There you go. You forgot the decreasing costs over time and sale of the trailer. But yes. Many college students go together and rent a house and split up the rooms. It requires someone with financial backing to cover the rent. That has a risk factor of being stuck with the bill if your name is on the lease. A 4 bedroom house is going to rent for over $1000 but that’s still $250 a head. It would have worked for some of my friends who went to school on the buddy system (same degrees/classes) had they gone to a school away from home.
Maybe we’ve got a definition problem here.
By “mobile home” I am imagining something like this: http://www.jandmhomes.com/wp-content/uploads/1980-mobilehome.jpg
Not a big travel trailer that looks like this: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/45/17/2d/45172df2ba1fe38ebccd379547b8f945.jpg
(adjust for era accordingly)
The top image is what I’m talking about as a singlewide mobile home, and there is no way in heck some dude with a truck is going to move that, at least not safely and legally. I know people do stuff like that way out in the sticks, but doing it anywhere near an incorporated area isn’t going to fly. Here’s an actual reputable moving company’s website: http://jcjmobilehomemovers.com/rates.htm
You’re talking $2,400 in set up and drop off fees, plus $5/mile, plus whatever sundry permits and escort car services are required. It ain’t cheap.
Well, for one thing, there’s the fact that the business of actually selling mobile homes is nearly non-existent now. The companies have moved to “modular homes” which are almost always placed on owned land not leased land. Here’s but one article about it: America's Fastest-Dying Business? It's Mobile Homes - The Atlantic
More generally just plug in “mobile home closures” into google and you will see there’s no national statistics, but you’ll see pages and pages of the same trends playing out regionally across the country where construction of new parks has been stagnated since the 80’s and those parks are gradually getting closed as real estate values go up. What new parks do open only want newer modular units. Maybe in areas where real estate prices are chronically depressed closures aren’t a problem, but in that case affordable housing isn’t really a problem either.
I don’t argue that your plan can work but I think you have a massively optimistic idea of how generally applicable it is. In general, I’d argue it only really works in places that have really low housing prices anyways. For purposes of this thread, we’re talking about places where housing is really expensive. Trailer parks do exist in those places, but the problem is they’re the areas that are mostly likely to be hit by park closures.
Like I mentioned earlier, I did live in a trailer for much of my college career. I rented it for $350, but the lot rent for my neighbors was $250. In contrast my then partner rented a roughly similar sized studio apartment in town for $325. The difference is, like I said, utilities. Hers were usually about $30, whereas mine were sometimes over $400. I also probably spent another $100 in gas per month commuting. Even if hypothetically I’d bought and sold the trailer outright with no money lost in the process, I still would have been very far behind versus renting a comparably sized apartment.
I’m 46 and I live with my father! Can I have gold?
The housemate who had a job spent maybe 2-3 hours commuting every day to the only faintly “metro” area in their county. I still can’t wrap my head around that :boggle:
Job security and social opportunities span generations. They’re both basic human needs. I know a few retirees who have downsized and moved back into the city rather than spend their golden years in the suburban house where they’ve lived for the past 40-some-odd years. They don’t want the local COA activities. They want the vibrancy of city living. Can’t blame them – I can see myself doing the same thing when I’m at that age. If they can afford it, more power to them!
I never made enough money in my 20s/30s to justify moving out even though there were many many MANY times I wanted to. Maybe if I’d been more foolhardy I would’ve tried it. Luckily I’m not, and I could see the economic disaster I would’ve courted had I done it. Staying at home involved many sacrifices, don’t get me wrong, but for me it was more important to keep a roof over my head and take care of my mother than have a lively social life :shrug:
Sometimes I wonder if the anxiety and depression that’s rampant in our society is the result of our commute times. Rush-hour traffic is stressful. Crazy drivers are stressful. Creeping gas prices and flat tires are stressful. Missed buses and stalled trains are stressful. The longer the commute, the most stressful these things are.
Well-to-do people can afford to pay more to avoid this stress. But they are also the ones who can afford vacations, anti-depressants, and flexible work hours. The people who already have stressful lives don’t need to add a stressful commute on top of everything else. But that’s what happens and will continue to happen as housing prices get steeper.
