How much did you save?

[Jeff Goldsmith]

I am curious as to how much everybody saved when they purchased there homes? My wife and I are preparing to buy or first manufactured home and the price is $70,000. What would you offer the salesman? Is $65,000 a good sarting point? If he wont come down should we just leave? The big problem we have is this dealer is the only dealer in the area that sells the model we really want! What did everybody else save off the asking price? Any tips?

[jgn]

Jeff:

The best way to shop for a price is to get quotes from two or three dealers. It sounds like you have decided on what home you want so half the battle is complete but you need additonal quotes to see if this is a fair offer. Most dealers will service a fairly wide area 100-200 miles and there should be another dealer in that range even if you phone them with what you are looking at and get a fax quote back. There are two things involved in a MH and they are equally important and that is the dealer and the manufacturer so choose both with care and research.

[Sylvia]

Heh1 In *our* case, we saved around $100,000.00! When we were apartment lubbers, we had stock investments from my grandmother who had died. She had made me promise **NOT** to sell the stock because "It'll keep you in your old age!" and I had agreed.

We had the stock for about 2 years when one night I had a *very* vivid dream that I was talking to Mama and she said to me "Well, Honey, I'm OK with you getting rid of the stocks, but you'd better gat a house." I agreed and woke up.

What the....? The dream was so vivid it took nme several moments to remember ... Mama is dead. I'd promised NOT to ever sell, but.....

I am one to follow my dreams' suggestions and I told my partner "We're selling the stocks." We went shopping and found our home, a 1990 FarWest beauty that was on the market for almost $100,000.00. We talked the owner down and she talked us up and we met at $86,000.00. I liquidated the stocks and wrote the check, cash on the barrelhead for our modular home.

That was in July 2000. Three months before the news hit. The energy crash and California crisis. Had we *kept* our stocks in Enron, Global Crossing, PG&E, Southern California Edison, and several other "blue chip" energy stocks, we would have lost it ALL!

So now we're selling our home for $139,950.00 and yeah, it saved our investment! This beautiful place is truly our "dream home"!

Swan

[Mike]

Touching story but what does that have to do with the question?

[Dan F]

I saved almost 20,000 but I also traveled 300 miles to find the right dealer. most of the time the homes are all manufactured in the same place anyway so the delivery is no futher. just shop around.

[JoAnne L.]

By traveling all over the state - Michigan, and checking all the homes out, we settled on a 2001 Redman and saved over $14,000 by "shopping around".