Check out the last remaining mobile home park in our upscale suburb,Santa Barbara Estates. Click on the photos section and you will be surprised how nice a mobile home park can be.
I think if you can just rent a trailer as you would an apartment or small house, it can be okay. The usual situation of owning the trailer and paying lot rent is extremely fraught with peril these days though. For various reasons, both regulatory (i.e. local governments deciding they don’t want them and eliminating them via zoning) and financial (i.e. real estate becoming more valuable for other development,) trailer parks are gradually shutting down in most regions of the country.
Not only does that mean you’ve always got a certain chance of getting kicked off your lot, but it also means that the parks that remain open can be choosy about who they take. Before you consider buying a trailer on a rented lot, definitely look around at the lot for rent ads in your area. You’ll very likely find that they’ll only take newer trailers, and so while you can buy a nice older trailer for pretty cheap, if the park closes you’re probably SOL.
I have heard this is true… I think it’s making more homeless people. 
I agree because treailers are a good low cost source of housing. Really they are even cheaper than this new “tiny homes” movement or people doing things like converting old shipping containers to homes.
But, since they are trailers, they have this stigma about them that tiny homes do not.
Eh… trailers on rented lots really aren’t particularly ideal low cost housing though. When you include things like depreciation, high heating costs, repairs, etc you’re almost always going to be better off over time with an apartment or duplex. The whole ownership aspect of it is alluring to a lot of people, but in most cases that winds up being more of a liability than an asset. They’re also really low-density, so for an area that really does have a shortage of affordable housing there’s better solutions. (Near me, they just closed a massive trailer park and replaced with about half retail and half rent-subsidized apartments and townhouses which house way more people than the trailers ever did.)
Although another difficult aspect of the problem is that trailer parks often don’t do the sorts of background and credit checks you get with a normal rental unit and so they’re often the last resort for people who have problematic backgrounds. That’s part of the rough reputation trailer parks often have and, yeah, it does mean when parks close some of the residents wind up homeless even if there are other housing options they can theoretically afford.
Why does lot rent and mobile home price vary so much? Some homes start at 5k with a lot rent of about $150 but some homes go for 80k and lot rent is $600+ a month. Lot rent and the cost of the home usually is more than rent on an apartment when I look into it.
I’ve heard the homes do not hold heat well, which would raise the cost of energy. Factor in the cost of repairs to the home and I do not see the benefit of a trailer park over an apartment.
Mobile homes depreciate like cars, so with the costs of the units themselves it’s basically the same question of why some cars cost $30,000 and others cost $500.
With the lot rent, it’s partly location (same as any real estate) with the added issue that since in practice mobile homes are very rarely moved, the whole park depreciates. A newer park full of new expensive units might feel pretty much like a middle class neighborhood, but a few decades later when it’s full of depreciated old trailers it’ll feel like a poor neighborhood, regardless of what the surrounding area is like.
This is the biggie. The owners of those apartments & townhouses will want to protect their investment, so they have every incentive to screen applicants to weed out any potential troublemakers. (And yes, even for rent-subsidized apartments, they will run a background check on the applicants.) OTOH, the owner of a trailer park really doesn’t care if a tenant lets his trailer go to hell. It’s not the owner’s problem.
ETA: I’ll bet that the occupants of those new apartments are not the people that lived in the trailer park, but are from a step or two up the economic ladder. And the occupants of the townhouses are a step or two above them.
Agree overall.
The part quoted above also applies to plain old single family houses. A neighborhood of small 40 year old houses that were middle class when built will not be middle class today.
They might have appreciated, but if you simply take the cash purchase price 40 years ago and apply accumulated inflation, you’ll come up with a number pretty close to their current price. If, and only if, the neighborhood or job situation in the area hasn’t fallen apart meantime.
The idea that houses appreciate over the long term is mostly a myth caused by price inflation in the larger economy.
35 years ago my sister lived in a trailer park for several months. Last year when my parents moved out of that town and we were headed back to get my car, we decided to drive through it.
Scary. Old trailers, trash everywhere, just looked like a complete slum.
I disagree with the bolded part. Neighborhoods rise and fall in terms of wealth, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with the age of the houses. Lots of neighborhoods start middle class and stay that way through successive generations. If anything houses in poor condition tend to be a symptom of a neighborhood sliding into a lower wealth bracket, not a cause.
I think the key difference is that a normal stick built house will more or less hold its value over time if maintained. Whether the value of the house + land goes up or down depends on the vagaries of the real estate market, but the value of the house at least stays steady. With a trailer, though, depreciation is inexorable. No amount of maintenance is going to prevent it from becoming near-worthless after a few decades.
I wonder how this was legal. Discrimination on the basis of familial status is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act. They could have only rented to elderly folks, but including childless non-elderly adults without allowing adults with children is a HUGE violation.
It could have been a 55+ mobile home park, perhaps? There’s a few of them around my way. They advertise to “active adults”. I have no idea if children are allowed.
