Archive for MOBILE’S FOR FREEDOM
Mar
18
Mobiles for Freedom – 5
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Well, I hope everyone had a great weekend but it’s time to get back to business. Last post I was explaining the pro’s and con’s of the singlewide mobile homes. Now it’s time to talk about the multisection homes, doubles and triplewides. While it is true that I do own a singlewide mobile now and I have not ever personally owned a multisection home, I have been in and around hundreds of these homes over the last decade. Mrs. Prepper and I spent a great deal of time searching for our current bug out home and looked at plenty of the doublewides and even a few triples. In addition to just looking at these homes for our personal use we’ve helped dozens of other buyers get into these homes over the years.
To start with the pro’s again… Double and triplewide homes are much the same as a typical rambler and will be more acceptable aesthetically to many buyers. When you’re trying to sell the spouse on this idea and I hope you are giving this more then the old college try, please do yourself a favor and find a nice doublewide to take them to as your first stop. The primary Pro of these homes is the familiar layout options. The typical layout configuration is the two bedrooms in the rear and living room in front. I have seen variations but not very often, at least with these smaller units. When you begin to get into the larger doubles and certainly into the triples, layouts can sometimes take you by surprise. The variations that you’ll find on the second hand market can run the gambit. When these homes are purchased new the buyers can usually choose from 3-10 different layouts as well as the manufactures will accomodate 100′s of upgrade options. Another Pro in these larger units is the bathrooms. Often the bathrooms are one of the areas in the home that have been given generous amounts of square footage. Later model mobile homes are known for the soaking tubs that many manufactures would install in their master bedroom designs. I’m not always a big fan of these but then again I don’t take many baths… Before I give any smart alec a shot at my hygiene habits – I DO bathe, I just prefer showers! I know that many women have told me that they enjoy this particular upgrade and like I said it’s a fairly common one. I doubt it will take you long to find a layout with your preferred bathroom layout. As the years went on the more you’ll see the upgrades and quality improvements.
Ok, so for pro’s we have the layout variations, unlimited square footage avaialabilty. Generous bathroom footage and design options. Most people find them more attractive and therefore you will often find them in better condition. Let’s see, another Pro would be the roof design… These multiple sections have a better roof design, in so much as they have a slightly increased slope to the roof. When the snows and rains come, and they will, the added slope will help keep the water running off. Another typical feature that these units enjoy over the singlewides is the laundry room. You might not find a separate laundry room on the smaller 2 bedrooms but once you get to a little larger unit, you get a laundry room. Again, I don’t spend a lot of time using the laundry room at my primary residence but I do enjoy the ability to close off the noise. In the singlewide units the laundry is usually in the hallway outside the master bedroom or possibly inside the second bathroom, if your fortunate enough to have a second bathroom… Neither configuration is one that I would choose but that’s just what you get if you go singlewide…
Oh, don’t let me forget the dining room… You will almost always get a separate dining area with the doubles and larger units. Like I said in the last post, we don’t eat at the table every night but it is very nice to have the option. The larger units will usually have a more formal dining area as well as sufficient space off of the kitchen to provide for eating as well.
The Con’s, these are just my opinion and many of you will not necessarily think these major detractors but in the interested of fair comparison, here they are! As if you wouldn’t have guessed this already, multiple sections are actually MULTIPLE sections joined together on site to form a single home. These multi sections all have to handled each and every time they are moved. Everything from the actual joining bolts to the electrical wiring and furnace ducting has to be uncoupled when the units pieces are divided to make moving the unit possible. More labor equals, as you might have guessed, more labor costs!
Each section of the house is actually its own trailer. Having an independant trailer frame under each section so that the units can be pulled individually to their next location and then reset back into the same house that they previously were. With each section requiring its own mode of transport, that means the transport company will need to use multiple trucks or have a single truck making 2 or 3 trips to the new setup location. These additional trips are a detractor in my mind as these moving costs are often the largest additional expense when purchasing one of these homes.
We will cover the options that a mobile home buyer will have to choose from in an upcoming post but if the home is on leased land, the space rent is often higher for a multisection. This doesn’t seem fair especially for a smaller doublewide but the space is twice as wide and therefore often comes with a higher cost… If the home is located on privately owned land, whether it’s the buyers land or someone else’s, the site prep is commensurate with the footprint of the home being prepared for. Fortunately, site prep is often only required once, if at some point in the owners future a different mobile home was desired the site prep wouldn’t be required a second time. This is true as long as a home of similar footprint or smaller was purchased.
