Mobile Homes and Housing Affordability

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Good luck during tornado season.

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True, certainly for some regions over others.

Talk to any dyed in the wool affordable housing advocate and they’ll tell you the most important thing right now is protecting existing trailer parks as they don’t get zoning approval anymore and outside investors like to swoop in, buy them and jack up the rent.

I have a younger family member. After she got married her parents gave them a few acres and they bought the adjoining acreage, totaling around 14 acres. They found an older mobile home for sale and bought it. They spent some money to remodel it to the point that it was clean with new appliances and all. They pretty much had the money to come out almost even on that.

Now, they're saving all they can to put towards building a house in a few years. He's an engineer and she's a nurse, their vehicles are paid off, and the only payment they are making is on the land. It seems a reasonable route to go. Against modern trends, they seem to be thinking about their needs rather than their wants.

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I think its really tough to get a loan for a used mobile home.

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True. And the rate will be absurd. But probably not more than a lot of credit cards.

Mobile homes cost over $100 grand now.

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After she got married her parents gave them a few acres and they bought the adjoining acreage, totaling around 14 acres. They found an older mobile home for sale and bought it.

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I think this is the best scenario for owning a mobile home. You get your own plot of land. You plop a mobile home on it. You save rent and mortgage payments while you live in the cheap mobile home with the intention of building a new site built home on the same plot of land and then sell off the mobile home once your construction is complete. Even that requires some deep dive financial analysis versus a traditional starter home.

It sucks but I get it. The cost of traditional home ownership (market prices + interest + insurance + repairs) has gone way up outpacing wage growth by far and renting is just as bad. That's killing the younger middle class.

I think the best solution is to foresake the fancy wedding and new toys and live in a multigenerational house (ie rent free with parents) for a few years until you have a perfect credit score and a 20%+ down payment saved up. We live like bums in college for four years so just keep sacrificing after college. But nobody wants to do that.

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We live like bums in college for four years so just keep sacrificing after college. But nobody wants to do that.

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This is what I did. Lived like a college student for 8 years after college while my friends stretched themselves thin and bought houses. I was able to save $25k per year for a down payment, and dumped over $200k into my house.

Looking back, I wish I wouldn’t have put so much money down towards a 2.75% loan, but not a big regret. I still came out ahead by “sacrificing” for those first 8 years.

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I know that financing is more costly, and you’ve got lot costs. Utilities will be a bear.

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Yep. Insurance is more expensive if you’re in a hurricane prone area. Then you have to figure in cost to either buy land to put it on or leasing a spot in a trailer park. Plus mobile homes are depreciating assets that aren’t always easy to get rid of when its time to sell.

Its not like you’d be building equity while living in a mobile home since they depreciate over time instead of holding or gaining value like traditional homes.

I’d rather rent an apartment than own a mobile home. Only time a mobile home would make sense to me is if I had land somewhere and wanted to add the mobile home as a hunting camp.

One approach is to buy land (no mortgage, just pay) outside the city. The city will grow..
Put a used trailer on it, drill your well set up a septic tank far from the single wide (or used RV).. Run the electric in.
The add on to the single wide and do it yourself.
You'll know what you have and that you could afford it. If you aren't paying interest for a decade before you start knocking now the principle payments, you come out way, way ahead.
Also, know your county tax codes and what acreage gets you greenbelt status. Also if there is an old undesirable house there, add on to it. Taxes decrease on older houses, even if built onto.