The other alternative to more, cheaper housing is to move the jobs to where the relatively cheap, plentiful housing already is. This wouldn’t work for all sorts of jobs, but technology (i.e. instant electronic communication and such) may make it more feasible for some companies to relocate to less expensive areas, or set up remote offices, or allow workers to telecommute from home.
(There’ll still be people who want to live in expensive areas, but that, like wanting to live in a mansion, is a luxury, not a necessity.)
Guess you should have bought the trailer instead of renting it and taken the savings. And the coldest month I experienced had zero degree days. I used fuel oil and never came close to $400. Were you burning endangered butterflies to heat it?
Hmmm… ‘Trailers’ or what we are talking about mobile homes depreciate. The are titled like cars in the county I live in.
Yep they are getting better. My family owned a mobile home park and sold them too. That was a long time ago, and we got into modular homes. Once set, modular homes where not moved. They can appreciate, but you don’t just tow these suckers around.
Yes you can move a mobile home. Like Jack said though, it’s a big undertaking, and from what I saw when we owned a mob park, pretty dam rare. Most are ‘moved’ in the back of a few tandem dump trucks and a track hoe with a thumb.
I do think you and Jack and I are talking about different classes of homes. I’m talking about at least a 10’x60’ the more common is a 12’x70’ or 14’x70’. Not something you hook up to a pickup truck.
It was just a natural gas furnace that was the same vintage as the mobile home (early 70’s I think). Granted, I only had a couple of months where it was in the $400 range, but my typical winter bills were always in the $250-300 range. Granted at the same time I lived there, there was a deregulation fiasco in my state that led to unusually high natural gas prices, but still, mostly the paper-thin walls and single pane glass was to blame. (and, yes, I had those shrink-wrap things over the windows.)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mobile home with an oil-burning furnace. Do you have to have a buried oil tank? Maybe those are more common somewhere else and have lower costs, but around here they’re pretty much all natural gas or propane.
If I’d bought the thing instead of renting it that would have saved me maybe $2000 total or so? I might have still been able to get out ahead (although I do recall many visits from the property management company’s handyman) but being able to just walk away from it instead of trying to sell it was definitely worth it.
In my metro area, the well-to-do people tend to have longer commutes, as they often live in the fancy leafy suburbs, rather than in the City proper.
is it really beyond your comprehension that other people’s situations and experiences might differ from yours?
The what decreasing costs over time? Any loan I’m familiar with, your payment is the same each week/month for the term of the loan. My point is, at the end of the 5 year period, in the scenario you yourself proposed, you end up with an asset worth $10k (or less, depending on depreciation), and the hypothetical roommate ends up with $16k in the bank, for the exact same monthly expenses. The renting roommate is better off.
Anyway, I think the larger point here is really not “renting versus buying”, it’s more “being frugal versus profligate”. In your world, you may be able to be frugal by living out of town in a particular sort of dwelling. In my world, the way to be frugal is to not own a car (which implies not living way out of town), and not try to occupy an entire dwelling by yourself. (And I doubt if there’s such a thing as a long-term mobile home park within fifty kilometres of me.)
But however frugal you are, if your income is a lot less than the people around you, you’re in danger of getting priced out of the housing market, whether you’re talking about the renting market or the buying market. There may be individual good deals available, where people are liable to have “blind spots” about living a certain way (in my area this generally relates to whether you’re in a “good” suburb" or a “bad” suburb … but as house prices go up and up people are being far more savvy about not being swayed by emotional factors like that, and the good deals are disappearing fast). But you’re not guaranteed to have “good deals” in the place where you actually are, and you’re not guaranteed that the good deal is going to be a buying sort or a rent-and-stick-your-money-in-the-bank sort.
Magiver, take a look at pictures like these. This is what a tornado does to a mobile home park. Granted, it can also do that to stick-built and brick houses but it usually takes a more powerful tornado to do that.
Tying down/attaching a trailer home to a foundation isn’t going to help in this situation. Yes, trailer parks in many areas are required to have storm shelters, but aside from it being a pain in the ass to have to leave your home during every severe storm, perhaps having to sleep in the shelter despite needing to get your ass up for your low-paying shift work job, if this happens to your home you still have the loan on it. You will STILL be paying for that wrecked piled of stuff, even though you have nothing left of it or any of your possessions.
