Most of the holdups we see on a temporary housing placement have nothing to do with the home. They are about the lot.
A hotel room does not care what the driveway looks like. A home set on the policyholder’s own property does, and the questions are the same every time. Can a truck get in. Is there room to set the home down. Will the ground hold it. Is there water, sewer and power to connect to.
None of that is complicated. It just needs answering before a truck leaves the yard rather than after it arrives in the street. Here is what we look at, roughly in the order we look at it, whether you are an adjuster sizing up a file or a homeowner wondering if your own yard will work.
Getting in
The first question is not the lot. It is the road to it.
A truck towing a home needs room to swing in off the street, and it needs that room without taking out a mailbox, a fence post or a neighbor’s parked car. The things that stop an approach, more often than people expect:
- tight turns at the end of a cul de sac, or a gate that is narrower than it looks
- tree limbs over the driveway. A home stands taller than the pickup that has been clearing those branches for years
- low power, phone or cable lines crossing the drive
- a culvert, cattle guard or wooden bridge on a rural drive that nobody knows the weight rating of
- a long narrow drive with nowhere to turn around, which can be workable or can be a hard stop depending on what sits at the end of it
Where the approach is tight, the answer is usually to walk it before delivery day rather than discover it with a loaded truck blocking the road. We do that on plenty of placements and it costs nothing to ask for.
Where the home sits
Once it is on the property, the home needs its own footprint plus working room around it.
That means clearance on all four sides. Room for the entry steps and for the door to swing, room to walk the sides without turning sideways, and room for the truck to back it in and unhitch. It also means enough distance from the house, the fence and the trees that service work can happen without moving anything.
The part people forget is the way out. The home has to come off the lot when the rebuild is finished, and a contractor’s dumpster, a material drop or a new section of fence can close a route that was wide open on delivery day. If it is tight going in, decide early where it will leave from.
Distance from the structure matters too, particularly on a fire loss where what is left of the house still has to come down. Demolition equipment needs its own room. We would rather place the home once, in a spot that works for the whole rebuild, than move it twice.
Grade and ground
The home is set and leveled where it lands, so the ground underneath has to be reasonably level and firm enough to carry it.
A gentle slope is normal and we work with it. Soft ground is the real problem. After a flood, after a long wet spell, or on a lot where heavy equipment has just finished working, a yard that looks solid can be soft an inch down. Gravel, mats or a different corner of the property usually solves it, but it is far better known in advance than found under a wheel.
One more thing worth saying out loud: a lived-in yard and an active construction site are not the same ground. Once the rebuild starts there is traffic, there are nails and there is mud. Putting the home somewhere the crew is not driving past every morning is better for the family and better for the contractor.
Water, sewer and power
Our setup connects the home to what is already at the property. All three services are handled as part of the placement rather than left for the family to figure out. So the question on any lot is what is still there and still working.
- Water. A working spigot on the property is normally all it takes.
- Sewer. A cleanout on the existing sewer line, or a septic system in usable condition. The home drains into the property’s own sewer service, so a sound connection point matters more than almost anything else on this list.
- Power. Service at the property that the home can be connected to. On a fire loss the power is often cut at the meter, and getting it restored is the single thing most likely to hold a placement up. It also sits on the utility’s schedule rather than ours, which is why it is worth starting as soon as the claim is open.
If the loss took the services with it, that is a different conversation and not automatically a no. Tell us what is there and we will give you a straight answer.
What actually stops a delivery
The short list, and nearly all of it is findable with a phone call and a few photographs:
- no approach a truck can physically make
- no spot on the property with enough clearance around it
- ground too soft to carry the home
- no sewer connection point, or a septic system in no condition to take it
- power off, with no near term route to getting it back on
- a city rule, deed restriction or HOA covenant limiting what may sit on the lot
That last one varies by city, county and neighborhood, and the homeowner or the adjuster is usually the person who can find out fastest. Ask early. It is rarely the thing that ends a placement, but it is an expensive surprise on delivery day.
What we ask you for
When you call us about a property we will ask where it is, whether a claim is open, who the adjuster or the housing desk is, and how many people and pets are being housed. That part is the same conversation we described in the first 72 hours after a fire or a total loss.
For the lot itself, photographs answer more in thirty seconds than a description does in ten minutes:
- the approach, shot from the street looking in
- the spot where the home would sit, from far enough back to show what surrounds it
- the electrical meter or panel
- the sewer cleanout, or the septic lid
- one wide shot of the whole property
That is usually enough for us to say yes, no, or here is what would have to change first. Some properties genuinely do not work. We would rather say so on the phone than on delivery day, which is why we ask before anything is committed.
Why it is worth the ten minutes
Housing on the insured’s own lot sits on the same line of the policy as a hotel or a rental house, which we laid out in what additional living expenses actually covers. The difference is that the family stays on the property, the children stay in the same school, and the insured is standing on site every day the rebuild is going on.
Ten minutes of questions about access, clearance, grade and utilities is what keeps that from turning into a wasted trip. We do this work across the lower 48, through catastrophe season and through winter, and the lots that go smoothly are nearly always the ones somebody looked at properly first.
Talk to us about a property
If you are an adjuster, an independent firm or a carrier housing desk, we work directly with you and we are set up for it. More on that on our page for insurance companies, and for events with a lot of homes down at once, see catastrophe temporary housing.
If you are a homeowner, you can call us yourself and then hand us to your adjuster. That happens all the time and it works fine.
Dispatch is answered any hour, 24 hours a day. Call 346-708-4607, email rentals@temphousingrv.com, or send the property details through our contact form and we will call you back.
Temporary Housing Services is veteran-owned and family-run, based in Spring, Texas, placing furnished homes on policyholders’ own property across the lower 48.
