Palm Harbor Homes

[Sandy Masingill]

Want to hear from long time homeowners of Palm Harbor mobile homes. Are you happy with your choose? Any problems discovered later? An interesting and disturbing thing happened, we first talked to a retailer for the Alabama-based Palm Harbor; next we visited a Palm Harbor Village, Dallas, Texas-based Palm Harbor. The salesman from the Village really cutdown the homes being sold the retailer for AL.-based Palm Harbor. Is this common for one plant to compete with another plant in this manner? What is the Deal? We need an affordable mobile home we can trust and a retailer and company we can trust. Also, we've considered remodeling the existing 12x60 into a 28x80. Where do we start? Is this more affordable than buying new?

[Mario]

Sandy,
I read your E-Mail, and although I work for American Homestar, I can tell you that it's common practice for one salescenter to "bad Mouth" another salecenter. It's not the manufactere's fault, the quality is the same. Since the saleperson works on comission, and is totally uneducated about the product he or she is selling, all they can do is downgrade all other plants and salescenters in order to convince you that his store is the only one to buy from. With the affordability and production levels of Manufactered homes today, your best value is to buy a new one. Remodeling yours is simply unpractical. If you have any further questions, you can call me at 1-800-753-9080.

[Bob]

Sandy:
I would disagree with Mario in that manufacturers quaility does in fact vary from location to location. I would find it very easy to believe that a Palm Harbor built in TX would be built with more quaility than one built in AL because the income level in TX would probably be considerably higher and thus the sale price would be higher. To answer your question about upgrading your 12*60, it would depend on the location. State and community codes vary considerably and have probably changed since your home was originally set. I have never seen an old S/W married to a separate home that looked anywhere near decent. I would think long and hard before undertaking such a project.

[Jeanette]

I have a 1995 28 x 74 Palm Harbor that I LOVE. The house was built in Boaz, AL. I bought it from AAA in East Ridge, Tennessee. Had the best salesperson you could get.( She doesn't sell Palm Harbor anymore). The problem I'm having now (looking for another one to set up at my mom's) is I can't get a Palm Harbor dealer to give me a price. Got so mad at one dealership this afternoon I stomped out. He was the biggest snob I have ever seen. (He told me SOMEBODY would HAVE to go with me to look at the houses - they were all busy at the time- ) Ugh!!! What's with these people???

[Alan]

We are too having problems finding a saleperson that knows about these homes and is willing to sell us one......We have been to 4 different locations and the sales people are all incompetent....maybe someone out there can lead us to a dealership that can sell us one of the Palm Harbor homes we are looking for?

[Terry]

Sandy, I agree with Bob. PalmHarbor manufactured quality homes from PalmHarbor, Florida and they opened up another plant in Tempe, Arizona in the 80's that's when business really took of for them and they opened up another factory in Texas and another in Alabama and on in the eastern part of the U.S. Back in those days the company really paid attention to detail on the home and a strict inspection on their homes. The homes that was coming out of Tempe, Arizona was really a quality built home or should I say their high end home. Their homes were so popular it was marketed in New, Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. This plant produced quality manufactured homes. The plant from Texas was their middle class homes. Their homes was affordable with the extra options you can put into the home like the Energy Miser Construction, and optional drywalls in the home. The only thing is this company was using mostly drywall with vinal cover over it. Their homes were appealling though. The hard board siding was a quality and durable siding. Palmharbor then sold out in the Mid 1990's to another mobile home chain and that's when most of the company building phelosophy changed, which made PalmHarbor successful company. Now I see that PalmHarbor is cutting alot of corners in their construction work. Even their homes that once was a diamond out of Tempe, Arizona is no longer a quality home. The local dealer that was a prized dealer to PalmHarbor even say that PalmHarbor really went down in their construction and is no longer a quality built home. He says they used alot of cheater studs in their construction and compressed paper cabinets in their homes now than they did years ago. I hope you really do some shopping because some manufacturere are using only imitation products and just want to make money. Remember this is you investment and make it wisely. Also all plants don't produce the same quality in every home from the plants. They have different techniques they have to keep their costs down. I hope I helped you a little Terry.

[Val]

We also tried to look at some Palm Harbor homes in Spokane, Wa . The salesman was also a snob and would not show us the homes we were interested in, and would show us two homes only, which were a lot smaller than we told him we were looking for. He was very rude and condescending. We weren't impressed.

[Dee]

We would've loved looking at a Palm Harbor home, but unfortunately the salesperson was a total jerk, so we walked out. After viewing 5 other competitors and being pressed for time, the very last thing we wanted to do was to be taken into their office and given their 4-point b.s. story about their quality before we could see an actual home. Another competitor told us that while they are telling you their story, they are running a credit check on you! Great! I guess that would be one way for them to decide whether they need to take you out on their lot or not. Frankly I wasn't impressed with the way they do business and won't buy from them.