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Mobile home with bad roof (C) Daniel FriedmanBuyer's Advice for Mobile Homes
Double wides, Caravans, Manufactured Homes, & Trailers

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Advice for buyers of a mobile home, doublewide, or trailer.

This article series includes both advice and detailed inspection procedures, defect lists, codes for mobile homes or trailers.

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Inspection & Repair of Manufactured Homes, Doublewides, Caravans & Mobile Homes

1969 mobile home that does not meet any current codes or standards might or might need costly repairs but may have legal issues too (C) Inspectapedia.com Kayeren Cannell 2019This page gives general advice about buying a mobile home, doublewide, or trailer. Much of this general opinion would be good advice for the buyer of any sort of a home.

Question: I'm buying an "abandoned" mobile home made in 1969 with no approvals - at best, an "outhouse on wheels"

2019/06/13 Kayeren Cannell said:

I WAS going to purchase a 1969 mobile home in a mobile home park. This mobile was abandoned about 2 years ago.

Park owner has the court document that "officially" declares the unit as an abandonment, but did not proceed to get the title. She wants me to do it.

The 16 forms I have to fill out (each one with a $25 - $35 processing fee) to get duplicate Title; Registration; Cert of Retail Value; Pepperoni Pizza...etc; Waiver of Fees & back Taxes; put up a Surety Bond...etc., when I'M not the one is delinquent--I haven't bought it yet, nor do I live in it!

That's nothing yet & herein lies my question:

I got on NADA to get a value at least & when they ask the year of the mobile, you can't enter a year prior to 1980.

So then I read on & find out it's not even considered a home before 1976 when HUD initiated Code Compliance Standards.

At best, I'm buying an Outhouse on wheels. Am I suppose to put thousands of $$ to bring a cardboard box into compliance, which even their reg's say cannot be done? As I read on, I'm seeing the trouble I could end up in. So far--with fees taxes & putting up a Surety Bond, the amount is triple the asking price & from what I'm finding out, I will never get the Title anyway.

I've never done this before & it's not my area of expertise--I've always been a renter; however none of this seems right to me & I could be headed down a path I will regret. Am I correct in my assumption? So far I have not been able to accomplish ANYTHING they're wanting me to do. I do see me paying $30k for a $5k Outhouse I'll never own.

I need an expert. This is a rural area & other than a Social Security paralegal there isn't an attorney here I can go to. Anyway, any advice; info (hell, I'll take insults even) you have, I'd certainly appreciate your take on this. I'm suppose to meet with the park owner later today to sign some paperwork.

This Q&A about sorting out the legality of and code compliance of an older mobile home were posted originally at MOBILE HOME CODES, STANDARDS & MANUALS

Reply: remind the seller that you're the buyer, the one with the money and don't sign anything yet

Kayerin

General Advice for buying an older mobile home or trailer:

To help sort this out I have to ask some questions.

  1. Is this the only possible home of its type that you could find in your area?

    If there is a similar home that does not have all of the stumbling blocks of the one you've described, and if the price of that home is anywhere close to similar, the alternative may be a better deal as well as less of a headache.
  2. Do you have to buy a home in this area?

    Should you be looking further?

If the answers to both 1 and 2 are yes, then we can proceed to discuss how to deal with the issues with this specific property.

If the answers to either 1 and 2 are NO, then in my view, from what you've said, you would be smart to look at a different home to buy.

Some general advice:

  1. Set your attitude: When you're buying a home you want to feel that you love the home AND its location, from early on. But you never want to feel that this is your ONLY option - feeling that it's your only choice puts you at a terrible disadvantage as a purchaser.

In nearly 50 years of being around the sale and purchase of homes, my experience is that despite the fact that as my mom used to say, the buyer is the one with the money - thus people ought to be nice to the buyer - the fact is most of the players and procedures are stacked AGAINST the buyer.

Even people recommended to you as a buyer, such as the lawyer you find or the home inspector you find, may not really be working with your interest at mind.

The lawyer may be more interested in just cranking out deals and the inspector, if referred by a realtor, may be more interested in not rocking the boat of the deal lest the realtor refuse to refer the inspector to other buyers.

  1. DO NOT spend large sums of money as a gift to make someone else's property marketable to you.

    Every dollar you spend sticks you or commits you to being the buyer - which is exactly what a seller would wish. You could spend thousands of dollars researching title, paying fees, even fixing stuff, only to find some very serious show-stopper (like the home isn't legal, can't be sold, has liens against it, etc.)

    Then if you have to walk from the deal you've lost all your money - only the seller gains.
  2. DO NOT count on getting reimbursed if you decide not to buy.

    There is no deal, such as a promise by seller to reimburse you if you walk away, that would ever be enforceable without terrible additional costs in time and money to try to collect.
  3. THE SELLER is generally the person who is obligated to make their home sale-able.
  4. THE WORST HOME PURCHASES I have seen have usually been when the buyer is talked into running as fast as they can towards the property screaming I WANT IT I WANT IT while throwing their wallet ahead of them as they run.

    Sellers or realtors count on running momentum to carry a bad deal.

    And ALWAYS the it's only later, when it's too later, that the rushed buyer discovers annoying things that they wish they'd known before.
  5. The home must be re-sale-able.

