According to a survey, approximately twenty million Americans are living in mobile homes. If you are thinking about buying a mobile home for the first time, you might want to know the pros and cons of buying mobile home in Texas.
There always is the question that, is buying one of the mobile homes a good deal for you?
In this post, we will get more information on manufactured and mobile homes and what are the upside or downsides of buying one so that you can make the right decision.
Price Of course, the first pro for buying a mobile home in Texas is money. If you look at it, the price per square foot for a brand new mobile home in Texas, on average is $50.
If you compare it with purchasing a new house, that averages out around $107 per square foot.
This is a considerable saving. When you are buying a mobile home, you are buying a home itself and not the piece of land underneath it.
So you definitely want to consider the price if you are planning to buy mobile homes in Texas.
Mobility Another pro for buying mobile homes is, you can technically move house. If you don’t like the locality you live in, or your neighbors are driving you crazy, you can move your house to another location.
However, if you move your mobile home from one place to another location, you may have to face challenges while you are planning to sell this house to future buyers with a loan.
Technically, you can move it, but make sure you follow the right guidelines so that in the future, you are going to be able to sell your mobile home.
Taxes Eighty percent of the mobile homes are titled as personal property. Since one of the main reasons why people buy mobile homes is the cost.
It is also a big perk that the taxes you would pay on mobile homes is a lot less because it is considered personal property and not like a traditional stick-built home.
Energy Efficient Another advantage of buying a mobile home in Texas is energy efficiency. Newer built mobile homes have been rated for being more energy-efficient.
Over the last few years, mobile homes have become more energy efficient than some regular stick-built homes. They have improved on quality and safety over the years, much more than some of the ordinary standing houses.
All you might need to do is a little research about buying good quality mobile homes from the best manufacturers in the country.
Costs of Renting If you would like to put your mobile home in a mobile home community, you might have a problem in the future with the rising cost of renting the space where your mobile home sits.
It is just like renting an apartment. You cannot keep them to keep the price steady, and it is always going to go up as the costs to run the facility also increase. It is almost like paying an HOA fee.
However, one thing to consider if you are deciding to put your mobile home somewhere is, how much are the fees going to be when you park it, and how much do they go up regularly.
Acceptance So, you found the perfect mobile home and an ideal location. But they don’t have to accept you in that location. Some mobile communities have restrictions that you have to apply to be accepted into their facility.
You might want to keep that in mind, too, when you are deciding to buy mobile homes in Texas.
Appreciation One of the biggest disadvantages of owning a mobile home is that they rarely increase in value. It is almost like buying a car. When you drive it for a few years, it is going to depreciate in value.
In the future, when you go to sell your mobile home, and you have had it on a piece of land that you had for years, the value of the house does go up.
However, that is because the land was sold for a lot more in that area. So, the increase in value comes from the land that it sits on.
When you park your mobile home at its new location, you have to make sure that the tongue and axle have been removed, make sure you have all the paper works from when the house was parked at its location.
If you move the home from its original location, you might not qualify for VA and FHA funding.
Call it what you want, mobile home, modular home, trailer, double-wide.
Though they might not be the most popular option when it comes to home buying, however, with the above-mentioned pros and cons, you could be in a better position to decide if it is worth buying mobile homes in Texas.