It’s been my experience that these used homes almost always require a thorough going over and cosmetic upgrades to bring them up to snuff. While this isn’t something that any of us should be bothered by, most folks would do these fix ups on any home they bought! The larger the home the more there is to fix up, this isn’t really a con per Se but mentioned only as a reminder.
In the same vein, larger houses are usually more expensive! While I’ve seen many multisection homes, especially doublewides, for very attractive prices these homes are almost always more then a singlewide. These homes provide extremely low prices per square foot, the bigger homes just have more square footage to price!
The reality is that I don’t have a lot of bad stuff to say about these homes. Are the mobile homes comparable to a stick built home? Will they go up in value the same as your condo in town does or did in the past? Do they have a lot of unique issues that each buyer will probably have to address? All of these questions and many more will be answered in the upcoming posts on in the “Mobiles for Freedom” section. It is my sincere desire to help all of my fellow preppers find an affordable home to use both now or when the SHTF…
Prepper
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Mar
15
Mobiles for Freedom – 4
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Alright, let’s talk mobiles homes again today… It’s been a while since we discussed this topic and I promised you all some of the pro’s and con’s in the different configurations you will find when searching out these little gems. It may take me a couple of posts to get through this but we’l see how far we can get today…,
Let’s start at the beginning and kick off with the singlewide units or singles. The pro’s as I see them. Well, the price has to come in as this style home’s best attribute. I am currently in negociations on a singlewide for my BOL, or in this caseBugOutLand. If you recall I was looking at a single a few months ago that the owner was asking $19 or $20k, I offered her $9500, if my memory serves. That deal has not made any headway but I have since found an even better deal that the owner was asking $10k. I’ve formally offered her $2500 and she hasn’t officially counter offered yet! I don’t know how this will come out but she is at least thinking on it and I have a feeling that we’ll arrive at a purchase price of around $5-$6k. I’m not ready to give you all the details on that one yet but needless to say, if it comes together you’ll be seeing a lot more of that unit as I plan to do many posts on it to show you all exactly what a deal like this looks like from start to finish.
I digress, the cost of the singles is there very best PRO… Additionally, they have the benefit of reduced moving costs. The breakdown (this is the work needed to prepare the unit for its move) is greatly reduced as they are moved in one piece rather then multiple sections all requiring hands on hours of prep. Usually the mover will have to reattach the tongue and install axels and wheels to get everything underway. All of this is done on just a single unit and since these items are often rented from the mover, the fact that less is needed – less rental fees are charged.
The next PRO for a single is the site work… I’ll go into all of the specifics on what is required for site prep in a later post but for today’s purposes, lets just say that a smaller unit requires a smaller footprint to be prepped… Move time is also reduced since there is only a single truck needed or at worst a single trip to be made for your mover who will charge for not only the time required but an additional fuel surcharge or mileage fee will also be assessed depending on how far the truck or trucks will be traveling.
Another PRO for the singles I typically find is the square footage. Most of these homes are similar in square footage to a typical 2 bedroom double (around 850-1000 square foot). This coming with the reduced costs of a single…
Now let’s look at the CONS… It’s a single, so it will at least in the beginning stages be ugly! Like I said last time, the singles are usually seen as ugly since they are by design, long and skinny. Next, the layouts to choose from are typically rather limited and therefore the rooms won’t be wider then the 13.5 width of the home. This is not 100% true since I have seen 16 foot wide units advertised and been inside one a couple of years ago when I was doing research for a buyer that hired me to consult with him and help in finding a solid unit for his BOL. We haggled over price, which I’m know to do, but never got the seller down far enough to put a deal together. We eventually found this prepper another home to purchase for a tad over $13K and he’s been very happy with the house he chose!
Limited square footage is also seen as a CON by many folks. While I did say the square footage is a PRO for some of us, it is definitely a CON when the new owner needs more then the 1000 square foot that is normally the limit with a single. What about the size of the rooms? Yep, these would also be a CON, they are usually very small… Most of the singles are only 2 bedroom (which is another CON) and they will inevitably have a very small second bedroom. I do see lots of units that have a decent size master bedroom but never have seen a generous 2nd bedroom. Worst still (CON) is the three bedroom singles. Every room in the place is tiny since the manufacture has to divide all the available space into even more rooms.
Bathrooms, more often then not these would have to be seen as a CON. The best layout that I’ve seen in a single (in my opinion) did have a large master bath. I’m biased though since this is the layout we have at our BOL… The master bath, while larger then most, is still on the small side compared against many current stick built homes or even multi section mobile homes.