May parents retired and went from living in an Airstream trailer to living in a few mobile home parks of varying quality.
I would never buy one. You have to still pay grounds fees, and it doesn’t seem like a good investment (can trailers really appreciate with value, like real estate?). In addition, with an apartment, you don’t have to cut the grass, or deal with the stigma of living in a “trailer park”.
My parents had a lot of bad experiences with the one they bought in Pennsylvania, they did it on a whim because they had no place to stay after selling their Airstream, it was run down, and the owner wouldn’t fix anything. I don’t think they did well on the re-sale either.
They also had one in Florida which was much nicer. They eventually just ended up buying a modular home in Florida which was very nice.
When I left cali in 88, they were calling mobile homes ‘modular homes’ just as they did with trailers back in the late 70’s… 'It’s NOT a trailer, It’s a Mobile Home!
And No Heel, not calling your parents modular home a mobile home 
I grew up in a trailer park during the late 60’s early 70’s. It was really small, 20 or less spots, and was mostly well kept older trailers. It wasn’t a technically a senior park, but they did their best to make it older people. It was a pretty quiet place, most of the time I lived there, I was the only kid…which had it’s perks. But days and places like that are sadly gone now days…
personally, unless you come across a smoking deal to buy a mobile already set up in a decent park, with cheap lot rent, or the same on a piece of property, I’d go with the rent route. Again, it’s just a mater of finding something/some place you like.
Good luck Jackie!
You have your terminology wrong. Modular homes are NOT mobile homes. Modular homes are real houses set up on a regular foundation, and look just like a “stick built” home. Modular homes can be one story or two, have real walls and windows and everything else. 99 percent of people can’t tell the difference between a modular home and a stick-built home from the outside, and 90 percent probably can’t even from the inside. Some homes in “regular” subdivisions are modular and some are stick built.
http://ritz-craft.com/photo-gallery/photo-gallery/page.aspx?id=1032
You are thinking of “manufactured homes”. That is the phrase people generally use when they don’t want to say they live in a trailer or mobile home. But, to be fair, many manufactured homes are double-wides that don’t really look like what people call trailers either.
Correction, I never called a Modular home a mobile home, i said when I left California, that was what people were calling them! I’ve been in construction for over 30 years, and have worked on many prefab homes, and I DO know the difference!
After we lost our home due to my husband’s illness, we couldn’t afford squat, so we (well, now I am) were left with buying a mobile home. It’s older (1996) and was dirt cheap. It needs some cosmetic work on it, but nothing too costly. Let’s see if I can hit the highlights…
I love out on a lake that’s pretty much only for fishing, no partying. So, it’s extremely quiet around here.
It’s also mostly older folks, so that doubles the above.
I like this way of living over anything else I’ve ever done (apartments / suburbs). People ride around in their golf carts all the time, so there’s this constant sense of community. Also, as such, everyone looks out for everyone else and their stuff. In three years here, there hasn’t been one single crime and we’re decent sized at probably 150 or so trailers.
Yearly lot cost puts your monthly rental fee at less than $200. Super inexpensive. Water and trash are provided. My electric is higher than I’d like, but I’m finding more and more ways to cut it. If you can afford really nice, insulated underpinning, that will drastically reduce your bills. Also, really keep your window and door drafts stopped. And lower temperatures throughout the year.
I even have a metal roof and don’t notice overt weather sounding issues unless things get insane outside.
As far as resale value goes, I agree that you can unload these things (even if it’s truly trash – lots of hunters want them for deer season, for example) if you sell them cheaply enough. I specifically became interested in case I ever wanted to move again… I’ll just take my house with me. Around here, you can get it done for about 3 grand.
Our place doesn’t have security, but there’s two gated communities within a half mile radios. It’s unnecessary, but appeals to city dwellers who want to relocate or vacation here that think it is.
Yes, there are some areas that have age restrictions on their mobile homes. Ours doesn’t, so it’s not an issue.
Our park does do background checks for all inhabitants. However, just like with subleasing, there can be a way around that. I say that the best way to deal with that is find one that’s got very hand’s on owners. Then they gave a vested interest in keeping the riff-raff out and on top of things.
Back to heating and cooling… despite the age of my house, I am able to keep it at the temps I need with no problem. I’m in east Texas though, so imagine accordingly. Having ceiling fans helps in the summer. 
Last, our whole neighbor is kept pretty clean. Since we’re on a lake, we’re governed by the Sabine River Authority. They’ll give you a citation if they think anything gets too out of whack and doesn’t contribute to beautifying their lake. So that also helps.
Oh, and there’s very few kids here. I like them, but I’m just saying.
Overall, it’s been a great experience and, if you find the right one for you, I’d recommend it highly to most people I know. If you pick somewhere like I am and have the temperament for such a laid back environment, I think it could save you tons of money and you’d also be extremely happy there.
Good luck!
Watch out for bottle kids! (nsfw language)