The Only Reason to Buy a Mobile Home {Under any Circumstances}

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I grew up in a mobile home park. Prairie Village, #59, to be exact. We didn’t own our mobile home. I think my parents probably paid about $200 total in rent (including lot rent). If they paid any more than that in the 80’s they were getting ripped off! The only reason to buy a mobile home is for the land it sits on. Let me explain.

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The Difference Between a Mobile Home and a Stick-Built Home

A mobile home, also known as a manufactured home or sometimes a double-wide trailer, is a home that has been built to be moved to a buyer’s desired location and anchored there. If you’ve ever seen huge semi-trucks driving down the interstate with half of a home, it was carrying a mobile home to its final resting place. Mobile homes used to be very affordable options, as opposed to stick-built homes. Now, you can easily spend double what you could on a stick-built home for a mobile house with all the “bells and whistles”. A mobile home is considered personal property…not real estate. Mobile homes depreciate (go down) in value. They will never go up in value. I don’t care what anyone says. They’re a glorified car payment, and we all know that car payments don’t enhance your wealth.

Stick-built homes are built on a parcel of land, starting with permanent concrete or block foundation, and are built to a specific code for your area. They’re inspected from the electrical to the plumbing, roofing, and flooring and everything in between to ensure everything is up to code and meets quality standards and building requirements. Stick-built homes at the same price point of manufactured houses are usually much older, so they may be outdated. A stick-built home is considered real estate, or real property. Unless we’re in a depression or recession, real estate should, in theory, go up in value, or appreciate. Case in point: I purchased a home for $204,000 in late 2014, and we just had it appraised (February 2018). The current value after a $7,000 renovation is $240,000! We now have a good amount of equity in our home, but you can bet that would NOT be the case had we purchased a mobile home.

Mobile Home Salesmen are Snakes

I have a friend who called me one day on her way to look at mobile homes. She was making the 8-hour drive to Burleson, Texas to meet with a sales lady at Factory Expo Home Centers. I asked her what in the world she was thinking and pleaded with her not to buy a mobile home. She ensured me that this salesperson offered to pay for a hotel stay so that they could come check out the inventory. {Here’s where my panic attack started} The only reason to buy a mobile home (in the salesperson’s eyes) is to cut them a huge commission check.

You wanna know the reason the sales lady offered to pay for a hotel stay? She had already closed my friend. I explained that to her, saying that when you have so much invested (a 16-hour round-trip drive, hotel stay, plus time invested), you’re more than likely going to feel obligated to make a decision. In this lady’s mind, she was going to make a sale that weekend, so once I explained that to my friend, she assured me she would never make that decision without asking my advice first. WHEW!

NEVER MAKE THE BIGGEST FINANCIAL DECISION OF YOUR LIFE BECAUSE YOU FEEL OBLIGATED OR TOO INVESTED

(For example, your mindset is “we’ve already looked at 20 houses…let’s just pick one already”). The 21st house you look at could be the one for you. So don’t settle! And this is coming from a former Realtor®!

You wanna know what happened the next day when my friend visited Factory Expo Home Centers in Burleson, Texas? The sales lady had told her every lie under the sun to get my friend to drive there. The mobile home was cheaply built, with ugly particle board walls, and many of the “upgrades” my friend thought she could get simply “weren’t possible without the mobile home falling apart on the drive to its new home”. My friend thought that she could make upgrades to the kitchen, such as granite countertops and oak cabinets. Let me tell you something about upgrades in a mobile home.

You’ll pay a huge markup for upgrades in a mobile home. For example, the granite you wanted so badly may have cost the mobile home distributor $2,000 in materials and installation, but they will probably charge you triple that (at least). They will upcharge you for every single upgrade imaginable!

If you’re not going to listen to me about the only reason to buy a mobile home, at least don’t buy the upgrades from the manufacturer. Buy the base model and fix it up yourself. You’ll save thousands of dollars, and you’ll still lose your ass by not listening to me in the first place, but you’ll lose less money if you do the upgrades yourself, paying cash, and by shopping around locally. Trust me on this!

So What is the Only Reason to Buy a Mobile Home?

The only reason to buy a mobile home (under any circumstances) is for the land it is sitting on. Will Rogers once said, “Real estate is the best investment in the world because it is the only thing they’re not making any more.” It’s so true, y’all! Land is scarce, and it’s getting more expensive! Once the world is completely developed, there will be no more building unless you remove the existing structures or change them. Land doesn’t depreciate like mobile homes. In fact, the land will never depreciate! As it becomes more and more scarce, the values will continue to rise.

If you find a parcel of land (especially acreage) in a good area with steady values, that is the only reason to buy a mobile home. Buy the land, live in the mobile home while you prepare for a build. Or buy the land with a mobile home to use as a hunting property. Either way, the land is where the value is…not the mobile home.

If you’re looking for an incredible Realtor® in the Springfield IL area with lots of listings for sale, get in touch with my friend Deb Sarsany, of the Deb Sarsany Team at The Real Estate Group, in Springfield Illinois. She is the best of the best and will take extra good care of you! I used to work on her team. Aren’t we the coolest?! 🙂