A HUD foundation certification in Texas is a letter from a Texas-licensed engineer who has seen the home in person and states that its foundation meets HUD’s Permanent Foundations Guide. HGS Engineering, PLLC (Texas Firm #21268) writes that letter for homes across North Texas. The State of Texas does not issue it.
Texas records downloaded 19 October 2026, Census figures downloaded 16 October 2026.
The guide to the HUD engineering report covers what the engineer checks and what the letter says. Here is the other half of a Texas file: what the state records, how many homes those records count in seven counties, and where inside a county they sit.
Who Makes Each Record in a Texas Manufactured Home File?
Three different people produce three different documents, and mixing them up is the usual reason a closing slips. The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) runs the state side through its Manufactured Housing Division.
Form T is the Notice of Installation, the first card above. TDHCA’s page sets its deadline at 7 days from installation, or 3 days for a new installer on a provisional license.
The ownership record is the second. Its records search covers ownership records, selling retailers, tax liens and inspection records, and offers reports such as an ownership count and a monthly titling report per county.
Does Texas Publish a County Count of Manufactured Homes?
Yes. The Texas manufactured home data page first reported that the division’s top pages carry no county count. The report sits one click inside the records search, and the 16 October read did not reach it. TDHCA’s “Manufactured Home Ownership Records by County” report prints a column headed “Number of Certificates” for every county and lists 1,087,640 certificates in total. It needs no login.
The page does not say what a certificate is counted from or whether a home that has left a county or been retired stays in the number. None of that is published. What it does give is a certificate count for each county.
Across the seven counties the state lists 113,082 certificates against 74,666 Census homes, a ratio of 1.51. The state’s figure is larger in every county, and the seven account for 10.4 percent of the statewide list. The Census asks households what kind of building they live in, so a home that is titled but sits empty, or has been moved, may never answer that question. That is a possible reason, and the state page does not confirm it.
The order of the counties is steadier than the totals. Ranked by either source, Johnson is third, Denton fourth, Parker fifth, Collin sixth and Ellis seventh. Only the top two swap: Dallas leads on the Census count and Tarrant leads on the state’s.
How Do You Read the State Report Yourself?
Open the division’s Records Search, choose the Ownership Records by County Report from the report options, and the page loads as one long table. Each of its two columns, county name and certificate count, has a sort link in the heading, so the list can be ordered either way. A final row gives the total.
Read it with care. The table has 414 rows, and they include names such as Acadia and Adams that are not Texas counties, plus a row labelled UNKNOWN with 197 certificates. Only the rows for the seven counties are used here. A saved copy of the page is re-parsed on every build, and the build fails if any printed figure moves.
Which Source Should You Trust for a County Count?
Neither count says which homes already have a letter. The file from the earlier loan may hold one, because a letter is written one home at a time and only when a lender asks. For a reader sizing a market or checking a claim, the practical difference is the margin. The Census figure carries a published 90 percent margin of error, which the data page prints for each county; the state’s page prints a single number with no margin.
The records search offers several reports, and the state report carries no date of its own, so the day you saved the page is the only date a reader can check. The Census figure is the better guide to the size of the pool, but it pools five years of survey responses, 2019 through 2023, so it describes the middle of that span more than this year. Two counties differ only when the gap between their counts is larger than the published margin. Both sources are free, so a reader can repeat the comparison for any other Texas county from the same two reports. Treat this group as a sample of North Texas rather than a statewide pattern, because other counties may rank differently.
Someone racing a closing date can leave both tables for later: they size a market across seven counties, and nothing in them moves a single file any closer to a lender’s sign-off, an appraisal date or a signed closing statement.
One shared finding holds in both sources. Three counties, Johnson, Ellis and Parker, hold 34.5 percent of the seven-county Census count and 34 percent of the state’s certificates, while together they make up 7 percent of the housing units in the seven. So about a third of the manufactured homes sit in a small part of the housing.
Where Do the Homes Sit Inside a County?
Not in the county-seat city. The Census publishes the same table for places, and three cities in the service area, Cleburne in Johnson, Waxahachie in Ellis and Weatherford in Parker, are also county seats. Inside the limits of those cities sit 3 percent of the homes the Census finds in their counties.
The places table says nothing about where inside the rest of each county those homes sit. It shows only that they fall beyond the city limits, not what kind of land they stand on or which smaller town they sit near. Reading further than that from this table would be a guess, and this post does not make one. For ground conditions at those addresses, the USDA figures for the whole county are the nearer guide than anything in this table, since they map the county and not just the seat city.
What Does an Address Outside the City Change?
It puts more weight on what the engineer reads on the lot. The introductory pages of HUD’s guide say a foundation’s size, footing depth and anchorage depend on the building’s site, so the county a home sits in matters through its ground. In Johnson County the soil data on the HGS data page lists Crosstell and Heiden as the largest high shrink-swell soils by acre. In Ellis County it is Houston Black and Heiden. Parker County has the least of this clay of the three: only 9.3 percent of its rated soil is high or very high, against 59.6 percent in Johnson County and 71.7 percent in Ellis County. Each share counts rated acres only. The USDA soil survey leaves a slice of every county unrated, running from 14.2 percent of the land in Johnson County to 16.2 percent in Parker County, so the shares describe the mapped ground and nothing else.
The firm’s service area includes the whole of each county, and the request form takes any address.
Does the Form T Date Help with the Engineer’s Visit?
It can, for a home installed recently. TDHCA’s page says the installer prints or saves Form T for the customer’s home file, so the installer has a copy to give the owner. FHA draws its own line at one year on the site, which the HUD engineering report guide explains, and that line runs from when the home was permanently erected.
Ask the installer whether the copy shows the installation date, then give that date to the engineer with the loan type and the lender’s deadline. No Form T was reviewed for this post, so which fields it carries is unconfirmed. Treat the date as a question for the installer, not a promise that the form has it. If the installer cannot find a copy, tell the engineer when the home was set and who set it, and the visit can go ahead without the form. Skirting is one of the five things the engineer checks anyway, so a home that is already skirted is not a reason to wait.
How Do You Check Who Is Signing?
TBPELS, the state board for engineers and surveyors, requires any business offering engineering to the public to hold its own registration, down to a one-person sole proprietorship. HB 1544 took effect on January 1, 2000. Its stated aims included stopping engineers from offering services to the public without a license (TBPELS). The 76th Legislature passed the bill in 1999, with Representative Patrick Haggerty as its author and Senator Frank Madla as its sponsor, according to the Board’s own page on engineering firm registration.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can do a HUD foundation certification for a manufactured home in Texas?
A Texas-licensed engineer or architect whose firm is also registered with the state board. The last section says how to check both.
Is the state’s installation inspection the same as a HUD foundation certification?
No. They are different records made by different people, and the first figure shows each one.
Can I look up how many manufactured homes my county has?
Yes, for seven North Texas counties, each linked from the data page.
Sources
Downloaded and read 19 October 2026 unless noted. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, Manufactured Housing Division and Online Submissions for Home Installations, the 7-day and 3-day Form T deadlines and the records search description. TDHCA, Manufactured Housing Report Options and its Ownership Records by County report, the certificate counts by county. U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2019-2023 5-year table B25024, downloaded 16 October 2026. HUD USER, Permanent Foundations Guide for Manufactured Housing and its introductory pages. HUD, FHA Single Family Housing Policy Handbook 4000.1. Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, Engineering Firm Registration. The firm’s own pages: HUD Certification and Texas Manufactured Home Data.