    If you buy a home, even for all cash, that is not legally marketable, you are sinking your money into an abyss.

    You must keep in mind that should your circumstances change (and they will) and some day you need to move, sell, get your money out, then you will find that you're sunk: either you cannot get your money out of the property or doing so will require an abnormally long wait to find some other fool to come along and do what you did in the first place - pay for an un-marketable home.
  6. If a home does not or cannot qualify for financing that is close to the same as a home that cannot be sold - it can't be sold to a normal buyer, you'd have to wait for an all-cash buyer,

    and worse, any all cash buyer with an ounce of sense is going to make the home jump all the hurdles of a buyer who would be relying on financing, so that in turn when she sells the home she isn't stuck with an un-marketable property either.

OK so Ignore the Advice Above.

All that griping done, IF your inspection finds that despite its age, despite that the home may not comply with codes and standards that would even permit you to get normal financing to pay for it (even an all cash buyer) and IF there is really no alternative home you could buy or want to buy (really? how long and how far have you looked)

and IF you insist you want to go ahead,

THEN you MUST get an expert, independent evaluation of what the home is actually worth on the market - not somebody's guess, not the seller's guess, not the realtor's guess but a licensed appraiser's assessment. An appraisal is not exact but it can keep you from a mistake type #5 or #6 above: paying so much more than the home is actually worth on the market to a normal buyer that again you can't get your money out should you need to do so. You're sunk.

Watch out: from the tone of your note and your reference to "ANYTHING THEY'RE wanting me to do" tells me that you're being manipulated. But in real estate, because it's usually the most significant purchase people make, the courts in just about every country and jurisdiction put the burden on the buyer to do their own due-diligence investigations.

Nobody is going to bail you out if you're careless. The seller can hide defects, lie to you about a title, claim the well is on their property when it's not, etc. It's up to you to check out everything.

Remember what my mom- Teal - used to say. She had tremendous nerve. She'd walk into a furniture store or into a realtor's office and announce in a loud voice:

Listen, I'm the one here with the MONEY. I'm the BUYER. Treat me really well or I turn around, walk out, and take MY money ELSEWHERE.

Your photo shows an attractive, clean interior of a home - in a very limited view. But I cannot inspect the home by text nor photos

. IF you cannot resolve any of the very legitimate questions you've raised - better and smarter than ones I usually hear - easily and cheaply then ONLY if the price of the home is SO incredibly LOW that you would not care if later you have to walk away and leave 100% of that money on the ground behind you, only then could you consider going ahead.

DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING before these very basic questions are answered

  1. Is the home legal and marketable - could you sell it if you needed to?
  2. Is the price actually reasonable compared to other homes of this age, type, and location?
  3. Is there some very expensive hidden issue that is going to fall on you once you're the new legal owner? We can't eliminate all risk nor should we try to do so, but buying a home without having it thoroughly inspected and checked out legally is like throwing your wallet into the outhouse that you mentioned before - a toilet on wheels.
  4. Do you actually have or have access to all of the money you're going to need?

Watch out: the actual cost of buying any home is more than the purchase price that's your focus when you first start thinking about buying it. In order to avoid financial ruin for yourself it is important to get an idea of the actual true cost of buying a home.

What is the true cost of buying a home?

The true cost of buying a home includes at least the items listed below. Making a reasonable estimate of all of these can keep you out of trouble. Your attorney or realtor or banker / moorage lender will help you assure you've got all of these numbers. Then it's simple math: do you have enough money for this house?

  1. Sale Price: The actual purchase price of the home
  2. Required up-front repairs: The estimated or actual costs of repairs that must be made right away for the home to be safe and habitable. Those include fixing things in three categories
    1. Dangerous: that are dangerous such as fire hazards, electrical hazards, falling hazards,

      Details are at MOBILE HOME SAFETY DEFECTS
    2. Don't work: things that flat don't work or don't work at a reasonable level of reliability such as heating or air conditioning. A proper home inspection should identify these concerns.
    3. Deterioration: things that are causing rapid, expensive deterioration. Example: needs paint? Probably not urgent. Heat doesn't work and it's a cold climate? Urgent. Even if you think you can just wear a sweater indoors, loss of heat risks frozen bust pipes, water damage, mold - all expensive problems.

      A proper home inspection should identify these concerns. The good news is that most items are not so urgent.

      See details about how to recognize these Up-Front repairs, called Dan's 3 D's, at

      FEAR-O-METER - how worried should I be about ... whatever?

      See details about how to get the most from a home inspection at

      HOME INSPECTION, GET THE MOST FROM
  3. Additional fees such as attorney's fee, appraisal fee, mortgage points or fee, realtor's commission (usually paid by the seller but not always), deed registration fee, fees to obtain necessary permits, licenses, certificate of occupancy if not already granted
  4. Additional basic occupancy costs such as first payments or deposits necessary for homeowners insurance and utilities, and moving costs

A good place to start reading when you need to assess the overall condition of a mobile home or manufactured home and thus to understand what costs are coming up besides the purchase itself is at

MOBILE HOMES, DOUBLEWIDES, TRAILERS - home

Below are more detailed articles on common manufactured home problem areas that you'll want to be sure to check.


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