In my post from the other day I mentioned that I had gone to check out a lead on another mobile home for my BOL property over the weekend. A reader emailed me to see what the details were on that home. Additionally, they wanted to hear why I would want to have another one if I was seemingly already happy with the home I had… I decided to give everyone the details since like this reader I’m sure there are other folks that might want to know as well.

 

   As you can all see in the photos, this is a singlewide style home. It is manufactured by a company named Guerdon and is a model year 2000. This home measures 13.5 feet wide and 62.5 feet long, so it is considered a 14×63.

 

    If you’re not familiar with the layout of a home like this then let me describe it a little to fill in the blanks not obvious from the photos. The living room is on one end and the master bedroom is on the other. In a layout like this both bedrooms are on the same end with the bathroom in between. The kitchen is adjoining the living room and there’s a laundry area off the hallway next to the back door.

 

   I didn’t specifically measure the master bedroom but I do think a king sized bed would fit but not with much room to spare. I mention this detail only to help you get a picture of the room size. I think the bathroom arrangement in this home is called a continental bath, which means that there is a door from the bedroom into the bath as well as a door off the hallway. The second bedroom is VERY small and would accommodate a twin bed and dresser but little else. These micro bedrooms that are common in this style home would probably work as a babies nursery or possibly a home office… At least that is what comes to mind for me.

 

   This unit has a modest but full sized kitchen, by my estimation at least. It’s really the only generously dimensioned room in the house. All of the typical kitchen fixtures are present, while they are standard size, they are typically on the low end as far as quality goes. Same with the cabinets found in these homes, adequate size but substandard quality! There is room in this kitchen for a full size dining table, which is not always the case…

 

   Living room is on the small size and it would be difficult to find room for a woodstove and hearth, something that I believe would be requirement in a home owned by a prepper… This home was built at the factory with an additional door on the end of the unit per the specific needs of the original buyer, this is not the normal arrangement for a singlewide. The additional door would make it a much more limited furniture layout since there are additional considerations to keep from putting furniture in front of operable doors.

 

   The bathroom is full sized and perfectly adequate but with only one bath in the home has to do double duty as a guest bath. This is obviously not as convenient but still doable in such a small home.

 

   The home is all electric heat and has a traditional mobile home furnace, which means that it’s on the small size… However, the home is small too so I’ve found that electric heat isn’t as big of a detractor as it might be in a larger home.

 

   Asking price is $19,900 and WAY too high for a home this size and age. I currently have been finding these homes in the Seattle area and suburbs for under $10,000, sometimes a long way under $10,000. I do find lots of home sellers that price their places to high around here too but they seem to all sit unsold until they get their prices in line with reality.

 

   I offered the seller $9,500 and the explanation that I was willing to go that high only because the home was already close to its end destination. This would allow me to pay more to the seller because the home movers’ costs would be drastically reduced.

 

   Needless to say that sense I’m still describing a potential deal to you all, that the seller didn’t jump at my offer… Like I mentioned before, we will have to wait and see how motivated they are to get this home off their land. My deal was that I would take the home as is and they wouldn’t have to make the few repairs that had been discussed during the time they were showing the place to me.

 

   I’ll wait and see if we end up getting this place before I go into all the specific repairs and upgrades that I would do to this home. One way or the other though, I’ll be picking up another home like this in the near future and give you all a start to finish mobile home project review here at preppernation.com

 

   Ok, I think that I covered the basic details for you on this specific home but why do I want this piece of crap anyway…? Well, first I can see right past the crappiness of the place to find the potential. We currently have a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom, singlewide on our land now and that is where we, Mrs. Prepper and I, plan to live when we finally get to head to the BOL permanently. On a side note this move should be in the next couple of years… This second singlewide would be used as a guest house! We do have 2 bedrooms and 2 baths in our current place but it’s still not much larger than this other one is, house guests are welcome but its tight quarters!

 

   We have penciled out several ideas to get the additional square footage to accommodate guests and the addition of a second mobile is just simply the most cost effective way to accomplish our goal. It’s no secret that I’m bias toward the mobile home concept in general but the dollars and cents just don’t lie! If we present this “guest house or mother-in-law unit” to the county building department properly they should allow us to add this home to our existing infrastructure, also enabling us to keep the costs down.

 

   While the whole “allowing us” issue most of us have to deal with when it comes to county building departments and inspectors is a hot button issue that I’m capable of railing against for hours… I’ll save that dragon slaying for another post more suited for those politics!

 

   I hope this fills in the blanks on the what and why of this particular home we went to look at. There are of course MANY more details on this subject that we’ll be covering on a regular basis here. If I’ve missed anything on this specifically or if you have questions for me about anything else please just let me know and I’ll do my best to cover those issues as well!

 

 

Until tomorrow,

 

Prepper