Mobile Home of our Dreams?

   Alright, I’m back and ready to get back to business… I had been telling you all how I was developing my piece of land or BOL. I had gotten everything to the point where I was ready to make a choice on what kind of shelter, home or dwelling to go with. We had ruled out allocating the funds to build our dream house, at least for now. A shop with an apartment above looked very attractive! We attended a couple of RV shows and thought maybe we would get a used, but MUCH larger fifth wheel or even a “Park Model”. These Park Model style RV’s are actually really cool. They have progressed to the point that they are really more of a very small house than an RV. They have strict square footage restrictions of about 375 feet, if I remember correctly. They are built on a frame and the axles are added only for the move and then removed again. They are technically not a home as they are still titled with the state like an RV  but you end up with a very small cabin. Unfortunately, the company we found that makes a real nice product also charges upward of $60K for them… What to do?

   You already know what we chose, so stop acting all twitchy. We started our search for a used mobile home. We watched the local papers, Craigslist and even the small local County paper where our land is located. This took a number of months and a couple of false alarms when the pictures really didn’t do the mobile  palace justice! We even searched out of state, for the right home, the price of a long move could have still made it a good deal…

   We had determined that we wanted to go with a singlewide rather than a double. This package seemed to be a better route as there would be only one section to move and it would stay completely enclosed at all times. I also believed that it would be less likely to have had water penetration? I could be wrong on all accounts but stick with me because this has a happy ending.

   We had gone a little wrong by making the assumption that we would need to go with a home of such and such an age to get a good price. I knew I wanted one built after 1977 when they changed some of the building practices. However, the older homes also had a lot more damage, go figure? We even looked at one that a family was giving away. Now, I know “Free”, what’s the catch? Oh, there was a catch, it was falling apart! This family was actually living in the home previously at the building site while they built their dream home on a great piece of land. Well, now that they were done the County was making them remove the old home before they would do the final sign off on the new place. The new house was gorgeous, they looked like nice clean people with reasonable standard of living expectations? I can’t see how they would have been comfortable living in this mess even for a little while??

   Needless to say we didn’t go for the free one, even though we had invested a good number of hours to go take a look… “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”, as we high tail it off their mountain… We continued our search and actually came across something interesting? Homes that were built in the 1990′s were pretty good. Shingled, conventional peaked roofs – 2/12 pitch but still peaked rather than the arched metal ones we had been seeing. 2×6 exterior walls, full size entry doors, you know all the finery! We revised our seach and found what would be our home in a city a couple of hours away from us. It took more than a month of negotiating but we stuck to our guns and picked it up for $13,500 plus the cost of moving this monster a few hundred miles to our BOL.

   I bet you thought I was going to say something like $2500 or some other ridiculously low price. Sorry, we freakin stole this house! Don’t get me wrong the previous owner was quite excited to get it sold and off his property but there were two happy men that day!

  It’s a 1997 Fleetwood, 14×70, 2 bedroom, 2 bath and just shy of 1000 square foot. The previous owner had taken pretty good care of it overall. It was a bit weathered and had a number of issues for us to address but nothing we couldn’t handle given a little time…

   We found a mobile home mover, not an easy task as these guys are kind of allusive? It made me a little uneasy at first considering the distance they had to take it. We ended up finding a great outfit and they did a first rate job. They scraped the gutter pretty bad on a tree coming in our driveway but I wasn’t going to complain to loud. You have to remember that as of late I ride a desk and seeing them accomplish getting such a large object so far was impressive, such a small amount of damage was a small price to pay.

   We had our dirt guy prep the site to the movers and County specifications. They just came right in and dropped it off where we told em! It took a couple more days for them to get it all setup, leveled and tied down. Then it was all our problem… Oops, I mean blessing!

   I know what this looks like, yikes, its an ugly faded blue color that looks like it has skitch marks all over it. We thought so to but its a sleeper for sure. Of course it provides all the required facilities we were wanting but it is actually very comfortable and homey. My wife and daughter spent a number of weekends painting the entire interior and we stripped the existing carpets and replaced these with off the roll from Lowes. The kitchen, dining room and living room floor had already been upgraded to Pergo, it was in fine shape as well. Score! We basically started to go through the place, cleaning and doing what it takes to finish removing the old owners, really making it ours!

   I have a lot of additional steps to help you get completely caught up to where we are today but all good things take time. I wanted to leave you with the knowledge that a very comfortable housing option is available, should you choose to explore its possibilities for your situation. I maintain that I got the deal of a lifetime when I found this place for what we paid. However, since then I have seen a very similar house for $7500, I’m confident that with a little effort and cash in hand a buyer could have grabbed it for $5-6000. As you’ll see it isn’t turn key but well worth the trouble! Think about it and we’ll talk more about this soon!

Prepper