Maybe tornadoes are rare where YOU live, but Tornado Alley averages 1,000 a year. Granted the odds of one hitting any particular place in that region is low, but it’s not some bizarre freak occurrence when one does.
Also - if you attach a modular home to a foundation then it’s no longer a mobile home.
Now, clearly, some people still wind up in such homes, and quite a few of them chose that for one reason or another. That’s fine. However, if you rent a mobile home (not just the lot it’s on, but the whole thing) then if the crap hits the fan, or the tornado hits the park, you “just” need to find a new place to live, you aren’t stuck paying a loan for years on something that no longer exists. You don’t have to worry about how to move the damn thing if the lot rents go up or the park closes - you just find a new place. Some people prefer not to be encumbered with a trailer or loan, there’s not inherently wrong with that and it can be a good or bad decision depending on a lot of factors.
A mobile home worked out for you. Bravo. I also suspect that you owned one in a part of the country NOT prone to tornadoes and south of the severe winter zones (my area regular gets to sub-zero temperatures and has gone as low as -30 F… pretty much NO homes have truly adequate insulation for those temps. Well, maybe in Alaska or Siberia.) It’s not a one-size fits all answer. Truthfully, the winter heating costs quoted, the ones you doubt, are pretty typical for this area and some years they go even higher.
Where I live at present, between the severe storms and the low winter temperatures I would be extremely reluctant to live in a mobile home park. Now, if I moved down to where my in-laws live in Tennessee and Virginia, where tornadoes are extremely rare and winters are never as harsh as here, I’d seriously consider one - in fact, at one point when the Other Half and I were seriously contemplating such a move we did, in fact, do some shopping for just such a residence. It’s not that I would never live in such a place, it’s that I don’t think it’s a wise move in this particular region where I currently live. I’ve found an alternative for a comparable price, in a reinforced brick building that is much safer in bad weather.
I spent most of my 20s in northern NJ, making $12K-$16K a year.
The thing that saved me was low-income housing. I lived in a huge highrise complex where residents were not allowed to make more than a certain income.
They weren’t the nicest apartments in the world. But the complex was situated near public transit, grocery stores, schools, and parks. There was a schul and an adult community center in the basement of my building. Immigrant families were able to get their start there.
I don’t think you’re crazy. I wouldn’t mind living in one myself. A single-wide trailer is all the space I need.
Which is what happened to me. My ex-fiancé and I bought a house in 2004 with his inheritance from his grandmother. Then life interfered: he had to drop out of grad school due to health problems and was out of work for almost a year. I was having health problems of my own and was just barely getting by. We tried roommates, he tried renting the place out, and eventually (after we broke up), I told him just take my name off the damn place. I don’t own a house anymore but my credit rating sure has taken a ding from it.
I know I mentioned something like this upthread, but I think since the subject keeps coming up I should talk about tiny homes. Tiny homes are much like trailer homes in a lot of ways; but are have many features that are improvements, and they can be mobile or on a foundation.
In the three plus years I have been involved in the movement I have seen tremendous growth and interest. In my area, their is strong interest from middle class professionals and a lot of interest from “millenials” as well. There are innumerable facebook pages and meetup groups dedicated to making tiny homes acceptable in more areas. Some of these groups have seen success in changing zoning laws to allow for more of these types of dwellings. There is even a 5013c nonprofit that formed about three months ago to champion the cause of tiny house living.
Also, you will find plenty of support from these groups and they understand the issues and social conventions that make the transition difficult. In my area, tiny houses are not something people laugh at - actually when I tell people about my interest in them, people usually want to know more.
For a year or so, I was seriously planning on building my own tiny house. But the desire to live so small conflicted with my desire to be frugal. It turns out I didn’t have enough money to build the kind of tiny house I wanted, where I wanted. So I had to put that idea on hold.
The house I’ve got on contract is a not a tiny house, but it is small (810 sq ft.). It’s in a neighborhood of houses that are of similar sizes. There’s even one house that’s 475 sq ft. I’m actually glad that I didn’t drop all my money on a tiny house now. 810 sq ft will feel cavernous (my current dwelling is 700), but it will give me some wiggle room to grow.
I have this lovely vision of folks putting together “tiny home” communities, situated in urban centers, geared towards hipsters and single, child-free folks. But then I have this other vision of investors buying them all up and renting them out on AirBnB.