Chattel versus mortgage, what pre-qualification involves, and the questions worth asking before you sit down with anyone.
If the home is going on land you do not own, or in a community where you rent the lot, the loan is generally a chattel loan. That is a loan against the home itself as personal property rather than against real estate. Terms and underwriting are different from a conventional mortgage, and so are the lenders.
If you own the land and the home is permanently affixed to it, the deal can often be financed as real property, which opens up more conventional options. Whether that is possible depends on the foundation, the land, and local rules.
Most buyers assume this is a weeks-long process with a filing cabinet of paperwork. For manufactured homes it is usually a short conversation covering income, credit, what you have for a down payment, and whether land is part of the deal. Dealers work with a small number of specialist lenders and know quickly which one fits.
Doing it before you shop is worth it, because it changes which homes are worth walking through.
Any dealer worth buying from will answer all four without hedging. A specific rate is not something anyone should quote you before they have actually looked at your situation, and you should be suspicious of one that arrives too easily.
This guide is here because dealers kept getting asked these questions and nobody had a straight page to send people to. If you run a lot and want this handled automatically, that is what Cass does. If you are a buyer, just take the questions with you.