The Tennessee Court of Appeals recently reconciled forty years of often-confusing precedent with modern building technology in Douglas v. Five Star Properties, ruling that a permanently affixed CrossMod house falls outside a 1978 covenant banning “mobile homes.” The decision not only clarifies how courts should read similar restrictions but also signals to developers, lenders, and homeowner associations that precise drafting—not broad assumptions—will govern future disputes and shape how affordable homes are built and integrated into established neighborhoods.

Background

Win-Vue subdivision was platted in 1978 outside Morristown, Tennessee. Each deed incorporates the same six-word prohibition: “No mobile homes are permitted, and no poultry or swine may be raised or kept.”¹ In August 2023 Five Star Properties began setting a CrossMod, a HUD-code manufactured home whose two factory-assembled sections are craned onto a site-built, mortared block foundation before the roof, porch, and garage are framed in place.² One week later Jonathan Douglas, owner of three nearby lots and a traditional stick-built house, sued to enjoin the project. He contended that any dwelling constructed off-site falls within the covenant’s ban, warned of diminished property values, and demanded immediate removal.³

The chancery court fast-tracked the dispute. Douglas and five neighbors testified that Win-Vue “was always meant for real houses,” yet none possessed evidence of the developer’s original intent.⁴ Five Star countered with expert engineer James Harrell, house-moving contractor Michael Mills, and Clayton Homes executive Andrew Bryant. Harrell explained that CrossMods rest on continuous load-bearing masonry walls and are anchored with steel straps embedded in concrete footers; detaching one would require demolition comparable to relocating a brick rancher.⁵ Mills‐who moves conventional houses for a living-added that he could relocate many Win-Vue site-built dwellings more easily than the CrossMod once finished.⁶ Bryant testified that CrossMods lose their manufacturer’s certificate of origin when construction ends, an affidavit of affixture is recorded, and the dwelling is thereafter conveyed and taxed as real property.⁷

Despite those facts the chancellor found that a CrossMod “is what the public generally calls a double-wide mobile home” and issued a permanent injunction barring its placement on any Win-Vue lot.⁸ Five Star appealed.

How the Court Reached Its Conclusion

Because interpretation of a restrictive covenant is a question of law, the Court of Appeals reviewed the chancery court’s ruling de novo, though it accepted factual findings unless the evidence preponderated otherwise.⁹ Four long-standing principles guided the panel. First, the right freely to use private property is fundamental.¹⁰ Second, covenants that limit that right are strictly construed.¹¹ Third, any ambiguity is resolved against the party seeking enforcement.¹² Fourth, courts look to the covenant’s plain words, not post-hoc neighborhood sentiment.¹³

The panel traced Tennessee precedent in two epochs. During the 1980s and 1990s courts often lumped every factory-built dwelling into the “mobile-home” category so long as it arrived on wheels, even if the wheels were later removed.¹⁴ But the Tennessee Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Williams v. Fox (2007) marked a pivot, holding that a modular home permanently affixed to a lot is not a temporary building and therefore falls outside a covenant against “mobile homes, tents, trailers or the like.”¹⁵ Williams stressed that mobility, not manufacturing locus, defines a mobile home. The Court of Appeals applied the same logic in McKeehan v. Price (2022), ruling that a modular dwelling installed on a permanent block foundation failed to qualify as a trailer because “nothing in the record indicate[d] the home [was] designed or intended for transient occupancy or ready transportability.”¹⁶

The chancery court in Douglas leaned heavily on Neas v. Kearns (1999) and Napier v. Howard (2016). Yet as Judge Kristi M. Davis explained, those cases turned on continued mobility: in each, the dwelling retained a steel chassis or was routinely hauled away for seasonal use.¹⁷ The Win-Vue CrossMod, by contrast, would have to be unbolted from mortared walls, lifted off bonded piers, and structurally modified to survive highway speeds-an ordeal indistinguishable from moving a conventional house.¹⁸ Once permanently installed it also becomes real property under Fannie Mae’s MH Advantage program, a status incompatible with the vehicular titling regime that governs mobile homes.¹⁹

Under strict construction the covenant’s solitary word “mobile” could not be stretched to reach a dwelling engineered and legally required to stay put.²⁰ Because the record showed permanence-not transience-the Court reversed the injunction, vacated the order of removal, and remanded for dismissal.²¹

Why It Matters

The ruling carries weight well beyond this one development. Thousands of Tennessee subdivisions recorded before 1980 contain bare-bones clauses aimed at the single-wide trailers of that era. Douglas makes clear that such language does not automatically ban today’s HUD-code CrossMods or modular homes that mortgage lenders treat as real estate. Homeowner associations that still wish to exclude factory-built housing must now draft with surgical clarity, referencing statutory definitions, chassis retention, or specific product lines rather than relying on the vintage shorthand “mobile.”²² Future litigants, meanwhile, must prove genuine mobility-a remaining chassis, highway title, or the absence of an affidavit of affixture-instead of pointing solely to off-site construction.²³

The opinion also dovetails with public-policy efforts to diversify housing stock. CrossMods meet ENERGY STAR requirements, appraise against site-built comparables, and often cost twenty percent less per square foot than conventional homes.²⁴ Had the Court affirmed the chancery court, a six-word covenant drafted forty-seven years ago would have chilled an entire class of attainable housing across Tennessee. By insisting on fidelity to text and context, the panel preserved both the sanctity of contracts and the adaptability of neighborhoods to modern building technology.

Whether one views factory-built housing as innovation or intrusion, the lesson is the same: restrictive covenants mean what they say, no more and no less. If communities want broader limits, they must write them, record them, and live with the consequences.