A chattel house can be taken down and folded up for easy moving.  The house originated as an offshoot of large plantations that needed a great deal of land to grow crops, but also a great number of humans to work the land.  Plantation owners would often hire people to work the land and provide these workers with a spot of land where they could build their houses.  But, if the plantation owner didn't like the person or the work s/he was doing, the worker was fired and told to leave.  But the land didn't belong to the workers, so they would fold their houses up and load them onto wagons, then go off in search of another plantation to work at.  Taking the house apart and putting it back together was cheaper than buying an entirely new house.