Registering Your Tiny House Trailer In Texas

We had to register the trailer of our Amish Barn Raiser recently so that we could get a license plate and legally tow the house to the Dallas Tumbleweed Workshop. I worked with 2 different clerks that day (8/4) to get this all handled, and I learned a few things along the way that will likely be helpful for anyone building their mobile tiny house in Texas. I’ve even got (lousy) photos of important forms for point of reference! Just click any of the photos in this post to make them larger and easier to read.

First up is a photo of our receipt showing the fees you can expect when you register your trailer as a flat-bed using “Form 130-U Application for Texas Title.” The photo after the receipt has a simple step-by-step for registration listed on it, and all the necessary forms can be found on www.TXDMV.gov. You’ll note that we were charged late fees, and even though Tumbleweed tried to help by changing the date on the Bill of Sale to May when we actually took possession of the trailer, the 2nd clerk that helped me (I had to go back in the afternoon because I didn’t have a separate Bill of Sale for just the price of the trailer) didn’t notice the change and used the date on the Certificate of Origin for the trailer. Texas charges $25/mo past the “bill of sale” date plus a 10% tax penalty taken from the amount of tax charged on the total cost of the trailer. I’ve scratched a line through those fees and highlighted the actual standard fees in yellow and a hand written total of what was collected sans fees.

I also wanted to share the info we were told by a clerk at the Denton County Tax Assessor’s office, because we now have a little (key word there) hope that we *MIGHT* be able to register the whole house as an RV-travel trailer once the building is completed. The clerk gave me a few pointers, and I turned them into a handout we made available for the workshop attendees. Here’s a photo of the front and back of that flyer:

I try to make it clear that this information is most definitely NOT a guarantee that we or anyone else will be successful in registering their completed tiny house as an RV-travel trailer in Texas, but it does give me a little hope that it’s possible. Below are more photos of the forms needed to hopefully turn your flat-bed trailer with a tiny house “load” into a REAL RV-travel trailer. We will definitely be shooting for that option, so I’ll post an update about that progress. We’ve got several months of building ahead of us before we’ll be trying to make that change, but I’m cautiously optimistic it might work.

Lastly, I’m adding two photos of the tri-fold brochure we handed out that gives updates on our house, our building plans, and why we added a few protective layers to it on top of the ZIP system and roof sheathing. I’ll get much better quality images later and swap them, but you’ll get the general idea.

That’s it for now! I hope everyone enjoys their weekend!

~Meg