On the subject of mobile homes and modular homes...
Mobile homes are typically built with cheaper materials. Drywall may only be 3/8" instead of 1/2". Sometimes studs are 1.5x3.5 (actual, 1.25x3). Electrical uses special low weight push in switches, which don't last. Older mobile homes were able to dispense with necessities like shut off valves at the sink and toilet. A true mobile home in a designated mobile home park must also leave its tow frame exposed, so you have the ugly triangle frame at the front.
Modular homes can vary from mobile home quality, to fine home building. Most modular homes are built with normal building materials (true drywall, true electrical boxes and switches). Modular homes are usually placed on a decent foundation. Modular homes won't have the tow frame exposed.
However, a modular home is towed to site and typically carries a sturdy steel I-beam or two underneath. If you have a modular home, you'll find these I-beams in the crawlspace. There's nothing wrong with that except it makes for difficulty in crawling under the house.
I'm not a home building expert, I only speak from what I've seen in my disaster relief volunteering. I've worked on way too many mobile and modular homes, and crawled under a handful - each one a unique and miserable experience since they were flood homes.
If I were looking at buying a modular home, I would look at two things:
- Is the foundation proper. Because of the I-beams, sometimes the builder cheats.
- What kind of flooring? I'm talking sub-floor. This would require crawling under and looking at the sub-floor and joists. Some modular makers cheat a bit in the quality in this area.
Since this is a 1953 home, it probably isn't modular since that industry really got going in the 60s.
My dad's first plumbing job was in the late 40s with a company called "Home-ola". Think of a jukebox, "rock-ola". "ola" was a suffix that came to mean "automated" until automated bribery payments came into being and "ola" got a bad name.
Anyway, what dad did was be part of a cog in an assembly line, just cutting pipe to a certain length. The job workers would swarm the site and work on 10 homes at once, each one a bit farther along than the other. This was during the post WWII housing shortage. They would do the same job on one home 10 days in a row. It was an assembly line in place. These were essentially modular homes built on site! Over time, they were then built off-site at a factory.
This home could be similar to that.