If you’re buying a mobile home to fill a vacant lot – new or used – there are a few things you have to double-check because if you make the wrong decision the damage can be in the tens of thousands of dollars. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review those items and explore how to get them right.
Episode 405: Things To Double-Check Before Buying Transcript
It's a scary thing placing an order for a new or used mobile home because once you make the commitment, it's almost impossible to stop it. And when it arrives at your property, it's set in stone. You can't manipulate it. You can't push it a little, get it into the lot. But how can you make ordering homes a little less scary? Well, the key is to check and then double check all the key attributes. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. We're going to talk about the key things you need to check and double check before you order any new or used mobile home. So let's start off with the home size. That should be a given. That's obvious, right? The home has to fit within the confines of the lot. But what happens sometimes is the manager gets lazy. They don't want to go out there and actually measure the lot. So they're just going to kind of guess at a size. And this can be very damaging to you because in the world of selling new or used mobile homes, the three-bedroom sells about 100 times easier than the two-bedroom.
And if you order a home that's smaller than the lot allows, you'll forever kick yourself because you could have had that three-bedroom home in there, which would have sold so easily. But instead, you ended up with a two-bedroom, which takes you a lot more effort to get it out the door. But before you could even figure out the home size, the first thing we have to ascertain is the setback from the street and the setback from typically the easement at the back of the lot. And if we don't know those two measures, we have to get a surveyor to go out and tell us where the easement is at the back and then extrapolate from that how many feet we have to be away from it. And additionally, based on ordinance or, if nothing else, constructive reliance on the other homes and their setbacks, then we can finally figure out how big the home can be. But if you leave it up to just random chance or the manager just giving you their ballpark idea, where you can be really hurt in the home-buying experience is if you end up with a home smaller than what you could have had because it doesn't cost very much to go a little bigger, but it can cost you a ton to go a little too small because when you reorient from a three-bedroom down to a two-bedroom, that's a real problem.
And you're going to find that all the way back to mom-and-pop, mom-and-pop did not even know where the confines of the lot were from the front to the back. They were guessing at the back. That's why so many mobile home parks, when you buy them and you get the survey, there's a whole bunch of homes that spill out over the property line into the neighbor because mom-and-pop didn't even know where the property line was. And sticking homes into the neighbor, that's a no-no, but sticking homes into your easement, that can also be a no-no. So before you can really order the home size, we have to know the exact measurement, the exact position of where the front of the home is and the back of the home. Now, of course, the other part of ordering a home is the width from side to side. Now, for that, we need to know what the fire marshal wants to as far as separation between homes if the park has high density, and just in general, what you feel based on the spatial demographics of your customer and what they're looking for in the home and the lot, what's the appropriate width.
Now, I would never recommend you buy a home that's less than 14 feet wide. So this is really a question of should it be a 14 or a 16 or an 18? And to be honest with you, most customers are just fine with the 16. 18 is probably excessive and a little much overkill. Yet some parks cannot handle a 16 even without throwing all of their density issues together into a big lump and potentially causing a visit from the fire marshal. But you've got to figure out once and for all what you're doing as far as front to back and side to side before you place that order. The next one is utility orientation because in mobile home parks, mobile homes are fueled by one of two things, electricity or electricity plus gas. And you can't screw that up because if you order a home that uses natural gas into a park that's all electric, well, you've created a mess because you have a home that needs to have a gas line connected, but yet there's no gas line to connect. So the first question is, is this lot gas and electric or is it all electric?
Now, there's a third choice out there, which is propane. In some cases, you could put propane in as the alternative gas fuel. And even if you do not have natural gas, you could maybe make that happen. But traditionally, if you're looking at a park that has natural gas that has failed or never had natural gas, rather than buy a gas and propane home, you're going to want to buy one that's all electric. And if you're buying a home that is, in fact, all electric, we also need to know if the park has enough amps to that lot to power up that home. Now, if you can't get the number of amps to the lot, if your park is master metered electric and the power is just not there to supply the necessary amps, then you may, in fact, have to go to electrical plus propane. But you got to figure all this out before you order the home because you would never want to bring in a home without knowing the amps needed, whether you have the amps, whether you have the gas. All these many issues, these all have to be resolved on the front end.
Then you have snow load and wind load homes. Now if you look at a map of the United States, the states which require snow load, which means a sturdier roof to handle a higher weight of snow, that's in the upper part of the map where it snows really hard. You would never need to have snow load homes in Louisiana. But on the wind load side, the wind load is pretty much just up and down the eastern seaboard. That's where you'll find most of the wind load areas. But what's critical is you got to know if you're in a snow load or a wind load zone because if you are, the home has to be built a little differently. You cannot put a new or used home that has insufficient snow or wind rating into those zones. Now the big problem some people don't realize is that a lot of these dealers, if you're buying a used home, and even at some of the new homes, the guys at the plant, they don't themselves know what the snow load and wind load zones even are. There are some classic stories in the industry of people who have bought multiple homes based on the salesman's advice there at the factory only to find out, lo and behold, they've got the wrong snow load or wind load.
And often that doesn't even come to light until sometimes a year or two down the road after they've already sold the home to the customer who's gone out and put their furniture in it, they've been living in it, and then lo and behold, suddenly somehow, someway, maybe they go to resell the home, the customer does, and it turns out it's not the correct wind load or snow load. In that event, what would have to happen is you would have to actually go in and rebuild the home to the correct wind load or snow load, or you'd have to drag it out of your park and bring in one that is the correct snow and wind load. Now you can imagine the complications of that with the customer who you didn't tell him on the front end that the home was insufficient, and now your solution is to basically dehouse them for some period of time. Even if you're going to make the necessary repairs, they'll have to leave the home because it's going to require all kinds of work on the roof. Not a good situation. So you're going to always want to check and make 100% sure that that new or used home you are buying is in the correct wind and snow load.
And don't let people say things like, oh, I think it is. No, this is a black and white issue. It either is or it is not. The title to that home should reflect that it either is a certain snow load or wind load, or it isn't. You cannot leave it in a gray matter because if that goes bad, you will face litigation. You'll face all kinds of problems, which could have all been avoided if you'd only paid attention yourself. The bottom line to it all is if you're going to buy a new or used home, you've got to put in a little extra effort. Now, the good news is once you learn the things I've just discussed on your property, most of the homes will always apply to that standard. But you got to figure out what you're doing. You've got to double check everything regarding that home and your property before you place that order. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.