Field Trip on Depreciation Complaint

[Peggy]

This is more on the other post originated by "Shiloh" about the Palm Harbor home and culminating in a discussion about depreciation. I was checking the MLS listings this morning and I saw a listing for a "mobile home" that 's only about 7 miles from me so, knowing the area to be what can charitably be called "blighted", I decided to see what the market will bear, so to speak. Folks, let me describe this to you - this is a SINGLE-WIDE (let me repeat that: this is a SINGLE-WIDE) trailer - not a manufactured home - this is an old aluminum trailer built in 1982 that was 2-tone in color - sort of a copper color and white. Yes, it WAS neat as a pin and it DOES sit on one acre with a cyclone fence. But get this - it has no central air - only a window unit. This trailer sits in an area of other trailers that have been there for 30 or more years. Most of the other trailers were rusted out, many with one or two windows boarded up, crooked blinds or old sheets in the windows, some halfway covered with kudzu, old cars in the yards, old tires leaning up against fences, one with an old truckbed (no cab) sitting in the gravel driveway, another with an ancient bread van being used for a doghouse apparently and an old school bus missing a door. Several of these trailers had been added onto with no consideration whatsodamnever for aesthetics - just a "wing" hammered on here and there with no attempt to match paint colors. Waist-high grass and weeds were everywhere and I passed one ramshackle home with a window broken out where two young men stood talking, one of them wearing a tee shirt that said "UPYOURS" on the back. Well, you get the picture. Okay, Okay, I'll get to the point - the price of this SINGLE-WIDE trailer is $59,900 !!!! Maybe Mr. Murray can guesstimate at about how much the total package cost back in 1982. I'm guessing that an acre of land in Cherokee County, GA back then was about $1000, if that. What did a single-wide trailer cost back then? Maybe $10,000 or is that too high? And yet, today, that package is going for almost $60,000. I'm going to keep an eye on this place and see what the actual selling price is. If it goes for $50,000, it has still appreciated, so I hope that puts everybody's mind at rest. For those of you who are in the Cherokee County area, this is listing # 646952 in the Fountain-n-Lake subdivision, although I saw neither a fountain nor a lake. It is, however, and in spite of the dilapidated housing, a place of great beauty with towering hardwoods shading the entire area and an overall feeling of peacefulness that you don't see in today's middle-class ghettoes (i.e., townhouses sitting on an eighth of an acre and costing - in this area- at about $130,000)

[Calvin]

I'm glad you posted this. I just showed it to my wife - she keeps telling me about the depreciation thing. We're selling our condominium and getting a bigger place but she just won't believe a MH will appreciate in value. If you see any other deals like this post them. I don't want to move into a site-built house with all kinds of problems and neighbors watching everybody else's business. That's what we've got now and I hate it. Also I want some trees and a little bit of land and more square footage. She's concerned about image -What will our friends think, that kinda thing. It's crazy.