Author Topic: Buying a manufactured home?  (Read 5107 times)

ragesinggoddess

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Buying a manufactured home?
« on: April 05, 2014, 06:26:39 AM »
There's a 1960's manufactured home for sale for 20K a short bike ride from my workplace. We're currently paying $800 in rent and we only make about 50K/yearly, so it would be great to save some money on housing. But I'm curious if there are hidden costs I'm not aware of. Are maintenance costs likely to represent a higher portion of home value with this kind of home? Are they hard to re-sell? What's it like living in a trailer park?

Also, thoughts on how to sell this idea to my husband would be awesome :)

Rural

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2014, 07:06:07 AM »
Are you looking at a manufactured home or a trailer (mobile home)? If , as it sounds from your post, you have a 1960s trailer for sale for $20k in a trailer park, then it's overpriced by roughly $18k, maybe more.


Potential other issues: if it's in a park, are you buying the lot, too, or just the trailer? If it's just the trailer, you'll still have monthly rent on the lot. If it goes up or you don't pay it, you may have the option to move elsewhere, but it may be structurally unfit for moving, and it may be illegal to make a trailer of that age on public roads. Plus it may be illegal to site a trailer of that age anywhere nearby. Also the lot owner may be able to seize the trailer for back rent. So find out about lot rent.


I did convince my husband to live in a trailer of about that age (1971) for what ended up being four years, up until last summer. But it wasn't in a park (the trailer was already on the acreage we bought to build on). Still it took some considerable convincing. Neither of us is sorry now in retrospect, but that's not because of getting cheap housing out of the deal; it's because we got our dream house out of the deal. We actually got a small discount on the land purchase because of the expense we'd have to incur in removing the trailer.


In other words, there are a couple of ways this could go well, but there are many, many ways it could go very badly, even without bringing up the issue of living in a park. Proceed with extreme caution.

Christiana

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2014, 01:24:19 PM »
Higher utility costs for heating and cooling...if it's a poorly-insulated metal box with little thermal mass.

Cassie

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2014, 02:51:07 PM »
My MIL lived in a park & her lot rent went up every year. Also the park was very bossy, etc. It was not a good situation. Now a manufactured home on it's own land would be a different story.  Some of the newer models-last 15 years are built very well.

CarDude

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2014, 03:59:38 PM »
My MIL lived in a park & her lot rent went up every year. Also the park was very bossy, etc. It was not a good situation. Now a manufactured home on it's own land would be a different story.  Some of the newer models-last 15 years are built very well.

Yeah, I'd start by looking at the fees over the last several years, or better yet, put one of them on your own plot.

Rural

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2014, 06:22:33 PM »
Higher utility costs for heating and cooling...if it's a poorly-insulated metal box with little thermal mass.


Oh, my, yes, vey high costs and not possible to make it actually comfortable for any price.

Milspecstache

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2014, 09:44:07 PM »
We lived in a 70's singlewide while building our dream-home.  It was in rough shape, so maintenance was very cheap once I put in new PEX to get the water flowing.  Basically I only did the minimum as I knew I would be tearing it down soon.

Yes it was slightly more expensive to heat/cool (slightly because the sq footage was so low that it made it comparable to our current much bigger home).  And we only cooled it at night when sleeping via window units.
I didn't put home insurance on it either as I didn't care if it caught fire and burned to the ground.

I would guess that you will pay lot fees.  I knew a lady who was paying my land mortgage payment ($550 for over 4 acres) for her lot rent in a trailer park.  Even though she owned the trailer she had to pay lot rent which was ridiculous.


Rural

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #7 on: April 06, 2014, 04:03:28 AM »
Insurance is an issue I forgot. We did try to insure, but no company would write a policy on a mobile of that age. Something else to check on before deciding if insurance is important to you.

fixer-upper

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #8 on: April 06, 2014, 04:14:50 AM »
That age of trailer isn't HUD approved, and is likely grandfathered in place on its lot.  You can't realistically move it, because you wouldn't be able to hook up to utilities in a new location.

What's the lot rent, or will you be buying the lot?  That's 9/10 of your purchase price.

With that being said, it may still be a good deal in relation to rent.

ragesinggoddess

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Re: Buying a manufactured home?
« Reply #9 on: April 07, 2014, 09:33:14 AM »
Thanks, all! Sounds like not a good idea for us. We can definitely find cheaper rent elsewhere, so I will keep looking into that.