Even if you're rebuilding with your old materials, you'll likely need permits for the new construction. Permit costs range from $100 to $1,000 depending on the project scope and location. The inspection process may reveal that your old structure doesn't meet current codes—stairs that lack proper handrails, decks missing proper footings, or electrical work not up to code—requiring modifications that add cost.

If you're moving into a mobile home community or park, their rules supersede what's technically legal under local building codes. Many parks have strict aesthetic requirements, prohibiting certain types of structures entirely or requiring specific materials and designs. Some upscale communities, particularly in states like Arizona and Florida with large retirement mobile home parks, mandate that all structures meet community architectural standards, making it impossible to replicate your old additions even if you wanted to.

What's Worth Moving

Certain items almost always make sense to relocate. Prefabricated metal carports and storage sheds, particularly higher-end models, can be cost-effectively dismantled and rebuilt. If you invested $3,000 in a quality metal carport, spending $800 to move it beats buying new.

Specialty items like custom-built wheelchair ramps, particularly those made from composite materials or aluminum, should generally be relocated. These specialized structures are expensive to replace and often dismantle cleanly.

High-quality outdoor features you can easily detach—decorative posts, light fixtures, house numbers, mailbox assemblies, and landscaping elements like pavers or garden borders—should definitely accompany your move. These items add minimal transportation cost but represent hundreds or thousands of dollars to replace.

What's Rarely Worth Moving

Basic wooden decks more than five years old rarely justify moving costs unless they're exceptionally large or built with premium materials. Standard pressure-treated lumber decks depreciate quickly and often cost less to rebuild than to relocate.

Built-in features like brick or stone steps, concrete porches, lattice skirting permanently attached, and in-ground features like fish ponds or built-in fire pits must almost always be abandoned. The labor and transportation costs exceed replacement value, and they likely won't fit your new site's layout anyway.

Older additions with outdated electrical or plumbing systems shouldn't be relocated. You'll spend money dismantling and moving components that won't pass inspection at your new location, requiring replacement anyway.

Making the Decision

Create a detailed cost analysis before deciding. Get written estimates for dismantling, transportation, and reconstruction, then compare this total to the cost of building new at your destination. Factor in that new construction comes with warranties, meets current codes, and can be designed specifically for your new site.

Consider the age and condition of your structures honestly. A seven-year-old deck has already lived more than half its useful life. Spending thousands to relocate it may leave you with a structure needing replacement in just a few years.

Finally, recognize that some attachment to these structures is emotional. You built that deck yourself, or it's where your grandchildren played. While these memories matter, they shouldn't drive a decision that could cost thousands of dollars unnecessarily. Sometimes, the best choice is leaving the old behind and creating new spaces—and new memories—at your destination.

Should You Move Your Porch, Deck, or Additions? What’s Allowed and What’s Not