Palm Desert Mobile Home Leveling 
Palm Desert has about 3,400 mobile homes, and close to 20,000 sit between Palm Springs and Indio. Most of them sit on piers, and most of the valley floor under them is sand. When a pier settles, the home tells you: a door starts to drag, a floor slopes, a crack runs up from a window corner. We relevel the home, rebuild the piers and pads that have failed, and repair what has torn underneath.
Our typical relevel ranges are $450 to $800 for a singlewide and $750 to $1,400 for a doublewide. We get under the home and read the frame at the piers before we give you a number, and the number comes in writing. The rest of our ranges are on the pricing page.
The ground under the valley
Most of the valley floor from Cathedral City through Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage is Myoma fine sand. The USDA soil survey describes it as sand blown from recent alluvium: loose, single grain, with rapid permeability. On the north side of the valley, in Desert Edge, Sky Valley and much of Thousand Palms, the ground is Carsitas sand and gravelly sand laid down on alluvial fans. These are low-clay soils with low shrink-swell and no caliche layer, so the clay-heave story you may have heard about other places does not fit here.
Loose sand drains fast, but water still matters. California’s rules want a footing set level on firm, undisturbed soil or compacted fill. NRCS notes that irrigation or seepage can create a seasonal water table 2 to 5 feet down in Carsitas sand, that perched water is common where Coachella soils are irrigated, and that summer thunderstorms can briefly flood the sand. So when we find one low corner, we look at what is near it: a sprinkler line, a leaking hose bib, a downspout, runoff from the street.
California treats a relevel as a reinstallation
This is the part most owners do not expect. Health and Safety Code 18613 says that altering, modifying or replacing a home’s load-bearing supports or stabilizing devices counts as reinstalling the home, and a reinstallation needs a permit. The contractor pulls it and must show a valid licence; an owner doing the work pulls it themselves. The licence class is the CSLB C-47 General Manufactured Housing Contractor. Ask whoever is going under your home for the number and check it on CSLB. Our California releveling rules page walks through who issues permits inside and outside parks.
Who we work for
The valley is not one kind of owner. Palm Desert’s median resident is about 57 and Rancho Mirage’s about 65, and more than a quarter of Palm Desert’s homes (37% in Rancho Mirage) are held for seasonal use, per the Census. If you are away for part of the year, a settling pier can go unnoticed for months, and a pre-purchase foundation check or a look before you leave saves the surprise. Indio, Cathedral City and Thousand Palms are younger places, with median ages around 37 to 41.
Palm Desert’s own communities include Palm Desert Greens, a guard-gated 55+ community of 1,922 homes, and Portola Country Club, a 55+ community of 500 manufactured homes around a par-3 course where the homes are individually owned. Outside the city we cover Cathedral City, Indio, Palm Springs, Thousand Palms and Desert Edge and Sky Valley, plus Rancho Mirage next door. Palm Desert sits on Highway 111 and I-10, with exits at Monterey Avenue and Cook Street, in the middle of the valley.
How a job goes
- You tell us what you are seeing. The symptom pages help you describe it.
- We go under the home, read the frame at the piers and look at the pads, tie-downs, underbelly and skirting.
- You get a written price that says how many piers are being reshimmed and how many rebuilt.
- Nothing is lifted until you have said yes, and the permit question has been settled.
Not sure what it might cost? Try the leveling cost calculator, then send us the result with the quote form.