Santa Rosa CA, 13 June 2002.

HOW TO PICK YOUR MH

1) Find a nice trailer park, one without too many shotgun shells and engine blocks laying around. Buy something in place, a single-wide or double-wide that's already installed, preferably from the survivors of some recently kicked-off old geezer. Sure, it'll smell bad, and the neighbors are passive-aggressive, and the space rent is a killer and will keep on increasing exponentially, and a tornado could suck it all up at any time -- but hey, life is a thrill, right? Buy a case of beer, move in, party down, and you'll be fine.

OR

2) Find a dealer who offers cheap modular packages. For the price of a new SUV you can buy a parcel of land with a freshly-installed shiny new 2-section ('double-wide') house, and they'll even take the wheels off when they're done. Sure, there's a 95% likelihood that your new Champion or Fleetwood home will have major structural problems within a year because the cheap-ass fly-by-night installers just duct-taped the thang together. And it's 100% likely that the trim, tiles and siding will start peeling off almost immediately. But hey, there's no place like home! Slug another jug of malt liquor and smile, bubba!

OR

3) Search exhaustively 'til you find a nice piece of fairly level land with utilities in or readily available. Then exhaustively check out all the local (within 500 miles) dealers of Karsten or Skyline homes, and weed out the scum and psychoes and thieves. Find somebody who's been in business for a few decades and isn't redlined by the BBB. Then find the right house layout, and check that the standard features are just what you want -- upgrades get expensive, especially since they're taxed separately. Specify exactly what you want. Then go over every stinking detail of the purchase and production and installation agreements, several times. And make sure that they'll come back in a year to tighten-up everything that's loosened and slipped by then. Don't be surprised that the house and installation cost more than you expected, and that the whole process takes much longer than you expected, etc. Oy.

More Notes - 6 July 2002

Note: A high-volume dealer may offer 'package' homes (with many upgrades included) at a substantial discount over invoice. Look at these carefully, good deals can be had.

That part about 'quality' is important. In an AARP survey I alluded to above, the vast majority of new MHs are reported to suffer from severe structural problems almost immediately. Why? Low-end installers throwing together low-end MHs, that's why. We've seen bargains in central Nevada, US$30,000 for a 1-acre homesite with a 1600 square foot house. And the land has no cover, and the house has no eaves, and the frame is staked down into sand (no foundation), and it'll start to fall apart as soon as you walk into it. Urg.

CALIFORNIA MH RETAIL PRICES (installation extra)


1. Low-End: under US$50,000
2. Mid-Range: $50k-100k
3. High-End: $100k-150k
4. Luxury: over US$150,000

Low-end MHs don't have to be crap, but the ones we've seen are invariably poorly designed and built, with inferior materials that won't withstand weather and usage. They can be suitably situated — buy an old aircraft hangar with a concrete slab floor, put the cheap MH inside, spend most of your time elsewhere, and the MH probably won't deteriorate too fast. Probably. Low-end MHs can be upgraded, but the upgrades are subject to sales tax in most states, and this can get expensive fast.

Mid-range and high-end MHs differ from their cheaper kin by having thicker walls, higher ceilings, better insulation, sturdier materials, and hopefully more attention to detail during installation. The sauna is extra. ANY MH can be designed to look and feel like a trailer (or maybe you LIKE those eensy-beensy bedrooms) but the larger ones usually have enough visual space that you won't feel too cramped. Some of the high-end and luxury MHs are hugely spacious and luxurious, maybe even too much so, but that's a matter of taste, eh?

What's important is, you want to look at the specifications of various MHs, note their standard and optional features, and get something with as many standard upgrades as possible. Better doors, carpets, tiles, fixtures, cabinets and counters in kitchen and bath, that kind of stuff. Get all the best you can up-front, because it's expensive to try to upgrade later.

Oh yeah, that trailer ambience: MHs are built from modules that range in width from 12-15 feet, in length from 36-72 feet. Modules can be shortened or stretched, but they can't be widened except by adding modules or attached ('tag') rooms. So except at the upper end, MHs too often tend to be long and narrow, just like... trailers. Funny 'bout that. And it's amazing how small even a good-sized MH can feel. A talented architect can make a 2400 square foot MH feel more cramped than a stick-built house half its size. Hmmm...

INSTALLING THE SUCKER (brief notes)


• Make sure contractor has installed many MHs locally before
• Get: a real foundation, not just the frame strapped to the ground
• Slope: get stepped ("pony wall") foundation & drainage channels
• Quake country: frame should also be strapped to the foundation
• High-wind country: roof should be strapped-down to the structure
• Have contractor return after a year to fix settling, cracks, etc.

I can't go into installation in detail, because there are just too many variables: terrain, infrastructure, neighborhood, climate, distance, experience. But note that several dealers may give radically different estimates for installing similar MHs in the same place. Big-volume dealers make profits on the sales; small-volume dealers earn their gravy on the installation. Beware. And it's much costlier to install a MH on raw land than on a site that's already been developed.

The lowdown: MHs are inherently sturdy, since to survive freeway haulage they essentially have to withstand a 5.5 earthquake for several hours. Modern MHs embody amazing technologies, much better than just a few years ago. But if they're built of cheap materials and/or installed sloppily, they can be an endless pain. Take care in your selection of dealer, house, site, installer, etc. and you can have a residential delight. Good luck, bucko.

[6 July 2002] Still to come: more on installation, and a list of online resources for learning more about MHs and their makers and dealers. Stay tuned.

[2 January 2006] I never got around to the above. Bother. But here's an interesting article: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED - A new generation of tech-savvy architects is bringing premium-quality, prefabricated housing to the masses.