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!

  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

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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

   Alright, I told you all that we’d be spending some time discussing what I believe is the answer to many of the issues that we all face surrounding our financial security, not to mention our ability to retire some day!

   Whether, you’re of an age to be looking forward to retirement or even a young guy just starting on the great adventure that God and life have in front of you, you’ll benefit from the ideas I’m about to bring up… If we have any hope of a financial success that doesn’t include the one in a million odds of winning the lottery or being named on Bill Gates’ short list of benevolence gift recipients, we’d better get a few things straight! We will have to face choices that the TV and even many members of our families will tell us are beneath us… Maybe better put, we will be looked on as “Aiming Low”. 

   In the past I’ve brought up what a scam the “American Dream” as we now think of it is! I’m going to continue with that theme and attempt to make a few factual comparisons… For most Americans and actually most everyone else in the world, the largest ongoing expense we all face is for our shelter. We often hear that a successful retirement plan is built around having our homes paid off by the time that promised day arrives and we get to discontinue our daily career of commuting many miles to the salt mines… In many upcoming posts here at Preppernation.com you will read about what I think of this promised retirement plan we have all had foisted on us. However, the part I do agree with is that getting a shelter that is owned free and clear is the key on the path to financial freedom and the sooner the better. 

   Let’s do a little math and see what we discover about what our modern shelter inAmericacosts us… This is applicable whether you’re a “home owner” and I use that term loosely or make rental payments each month. Since each area of the county has its own regional cost of living, we will be discussing the numbers generically; you can apply your personal specifics to this equation on your own and see if you come to a substantially different conclusion then I do? 

   For the sake of argument let’s use a person making $20 per hour as our example… Let’s say that that worker decided to purchase a home for $100K. Yes, Yes, I know half of you are saying you make more then this poor schmuck and the other half wish you had this schmucks generous income… I also know that “it’s impossible” for any of you to live with the purchase price of $100K… It will either be a palace and way beyond your needs while the other half of you could never find a home that cheap… 

   Ok, the way I calculate the income after taxes is approx. $17 per hour take home (15% tax bracket over all). If we were to just take the $100K and divide the price by that $17 per hour… we have over 5800 hours of work. Now, add in the interest equation and even at 4%, a very low historic interest rate, for a traditional 30 year period and the repayment will cost you over 10,100 hours of work. That’s almost 3-5 years of solid work 50 weeks a year, if we could possibly put 100% of our after tax income into paying off this shelter investment… which of course we can not do!

   Before we move on to the next point, let’s agree that this $100K home is still going to need modernization and ongoing upkeep in most every case. Additionally, there will always be things that you as the homeowner want to do to make the home truly yours and reflect your unique personalities.

   This is where I deviate from the accepted norms and make a suggestion that will almost certainly bring the scorn of anyone not already aware of and or choosing this option for themselves… You need to take a look at the mobile home option… I didn’t initially like this option myself but have sense broken through my own personal bias and found that these homes are indeed the answer that will set many of us free! I say many of us knowing that there will be the stubborn few that will resist what I will prove to be common sense! There will also be the folks that see the light but will not be able to convince their spouse of this wisdom… This last group will enter into another dark hole of depression – that of knowing there’s a better way and having to think about that on their commute to work each day… Good luck, you have my sympathies!

   Don’t worry I will be expanding on this suggestion in great detail in future posts but I want to broach the subject right up front so we can all get on the same page… I guess you could say I’m pulling a “cost of shelter” intervention on you and will continue to try to challenge your current reality, all in the hopes of helping you find the freedom that I have come to believe mobile homes can and will provide!

   Let’s look back at the example that we used just a moment ago… The worker earning $17 an hour take home pay but this time we can compare the hours worked against the price of a very nice mobile home with much the same potential as the $100K stick built home… 

   I know from personal experience and many hours of research that nice, clean mobile homes of modern construction can be purchased for around $10,000 – Just wait, I’ll be showing you where to find these gems in future posts…

   The $10,000 mobile home is equivalent to 580 hours of work, compare this to the 5800 – 10,100 hours needed to buy the $100K home, depending on the amount of interest payments required to pay the home off over many years. While I’ll admit that there are additional concerns that enter into both of these equations I just want to leave you today with an illustration of the possibilities!

Stay tuned for regular updates!

Prepper