Paradise lost, or disaster averted.. you be the judge
Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2013 11:25 am
I will try to recall the events discribed here to the best of my knowledge and if errors are made I will try to error only on the side of caution.
This past summer-fall, 2012 my wife and I who are both fully retired decided to spend a day going around the local area to view double wide manufatured homes. we had looked at them when we first got married over 40 years ago, but just weren't impressed enough to buy one.So we were eager to see how they had changed over the years. Over the following month or so we had looked at many double wides in probably 10 different parks. After comming to a fair degree of certanty about which park seemed to come the closest to our liking and life style, we went in and talked to the park manager. We felt she was being up front with us on representing the business end of the park and presenting evry thing in a truthfill mannor.
Now we had talked with several other park manager. One of which managed a very nice upscale park, but he did not come across as being honest at all, and I would not trust him to oder a brand new home correctlyto our specs. The other previously looked at park was run by a management company and the lease and rules contained what must have been at least fifty pages some of which described some of the rights that you must be willing to waive. So that was an imediate showstopper for them.
Moving foward. The manager of the park that we were willing to go with told us that their pricing policy was all inclusive. the price would cover the manufacturing, transporting lot prep, set up, connecting utilities, ect.
So far so good.
So after three more visits to the park and 6about 4 hours of time for picking out the floorplan,features, upgrades and the desired lot locarion we trooped off to our credit union to apply for financing as the manager said we would be ready to order within a week to ten days or so. Now we had previously talked to the park manager about their financing options. Every one of the 20 or more financing companies that they used were out of state. Hmm. Once before I had a lacaly secured home mortgage sold to a company which was out of state and it turned into a legal nightmare. So from that point on I only do business with banks where I can talk face to facewith paperwork in hand.
Now I had previously talked with the credit union about finacing a brand new manufactured home and having it placed on leased land. they ran our numbers and said there shoulnd be any problem.
Ok so now wer'e at the credit union and talking to the manager preping the nessasary papers and info. she asked the price of the home and we stated the price we had been given by the park manager. Then she asked what the tax would be. We told her the price was all inclusive as mentioned above.Thats when the plaster started to show some serious cracks. The credit union manager said that They could only finance the price of the retail home cost . they could not finance the transportion, setup, lot prep or utilitiy hook up. so she agin asked if we knew the cost of just the manufactured homeand retyail mark up. I said no but proceded to call the park manager being certain that she coult answer that questin. with the park manager on the line I gleefully handed the phone to the credit union manager. Aster a short conversatinand hanging up the phone with a puzzled look on her face, I uh oh. she said that the park mander told her that they will not give aseperate retail price just for the home. They simply don't do that. Our jaws dropped.
I can only imagine that the manufactured home park that we were doing business with did not want us to know the margin of profit on the home.
Soooooooooo. the credit union manager who openly felt very bad for us opened the topic of looking for a home on the realestate market. She wrote up several finacial senerio's based on number we had given her and current loan rate including conventional and fha loans. all fixed rates.
So as of yesterday we talked to several realestate buyers agent and we are currently new house hunters. My wife and I look at this experience with the manufactured home as being something that just wasn't meant to be. We are anxious to see what the future holds for us. Dispite being at the end of our shopping for a manufacture home I will continue to monitor and post on this site as I feel I have alot of knowledge to offer.
good luck to all.
Jerry
This past summer-fall, 2012 my wife and I who are both fully retired decided to spend a day going around the local area to view double wide manufatured homes. we had looked at them when we first got married over 40 years ago, but just weren't impressed enough to buy one.So we were eager to see how they had changed over the years. Over the following month or so we had looked at many double wides in probably 10 different parks. After comming to a fair degree of certanty about which park seemed to come the closest to our liking and life style, we went in and talked to the park manager. We felt she was being up front with us on representing the business end of the park and presenting evry thing in a truthfill mannor.
Now we had talked with several other park manager. One of which managed a very nice upscale park, but he did not come across as being honest at all, and I would not trust him to oder a brand new home correctlyto our specs. The other previously looked at park was run by a management company and the lease and rules contained what must have been at least fifty pages some of which described some of the rights that you must be willing to waive. So that was an imediate showstopper for them.
Moving foward. The manager of the park that we were willing to go with told us that their pricing policy was all inclusive. the price would cover the manufacturing, transporting lot prep, set up, connecting utilities, ect.
So far so good.
So after three more visits to the park and 6about 4 hours of time for picking out the floorplan,features, upgrades and the desired lot locarion we trooped off to our credit union to apply for financing as the manager said we would be ready to order within a week to ten days or so. Now we had previously talked to the park manager about their financing options. Every one of the 20 or more financing companies that they used were out of state. Hmm. Once before I had a lacaly secured home mortgage sold to a company which was out of state and it turned into a legal nightmare. So from that point on I only do business with banks where I can talk face to facewith paperwork in hand.
Now I had previously talked with the credit union about finacing a brand new manufactured home and having it placed on leased land. they ran our numbers and said there shoulnd be any problem.
Ok so now wer'e at the credit union and talking to the manager preping the nessasary papers and info. she asked the price of the home and we stated the price we had been given by the park manager. Then she asked what the tax would be. We told her the price was all inclusive as mentioned above.Thats when the plaster started to show some serious cracks. The credit union manager said that They could only finance the price of the retail home cost . they could not finance the transportion, setup, lot prep or utilitiy hook up. so she agin asked if we knew the cost of just the manufactured homeand retyail mark up. I said no but proceded to call the park manager being certain that she coult answer that questin. with the park manager on the line I gleefully handed the phone to the credit union manager. Aster a short conversatinand hanging up the phone with a puzzled look on her face, I uh oh. she said that the park mander told her that they will not give aseperate retail price just for the home. They simply don't do that. Our jaws dropped.
I can only imagine that the manufactured home park that we were doing business with did not want us to know the margin of profit on the home.
Soooooooooo. the credit union manager who openly felt very bad for us opened the topic of looking for a home on the realestate market. She wrote up several finacial senerio's based on number we had given her and current loan rate including conventional and fha loans. all fixed rates.
So as of yesterday we talked to several realestate buyers agent and we are currently new house hunters. My wife and I look at this experience with the manufactured home as being something that just wasn't meant to be. We are anxious to see what the future holds for us. Dispite being at the end of our shopping for a manufacture home I will continue to monitor and post on this site as I feel I have alot of knowledge to offer.
good luck to all.
Jerry