The largest CON (again in my opinion) is the lack of an adequate dining area. I’m sure that many of you, my fellow preppers, are guilty of the same laziness my family is… This being the laziness of making it a habit of eating your meals in the living room. Yes, yes, the prepper family does eat at the coffee table on many occasions but we do like to have the option of eating at the dining room table like any other civilized people. Our singlewide does have a small dining table crowded in to the kitchen but it’s not really useful beyond 2-3 people. I do not think this issue is a deal breaker but it is something of an issue if we wanted to entertain during the colder months where eating outside wasn’t practical. Additionally, we would enjoy having friends and family over to play cards. It’s even nice to have a full sized table to sit around and talk but the typical sized singlewide doesn’t provide enough square footage flexibility for that…
Ideally, all of these pros and cons should be taken into consideration when searching out that home you’ll plan to spend many years living in. Singlewides are an easy win on many fronts but that is coming from my families specific needs and where we’re seeing ourselves for the future. We all will have our unique needs that will have to be considered when making the purchase and its far better to be honest with ourselves before we make a purchase then after we have the home bought and moved.
I only got to the singles today so you’ll have to wait until next time to get the scoop on the multiple section homes. Think these ideas over and I’ll be back tomorrow to fill your head with a few more things to consider before you get out there and start beating the bushes for a home to call your own!
Prepper
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If the topics we cover here at PREPPERNATION are interesting to you, please take a mintue to subscribe to the email notifications. I will email you each time I add new material… I always like to hear from you, my readers, so let me also encourage you to post your comments on this or any of the other posts in the comments section!
Jan
30
Mobiles for Freedom – 3
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This week we’re going to delve into what types of homes are out there and a little on what I believe we should be looking for. I’ll be sharing my ideas on what this home might look like but each of you will need to go out and see what fits for your specific situation. Some of us will want to begin our freedom journey now while the kids are still at home, “good choice”! While others are closer to retirement age and will have fewer size requirements. Each individual scenario will require thought but they will all require a home…
Let’s get started. Most of us have seen the old house trailers that started showing up on the scene back in the 50’s, this is not what we’re looking for! At least unless one of you has some compelling reason to get something that old then I would suggest steering clear of a home this age! I have seen several of these OLD homes setup very nicely and there isn’t any reason that they couldn’t make a snug dwelling for a single individual or extremely cozy couple. They just come with their own set of challenges and I believe that there are better options available for nearly the same financial outlay.
If we jump forward a few decades we will get past the early renditions of the “Trailer House” and into a more modern variation. Early models had a flat or slightly bowed roof line and many were sided with aluminum. Again, many nice designs could be sited in the 1960’s-1970’s homes but we get closer to the stick built construction techniques we are used to now when we enter the 80’s, especially the later 80’s. This is when the “manufactured home” industry started to more commonly use 2×6 exterior wall construction and the roof lines even on singlewide units were typically found with a peak. Yes, the pitched roof was a low one on singles but it was still better then the old bowed design when it came to shedding rain and snow.
When I’m doing home searches for myself or for a consultation client, I’m watching for homes manufactured anywhere from the very late 80’s to present. I typically wouldn’t drive far to see any home that was earlier than a 1988 but hey that’s just me and my preferences. I know many folks that are quite happy in their singles and doubles built back in the early 70’s. Each of us will have preferences and biases of our own and many of us will have a spouse to consider in this search as well. I hope to only give a baseline for you all to work from for when we get into the posts about how and where to search out these little goldmines!
(TIP – I would suggest that when attempting to swing a reluctant spouse over to our way of thinking, we find an over the top example of what could be possible… I’m sure that when you start to look around your area for a home you’ll find homes that are for sale that some real estate investor has completely tricked out. These homes will most likely be way over priced but would be the best candidates to show your doubting Thomas or Thomasina spouse, because sometimes seeing is believing.)
I’ve mentioned singles (singlewide units) and doubles (doublewide units) but there are also triples (yep, you guessed it – triple wide units). Each one of these styles has their unique benefits and also drawbacks. It would seem obvious that the singlewide speaks for itself… It’s a home that is only in one section as opposed to its multi-sectioned siblings. The singles are usually found 13.5 feet wide and commonly 50-70 feet long. Doubles are often found with similar square footage to the singles but are divided into 2 sections and joined at the middle. This design has a more pleasing aesthetic to many people since it will appear as more of a rectangle then the long skinny appearance of the single. These homes will also often have more pronounced vaulted ceilings in the interior as well as slightly higher pitches to their roof line.
