a buyers nightmare

[John Long]

We live in Alaska and are looking into buying an older double wide mobile home. We are first time homebuyers. The nightmare has been that because of the age of the mobile home - 1975, pre-hud sticker - and the fact that it's a mobile home in general, we haven't been able to get traditional bank financing. The seller has gone to great lengths and sacrifice to sell this house to us.

Our concern is that down the road we will want to refinance the house and we're afraid of the difficulties we may face in that endeavor. We've been told that if we can upgrade the home to be more stick built and less manufactured that it could be financed as a stick built house. Don't know if that's true, but can anyone give us some pointers on things that we can do to make the "mobile" (it's on a permanent one-story cement foundation making it a two-story home and not really mobile at all, but the top half is still considered a mobile home) home portion of our new house more "stick built"? I can't seem to find anything anywhere on the internet about this so...help...anybody...please!

[Rita]

I don't know how it goes in your area, but where I live, if your manufactured home is on a permanent foundation on your own land, it's all "real estate" and is financed as such. Even my credit union would finance this kind of loan.

You say you are first-time buyers; what's your credit score? If it's not good, and you aren't in a rush, you might want to take some time, clean it up and try again in a couple of years.

BUT--If I were you, I wouldn't buy such an old home; they were built differently back then. Have you fallen in love with the property, or is the purchase amount all that you qualify for at this time?

Good luck to you.

[John Long]

Thanks Rita

Well, our situation is this:

We have need of three bedrooms and an additional room for my recording studio as well as a place for a small woodshop. We are somewhat limited in what we can shop for as far as price range is concerned. Our credit score is pretty good and we have been pre-approved for around 150,000 dollars, but houses here in Ketchikan Alaska run a bit on the expensive side. All the other houses we've looked at in our price range either don't have what we need in respect to rooms and workspaces or are in need of serious structural repairs.

This house has all the room we need, is structurally sound, is on a really nice city lot, is in our price range and has a few other percs like a great view, large decks on both levels and a detached garage. It's in a nice area of town and is within two blocks of three very close friends. In short, it's the best deal we're going to get for what we can spend.

So, back to my original question:

What kind of things can we do to the Mobile Home part of the house to make it less Mobile Home, more Stick Built? I assume that replacing the original paneling with dry wall and the old linoleum with laminate flooring are probably good starting points, but if anyone with some experience in this area has any other suggestions we would love to her them.

John Long

[Gil Davis]

There is no real way you can convert a 1975 mobile into a "stick-built". There are comanies that finance pre-HUD homes and I'll look up a couple for you. I'm not sure about Alaska, but generally they all cover every state. Be prepared to pay a higher interest rate than for a newer home.