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Is it a bad idea to purchase a mobile home?
PJD
Posts: 582 Forumite
I got off the property ladder about 2 years ago and have been renting since. I have recently been given notice by landlord and all I can find in the area I want to live are 1 bed flats for around £700 a month.
I have some savings and could probably afford to buy a property for around £150,000.
This would either buy me a 1 bed flat... or ... a spacious 2 bed, detached mobile home with garden and loads of parking!! Woo hoo!!!
I understand that mobile homes depreciate in value?? Is that still true if you maintain them properly?
Am I right in thinking that in terms of investment of my hard earned savings, buying a mobile home is a really bad idea!????
:beer:
I have some savings and could probably afford to buy a property for around £150,000.
This would either buy me a 1 bed flat... or ... a spacious 2 bed, detached mobile home with garden and loads of parking!! Woo hoo!!!
I understand that mobile homes depreciate in value?? Is that still true if you maintain them properly?
Am I right in thinking that in terms of investment of my hard earned savings, buying a mobile home is a really bad idea!????
:beer:
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Comments
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It is a very bad idea. Radio 4 have been running regular stories about scandals where old people are basically conned out of their homes by unscrupulous park owners who won't let them sell, then offer them derisory amounts. No doubt not all parks are like that, but do your research very carefully.Been away for a while.0
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Think very carefully before you do this..!0
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:cheesy:"I'm not from around here, I have my own customs"
For confirmation: No, I'm not a 40 year old woman, I'm a 26 year old bloke!0 -
Neighbours..... everybody needs.....0
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Running_Horse wrote: »It is a very bad idea. Radio 4 have been running regular stories about scandals where old people are basically conned out of their homes by unscrupulous park owners who won't let them sell, then offer them derisory amounts. No doubt not all parks are like that, but do your research very carefully.
Yes I think the park owners get a percentage of the price you sell for too.
I would be very happy with a spacious mobile home, - pity there's so many pitfalls, - i knew in the back of my mind it would be a bad idea, - anything too good to be true always is.0 -
don't go there....you will be committing financial suicide....It is nice to see the value of your house going up'' Why ?
Unless you are planning to sell up and not live anywhere, I can;t see the advantage.
If you are planning to upsize the new house will cost more.
If you are planning to downsize your new house will cost more than it should
If you are trying to buy your first house its almost impossible.0 -
I owned/lived in one once and I'd advise any friend of mine not to do it unless it was really cheap and they had about 2 years to live and didn't give a stuff.
1) The site owner sometimes charges a fee for you to move onto the site, they certainly interview you. In the late 80s I was charged about £300-400 to move on.
2) The site owner makes the rules and sometimes they can be peculiar. e.g. I was only allowed to purchase gas bottles from her (fair enough), £32 each at the time; if I wanted papers delivering or milk delivering they had to come from one source she approved (she didn't want lots of paperboys and milkmen on the site, one was enough).
3) The site owner might "patrol" the park regularly, like a ninja, looking for reasons to give you notice. Not trying to help your problem but threatening you with it. e.g. I had a small cistern leak and got given notice to fix it or bugg4h off - no "I always use this plumber" which she could have done easily enough.
4) Depending on location, in the winter the pipes can freeze up - I was 5 days without running water every winter and had to carefully "kick" open my glass aluminium framed door each morning as it had frozen shut.
5) There is ground rent to pay - which goes up yearly. In the late 80s I was paying about £90/month just in ground rent for a 30'x10'
6) They used to have rules about the age of the van, I think this was changed in law so that the van just has to be reasonable/presentable and you can't be kicked off for van age. Having said that, mine would be about 35 by now .... and the site's been sold off, re-drawn up and turned into a retirement park with shiny new homes on it ... so where would I have gone if I'd stayed?
7) When you leave the site owner has to vet/interview your potential buyers - and they have to pass muster. Sites can have age restrictions or "type of person" restrictions (mine was single females and married couples only). Site owners HAVE been known to use your advertising and introductions to sell/rent out their own vans - one of my neighbours had that problem, every time she found a buyer the site owner poached them.
8) When you sell you pay the site owner 10% of the sales price.
It's like living in prison, you're just allowed out when you like... but you might still be watched!0 -
I have also heard some things on the news about a certain group buying up many of the parks and enforcing sets of very unfavourable T & Cs e.g. enforcing the move out for a certain number of weeks a year rule on sites it previously wasn't, increasing ground rents exponentially, not maintaining services etc effectively to clear the site and sell the land.
Personally I would rather rent if I couldn't afford anything else.0 -
The best sites are where you own the freehold the van sits on but these are very few and far between and more expensive. Dont even think about buying a "normal" one.0
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They are a completley depriciating asset they only go down in value, now I know houses are depriciating at the moment, but at some point they will go up again, whereas a mobile home only goes one way and thats down. I would only do it as a temporary measure say six mths.
As PN says there are a lot of rules and regs, which would drive me mad.
On top of that a lot of sites, you cant get mail delivered, and you have to be out for so many mths of the year, normally in the winter.
In essense, IMO its a bad idea!
Plus if you need a mortgage its pretty much ruled out anyway!Pawpurrs x
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