The triples have grown in popularity over the last couple of decades and it’s these homes that in my opinion most closely resemble a standard stick built rambler. The square footage found in many of these units is generous to say the least. Also the floor plan layout can be adjusted almost endlessly to suit the desires of a particular purchaser, at least when the homes are purchased new. However, in almost 100% of the situations us freedom seeking preppers are looking for, the purchase of a new home wouldn’t fit our financial criteria.
Back to the aesthetics, the homes that I find most often fitting our financial requirements are singles. For many years the single was the most common unit sold with the scale tipping toward the multi-section as the years went on. Since the single was a popular choice earlier on, we’ll see many more of these units available on the used market. Next, lets face it the singlewides are just not that attractive, resembling a long skinny cigar tube. This appearance issue has its own positives and negatives, ugly homes are cheaper… Conversely, ugly homes are ugly and when someone, whether an owner or a renter, believes they live in an ugly home, they take far less care in its upkeep and maintenance… At least that’s been my experience! I’m sure that this statement will offend someone out there living in their beautifully kept singlewide! Obviously, I’m not talking to you, I too have a singlewide and it’s well kept and I think it looks pretty good, even though it’s still a work in progress. I’m speaking more generally and we can use this generality to our advantage when negotiating a deal on a home to purchase…
Doublewides are by far the most popular selling units on the market now and I expect to see more on the used market with each passing year. As more years go by with fewer and fewer singles being built and sold they will eventually fade into the background to a large degree. When you start to go look at the doubles, you will find a fairly traditional home layout; bedrooms at one end and the kitchen and living room at the other. These homes will also typically have a more defined dining area. This dining area is conspicuously absent in most singles. The doubles are easier to imagine living in, at least for me anyway. I’ve found that the doubles started to see improved construction methods earlier on then the singles did. It might be worth taking a little harder look at a late eighties double than you would a single of the same vintage. You’ll also often find the roof pitch on the doubles a bit steeper and more aesthetically pleasing.
I need to clarify something on the doubles… The homes that I’m personally interested in and that I’ve been commissioned to find for others, have largely been on the smaller side. The doubles are available in lots of size and layout configurations. Some of the larger units could have 4 bedrooms and 2 or more bathrooms. It’s not unusual to see a home with both a living room and family room. The sky’s the limit with what’s actually out there and I’m quite confident that if I were looking for these larger homes, I’d find some screaming deals on these as well!
On to the big brother of the mobile home world, the triple! As the name implies, the triple is a manufactured home that comes in 3 or more sections. Some variations of the triple we’re introduced as far back as the eighties, possibly even earlier versions were available but I haven’t ran across them yet so what was being released, if anything, would have been in more limited numbers. The triples that I’ve seen are so generous on the floor space it’s difficult to believe you’re in a mobile home! The exterior as it comes from the factory is often a dead giveaway but the interiors are usually nicely finished and lend themselves to fancy upgrades. I’ve found some of these homes so over the top with upgrades that it’s difficult to understand why the owner went the mobile route over a custom stick built home? I’ve yet to find any particularly tempting deals on this size of home; they could be out there though. It just takes the right buyer to be in the right place to score with any deal and I don’t see why this rule wouldn’t apply to this style home as much as anything else.
Next time we discuss this topic, I’d like to go into some of the pro’s and con’s of each of these different sized homes. They all have there great attributes as well as there drawbacks… We’ll continue to explore this topic together so you’ll be the most informed and best equipt mobile home buyer out there!
To be continued…
Prepper
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If the topics we cover here at PREPPERNATION are interesting to you, please take a mintue to subscribe to the email notifications. I will email you each time I add new material… I always like to hear from you, my readers, so let me also encourage you to post your comments on this or any of the other posts in the comments section!
Jan
13
Mobiles for Freedom – 2
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Let’s get back to the “Mobiles for freedom” topic today. Anyone find it surprising that a small home could be purchased for a very reasonable amount and save you years and years of work? This would ideally allow you to retire earlier? It really shouldn’t have been a surprise though since I’ve broached this subject on several occasions in the past. It’s even possible to find a home that most of you and your spouses will not only agree to live in but might even really enjoy. My hope is to prove to all of you that what is viewed by many as a reduction in standard of living will actually be an advance in quality of life!
I was very hesitant to look into this whole mobile home idea initially, just like many of you still are… Mrs. Prepper isn’t what I would consider high maintenance but I didn’t think I’d be able to sell her on the idea of living in a singlewide mobile home, much less a 12 year old model. There are other options, doublewides or even triplewides but the lowly singlewide is the favorite for me and I’ll share my reasons why in the future as we explore this topic… I was pleasantly surprised that once we got to looking at these homes she was a willing participant in what would prove to be a key element in our financial freedom plan!
