Manufactured & Mobile Homes in Dodge County, NE

A 2025 University of Nebraska-Lincoln study looked building by building at mobile home parks across Dodge, Douglas, and Sarpy Counties and found Dodge County carries the worst flood exposure of the three -- about half its mobile homes sit inside federally designated high-risk flood zones, and none of its parks have levee protection. That's a specific, dated finding worth checking against before buying land here for a manufactured or mobile home.

This page covers what's specific to Dodge County. For the general explanation, see the national guide.

What the UNL flood-risk study actually found in Dodge County

Prompted by Nebraska's catastrophic March 2019 flooding, a research team led by Zhenghong Tang, a professor of community and regional planning at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, published a building-level analysis of 23 mobile home parks across Dodge, Douglas, and Sarpy Counties in the peer-reviewed journal Natural Hazards in August 2025. The study's central finding for Dodge County is stark: about half of the mobile homes in the county sit within federally designated high-risk flood zones, a meaningfully higher share than the roughly one-in-five figure the same study found in Douglas County. The researchers also identified a structural reason for that gap -- Dodge County's mobile home parks have no levees shielding them at all, while Douglas County's levee system along the Missouri River has held back floodwaters in recent flood events. Most of the exposed residents identified by the study are concentrated around Fremont, the county seat.

The study also flagged a secondary risk factor worth knowing about beyond the flood-zone designation itself: some of the parks reviewed have only a single road in and out, or a layout of dead-end streets, either of which can trap residents during a fast-moving flash flood even if the water itself is not deep enough to reach a structure's floor. Using an average household size of 2.5 people, the research team estimated roughly 1,230 residents across all three counties studied are exposed to significant flood danger under this analysis -- a population-level estimate, not a claim about any specific park, but a useful sense of scale for how seriously the underlying data should be taken.

What to check before buying land for a manufactured home, or an existing park, in Dodge County

This finding doesn't mean manufactured or mobile housing is unworkable in Dodge County -- it means the flood-zone question deserves parcel-specific verification rather than an assumption based on a park's general reputation, price, or how far it appears to sit from the Platte or Elkhorn Rivers on a map. Before buying land or an existing home site here, pull the current FEMA Flood Insurance Rate Map for the specific parcel through Nebraska's Department of Water, Energy and Environment or directly from FEMA's Map Service Center, and ask the Dodge County Zoning Department whether the site sits inside any area covered by the county's post-2019 Elkhorn Township Drainage Improvement Plan or other floodplain-adjacent planning -- since land near that planning area could see either new protective infrastructure or continued exposure, depending on how the plan's funding and construction ultimately proceed.

Because manufactured and mobile homes are generally more vulnerable to floodwater than site-built construction -- lower foundation elevations, lighter anchoring, and in older units, less structural resistance to floating or shifting -- also ask specifically about evacuation access for any park or site you're considering: how many road connections exist, whether any of them are themselves prone to flooding first (cutting off egress before the home site floods), and what the park's or site's elevation is relative to the nearest waterway's base flood elevation. If you're buying an existing manufactured home rather than raw land, request the home's most recent flood insurance history and any documented flood damage, since a unit that has already flooded once carries a materially different risk profile than one that hasn't, even at the same address.

Manufactured and Mobile Homes in Dodge County, Nebraska

What the UNL flood-risk study actually found in Dodge County

What to check before buying land for a manufactured home, or an existing park, in Dodge County

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