Mobile Home Purchase

eagleeye2501

We are currently looking at the possibility of selling our property and moving into a mobile home and wanted to know any advantages and/or pitfalls of making such a move. The move would hopefully raise enough income to purchase the mobile home (£160,000) and leave us with enough income to pay off our morgage with a little extra surplus cash to spare. The mobile home site costing would include the purchase of the mobile home, a site position, plus all of the fixtures and fittings incorporated. We would have to pay around £130 per month site charge which would be ongoing. Gas and water would be purchased by via the site agents.

Can anyone help me by identifying any pitfalls with making this move please?

theartfullodger

What you purchase usually drops in value compared to bricks 'n mortar..

Most people don't understand the rules & regs as regards mobile homes/park homes - eg the site owner can charge 10% of sale fee when the place is sold (!)

(PS Are we talking Engerland here ??)

eg see
http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice/mobile_homes


in particular
http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/advice/mobile_homes/things_to_consider

Some site owners are considered by some people to be a bunch of dodgy, blood-sucking crooks: others hold different views & may be right... aye, right...

Cheers!

Lodger

lincroft1710

Regarding site owners, sites do change hands so you could go from good to bad owner and vice versa. Be wary of some of the more restrictive site terms and conditions which could stop you having grandchildren staying overnight, or the garden can only be lawn.

puddy

plus they will force you to upgrade your home at various points, you could be forced to buy a brand new one in a few years, they can have a say in who buys your home when you want to sell, making it difficult, plus taking a huge commission as above, they can also insist on you buying things from local delivery people like milkmen etc (im sure i read this somewhere)

in addition, the site fees can change, there may be maintenance, i would never touch it, plus 160k for a caravan is extremely expensive, get yourself a bunglalow or small apartment to do up

puddy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2003/apr/27/property.homebuying

this article is 7 years old but i doubt things have changed much

puddy

http://www.phraa.co.uk/guide-to-buying-a-park-home.html

this bloke set up this association because he and his wife were treated very badly when the owner of their site changed and installed new bullying rules and policies

Catspajamas

Many sites will make you move out for a period of time usually 2-4 weeks in a row at some point in the year. Where will you stay? Can you afford to go on hol for 4 weeks every year for the duration of you living there, or can you guarantee someone being able to put you up. Also many sites make you replace the home after a certain number of years.

Dame_Washalot

£130 per month plus gas and water on top -and no choice of suppliers. That is one heck of a lot of money
They will no doubt charge a 10% admin fee on top for that as well and also possible chuck in an allowance for inflation

The 5 year period is called "the relevant period" and they will inspect the home every 5 years. If the landlord is any good they should give you a schedule of dilapidations and give you the opportunity to bring your home up to standard before forcing you to change homes.

I manage 5 sites on behalf of a local authority - not travellers sites but sites where people purchase homes and rent the pitches from us. The tenants are usually elderly people.

Our rents are £21 weekly plus water rates based on actual bills.

We manage 160 homes and make £150K profit annually - even in these times when only one or two homes a year are selling.

We are also considering selling these capital assets as they are valued at £4-6 million. I feel very sorry for those residents if we do decide to sell the sites.

I would ask you to seriously consider putting this much money into a depreciating asset over which you would appear to have very little control.

Moody_Mare

megancara wrote: »

Many sites will make you move out for a period of time usually 2-4 weeks in a row at some point in the year. Where will you stay? Can you afford to go on hol for 4 weeks every year for the duration of you living there, or can you guarantee someone being able to put you up.

If you do go down this road then you need to buy a park home and the site must have a 12 month residential licence if you want this to be your main home. In our area of the country it it illegal to live in a caravan on a holiday licence as your main abode as your are not paying council tax and the local authorities insist you have a main home elsewhere to fulfill the park licencing requirements.

We have friends in a nice park home as they could not afford bricks & mortar. Rather than renting accomadation that they could not afford and then claiming housing benifits they found this the only option. The local council now states their home is illegal (not correct spacing) the site will do nothing as they ignored the problems for years. The site put it there and the council did not bother checking the requirements for years so was also at fault. They face loosing their home as they cannot afford the many thousands to upgrade.

To put it simply DO NOT BUY OR YOU MAY LIVE TO REGRET IT

Brb

I agree with all the comments above regarding finances depreciating etc but just wanted to add that I have a friend that lives at Billing Aquadrome and absolutely loves it. She lives in a beautiful place, in a lovely community. She moves in with her Mum for the appropriate amount of weeks a year and wouldn't live any differently now not for me but some ppl do like it a lot.

PasturesNew

The site my mobile home used to be sited on was sold off, all plots cleared and the new company have now got a different layout with brand new (really expensive) homes on it and it's a retirement park. If I'd still been there I'd have been turfed out on my ear somehow.

If I had £X I'd always rather buy bricks/mortar than a mobile home for life.

Also, site owners can be over-zealous in pursuit of their site rules - even though you see others getting away with things, they can often take a dislike to a few people and make life hard for them. I had a neighbour who was advertising hers for sale - every potential buyer had to be interviewed by the site owner and "approved" ... and the site owner was stealing her potential buyers to sell them one of her own vans.

On sites, the rules are strictly adhered to, there's no interpretation. My site rules stated that the edge of the grass round my mobile home had to be kept trimmed/straight. Thing is, I was rubbish at it as my cr4ppy straight (cack handed) wasn't good enough for Madam, so I ended up employing her gardener to cut my edges (I figured that was the best solution). I had a small cistern leak once, she banged on my door and demanded it was sorted or she'd give me notice: I had no job at the time so achieved this by turning my water off between flushes.

In the winter, my pipes froze solid as the lagging wasn't as good as it would have been in a house.

I had to buy the gas bottles from the site owner. All very well until you realise that the gas bottles were round the back of the van, they are nearly as big as me and I had to go to buy one at a reasonable hour (I was working full-time). You use most gas bottles in the winter, so I was having to lug big gas bottles the length of the site, then round the back, in the wind/rain/cold and in the dark a lot of the time.

I'd not recommend it to anybody as a long-term solution to be fair. I'd not really even want one as a holiday home.