Mobile home
prefabricated structure attached to a chassis
A mobile home (also known as a house trailer, park home, trailer, or trailer home) is a prefabricated structure, built in a factory on a permanently attached chassis before being transported to site (either by being towed or on a trailer). Used as permanent homes, or for holiday or temporary accommodation, they are often left permanently or semi-permanently in one place, but can be moved, and may be required to move from time to time for legal reasons.
Mobile homes share the same historic origins as travel trailers, but today the two are very different, with travel trailers being used primarily as temporary or vacation homes. Behind the cosmetic work fitted at installation to hide the base, mobile homes have strong trailer frames, axles, wheels, and tow-hitches.
History
In the United States, this form of housing goes back to the early years of cars and motorized highway travel. It was derived from the travel trailer (often referred to during the early years as "house trailers" or "trailer coaches"), a small unit with wheels attached permanently, often used for camping or extended travel.
The original rationale for this type of housing was its mobility. Units were initially marketed primarily to people whose lifestyle required mobility. However, in the 1950s, the homes began to be marketed primarily as an inexpensive form of housing designed to be set up and left in a location for long periods of time or even permanently installed with a masonry foundation. Previously, units had been eight feet or fewer in width, but in 1956, the 10-foot (3.0 m) wide home ("ten-wide") was introduced, along with the new term "mobile home".
The public source identifies “Mobile home” as prefabricated structure attached to a chassis. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mobile, home and prefabricated.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1434998. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1956.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mobile home” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.