Last time we discussed this topic I was attempting an example of what the cost differential was between a 100K stick built home versus a 10K mobile home in what it would equate to in required hours of your life worked. There could certainly be better examples that someone might come up with to illustrate this same point but I hope you all caught what I was going for anyway.
With so many other high expenses required by our modern life, why are mobile homes such a key element in the financial freedom equation? It’s because they can often be purchased outright for cash and or be paid off rapidly. Shelter is one of life’s few basic requirements; everyone has to have a place to stay warm and call home. That home can be found in many different configurations but my approach will be to make the transition from the American housing norms of stick built housing as painless as possible.
Modern mobile homes are constructed very nearly identical to a stick built home with the exception of their foundations. The fact that they are built in a factory someplace in the Midwest and then trucked to their final site destination requires a different approach then would have been used for a solid concrete foundation poured to fit immediately before construction began… Is this deviation from the norm a good enough reason to increase your cost of shelter by close to 900%? Keep in mind that my simplified example in the last post was conservative and the cost differential could easily exceed 900%… I just don’t think the additional costs can be justified, especially when looked at as the number of hours worked! However, this being a “free” country and me being a libertarian leaning sort of guy, feel “free” to choose the expensive route if you must… “It’s your future!”
Besides shelter our daily requirements are only food and water… These 2 will have to be addressed regardless of where you live so they don’t even need to enter into this discussion today, we’ll cover them separately at a later date. Since we all agree that Shelter is required, what additional considerations need to be accounted for in our shelter selection?
First thing I can think of is cost but I think we’ve already established that the sky’s the limit in America for what we could spend on our housing… We’ve touched on this last time but this item will be covered on an ongoing basis from different perspectives as they come up, let’s just agree that the cost is a concern and move on to the next item…
I think we can also all agree that our shelter is seen by most of us as a long term investment, if it isn’t it should be! How do these mobile homes stand up to reasonable scrutiny as a long term investment? This point is a little less cut and dry but I maintain that the shelter we all should be looking at as our long term investment could easily be accomplished with a solid mobile home.
The days of a person buying a house only to sell it again in 3-5 years for drastically more than was paid for it are over and I don’t expect to see them return in my lifetime. Let me make myself clear here, this strategy is still possible but the game has changed. Many of the folks that were successful in executing this plan up until a few years ago were playing by rules that favored this strategy. Our current and near term housing market does not support that game any longer and we’ll need to adjust our own investment strategy to follow the rules as they are written now!
Mortgage loans are much harder to qualify for today than they were only a few short years ago… This doesn’t have to concern us preppers as much as it does the average consumer, we’ll be shopping for a different type of home; our type would generally not qualify for conventional financing anyway! Much like our great grandparents, we will need to shop for a home with the truly long term in mind! Not 3-5 years in the future but possibly 30-40 years. When a long term investment is looked at truly in the “long term” it will require a different set of criteria to properly evaluate…
If we choose our home carefully, the long term investment potential is only limited to the number of years we choose to live in it! Every month that we don’t have to make a house payment is a month of positive return on investment for us. This positive return on investment could even begin as early as the first month, depending on how the investment is structured… We’ll discuss these investment strategies in depth in future posts as well!
Ok, what else do we need to consider in our search for shelter? How about, location? The old quip about “location, location, location” is still true today! Location is an important consideration for sure, so how will mobile homes stack up from this point of view?
Mobile homes can be and are found in just about any locale you might possibly think of! There are mobile homes sitting in some very expensive zip codes, just like they are found in old dirt lots that don’t even have conventional utilities to hook up to… Location, in relation to this discussion on mobile homes is only limited by where your imagination might take you. I feel like this might be a good time to remind everyone that these homes are called “mobile” for a reason; because they can be moved to just about anywhere!
While this short list of things to consider is far from exhaustive, it does cover the basics… We have determined that an affordable shelter alternative does exist. You can locate a home like this in almost any area of the country and the investment will often pay a dividend right from the first month.
This shelter strategy isn’t going to be for everyone but it is available to everyone! I know I have my work cut out for me but by the time I’m finished I think most of you will agree with me that mobile homes are the answer to our largest ongoing financial requirement!
Stay tuned for more on this subject…
Prepper
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If the topics we cover here at PREPPERNATION are interesting to you, please take a mintue to subscribe to the email notifications. I will email you each time I add new material… I always like to hear from you, my readers, so let me also encourage you to post your comments on this or any of the other posts in the comments section
Dec
30
Mobiles for Freedom
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