Thinking of purchasing a Manufactured Home

[mac]

To live inexpensively until school is done, I would rent, or buy the lowest-cost MF home in a park - an older one. I sense you have found a place already. I do think you will lose value when you sell. Better to wait until you're back to work.
I have seen buildable land outside of town for under $100K. If you bought a used MF home and had it placed there, you could later build or replace it with one more to your liking. We did that. We spent a bit more - 5 acres with a '76 Fleetwood in marginal condition - for $195K (it has $60K of timber on it). Later, we took the plunge and put a new Karsten on it.
I personally would want to keep my credit outstanding. The concerns you have are quite real. Go to manufacturedhomeseller.com for a huge list of Oregon MH; you'll see what's available (and what you'll be competing against, later).
Best of luck!!! Mac

[mac]

To live inexpensively until school is done, I would rent, or buy the lowest-cost MF home in a park - an older one. I sense you have found a place already. I do think you will lose value when you sell. Better to wait until you're back to work.
I have seen buildable land outside of town for under $100K. If you bought a used MF home and had it placed there, you could later build or replace it with one more to your liking. We did that. We spent a bit more - 5 acres with a '76 Fleetwood in marginal condition - for $195K (it has $60K of timber on it). Later, we took the plunge and put a new Karsten on it.
I personally would want to keep my credit outstanding. The concerns you have are quite real. Go to manufacturedhomeseller.com for a huge list of Oregon MH; you'll see what's available (and what you'll be competing against, later).
Best of luck!!! Mac

[don]

The PH I'm in had no upgrades....Palm Harbor has one of the finest customer satisfaction ratings in the industry. I paid 65K plus change for mine. Like I said I researched heavily and could not find anything that compared to the PH for that price.

[Mary Stanley]

Thanks Mac for the heads up. Real estate is so high in Corvallis - yipes! I'm finding it just shot up in the last 3-5 years. Driving around, I'm finding some mfg. homes for sale by owner in parks, and some of them are really nice. We've looked out towards Albany and Philomath and have found some mfg. homes on really beautiful property, but the homes were in fairly bad shape [Liberty and Fleetwood mostly]. My fear is that I would have to drop a large amount of cash to "rebuild" these homes - cash I need for school, so you can see my apprehension. This will shock you - we found one in town and so trashed - red candle wax all over the carpets, holes in the sheet rock, sheet rock missing in entire bathroom, walls painted black, floors saturated with animal urine - you could tell it was probably a crack house for drugs. Behind the home was a broken down rabbit hutch and a chicken coop. The banks actually wanted $106,000 - firm - and it was a Fleetwood to boot. It wasn't worth $15,000 - you'd have to demolish it and place a new one on it, so essentially, you're paying for the lot. Get this - the taxes are $1145/annually and being sold "as is."

Ideally, if I could find a great home on it's own lot, that's the way I'd go, but it's been difficult to find even a mid-range quality home on it's own property.

[Chi]

My husband and I are considering a brand new MH in a park (rented land) in the very south end of San Jose (bordering Morgan Hill), California. We plan to relocate in the next 2-5 years so a resale is in our foreseeable future. The sales agent tells us the house will definitely appreciate in value, but many of you experts here seem to disagree. I'm just trying to figure out if a MH is really good for us. Our other options are a.) to keep renting; and b.) spend about $500 more a month on a site-built with an hour 15 min. commute to work each way. (the $500 aestivate includes gas for commute)

[Chi]

^^^That's "estimate", not "aestivate". Stupid spell-check!

[jgn]

Chi
You live in an area that anything you live in will appreciate even a bus parked on the street. On the left coast I wouldn't worry about appreciation.

[maria]

Me and my soon-to-be husband live in Eugene, OR, which at this time is almost impossible to buy a first house. We are young, and we can find almost nothing under 150k, and even then the place is so old and drafty that major renovations would need to be done, thus needing another big investment. We love the Energy-star ratings that are found in Fuqua homes, and their First Pointe series uses 2X6's. We love the customization ability. We recently went to a Fuqua dealer in Coburg, and he gave us a short speal, showed us two houses, then gave us some brochures and his card, and encouraged us to walk around and look at the other show houses, and he promptly left us alone. He also encouraged us to stay with the River Pointe series, since we would easily be able to afford that. How many car salesman ask you to buy only what is in your budget?! While of course having a bit of that sleazy sales guy manner, it was completely no pressure and left us with a good feeling. Trust me, I had gone in there expecting a super-high pressure sales environment. We believe that if we buy a Fuqua (we plan to place it on its own piece of land, not a park) and make sure that we keep both the house up and landscape the area around it, that we will definitely make money in the end. Our choices were Palm Harbor and Fuqua, and after reading all over the horrible sales environment at Palm Harbor, as soon as we sign the marriage papers we will probably start the Fuqua home-buying process.

[Andy]

Do you know if fuqua makes single wides ? I can't seem to find any on their web site.

Thanks,
Andy

[June Selwyn]

Hi, I read your post and you said you are in CA. We are thinking of moving back to CA and buying a MH. I am having some trouble locating nice communities in the Sacramento area. Can you give me any ideas. Thanks June