Mobile Home Leveling in Cathedral City and Rancho Mirage

Cathedral City has about 2,400 mobile homes, roughly one home in ten, and a median resident age of about 41, younger than Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage. It sits about 8.8 miles in a straight line from the middle of Palm Desert. We relevel homes, rebuild piers and footings, check tie-downs and repair skirting and underbellies here and in Rancho Mirage next door. Typical relevel ranges are $450 to $800 for a singlewide and $750 to $1,400 for a doublewide, and your price comes in writing after we have seen the home.

Hilary and the parks

When the remnants of Hurricane Hilary crossed the valley on August 20, 2023, Cathedral City was one of the places that declared a local emergency. I-10 closed between Bob Hope Drive and Indian Canyon Drive. The city named Canyon Mobile Home Park among the places hardest hit, and firefighters rescued residents there.

Water and mud under a home is a good reason to look at the footings. If your park took water that August and nobody has looked under the home since, a level and pier inspection or a straight relevel quote is worth having.

The ground here

Cathedral City’s ground is a mix of Myoma fine sand, which NRCS describes as formed in sand blown from recent alluvium, loose and single grain with rapid permeability, and Carsitas sand and gravelly sand. Neither soil has much clay and there is no caliche layer, so swelling ground is not what we look for here. We look at footings placed on loose or disturbed sand, and at water from storms, sprinklers or leaks reaching them. NRCS notes that summer thunderstorms can briefly flood the sand.

Parks we know by name

Canyon Mobile Home Park and Tramview Mobile Home Park are two Cathedral City parks named in the city’s own notices. Most homes in the valley sit on rented park spaces, so the park’s rules apply to any work on the lot. Talk to the office before a job starts.

Permits in Cathedral City

California treats altering or replacing a home’s supports or tie-downs as a reinstallation that needs a permit (Health and Safety Code 18613). Inside parks, HCD issues those permits unless a city has taken over, and Cathedral City’s building department is on HCD’s list of local enforcement agencies. Outside parks, the city issues them. The contractor who pulls the permit must show a valid licence, and the class is the CSLB C-47: ask for the number and check it on CSLB. More on our California rules page.

Rancho Mirage

Rancho Mirage has about 730 mobile homes and the oldest residents of any place we serve (median age about 65), and more than a third of its homes are held for seasonal use, per the Census. Its valley floor is mostly Myoma fine sand, with hills and rock outcrop on the edge of town. Rancho Mirage’s building department is also on HCD’s local enforcement agency list, and the city has a Mobile Home Fair Practices Commission for park matters. For part-year owners, a look under the home before you leave for the season can catch a settling pier before it shows up as a door that will not close.

Related

• Pier and pad repair
• Tie-downs and anchors
• Palm Springs, next door
• Typical prices