This article below sheds light on what could be a large part of the problem.
As a side note, a few months ago, I looked with a friend at several manufactured homes in the original section of TV. They were decent, but all needed facelifting. I couldn't understand why a person would pay $115,000 for a manufactured home in need of $10,000+ in maintenance/facelifting, when one can buy a more solidly built patio villa with tried-and-true floor plan in a newer, northern section for $135,000.
Anyway, there are concepts to know in this article:
NAPLES — Dennis England’s mobile home in East Naples looks the same as it did a year ago.
There’s nothing different about it — inside or out.
But when he got his renewal policy from Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the state-run insurer, he felt like part of his home — and nest egg — had blown away.
Since England and his wife, Ruth, in their 70s, first signed up with Citizens years ago, they’ve had $64,000 of coverage on their mobile home, not including personal property or other structures. Their renewal policy — effective in May — cuts that same coverage more than 70 percent, dropping it to $18,000, nowhere near the home’s market value or what it would cost to replace it.
Citizens, created as the insurer of last resort, has been looking for ways to reduce its risks. One way has been to depreciate older manufactured and mobile homes.
In January 2006, Citizens began requiring that all policies like the Englands be written for actual cash value, not replacement cost. The law kicked in for renewals beginning in 2010, but the change happened slowly, reaching some in Southwest Florida for the first time this year....
........“Someone was telling me that roughly 40 percent of mobile homeowners in the state of Florida have elected not to have insurance because of either the cost or the inability to purchase enough insurance. To me that is an alarming number,” said Jim Ayotte, executive director of the Florida Manufactured Housing Association......
East Naples mobile home park owners, like many, feel pinch from Citizens insurance » Naples Daily News