Should We Buy A Mobile Home?

29, Alabama

My wife and I are saving up for our first home. We are still in the planning stage and don’t know much about home buying. So if this sounds stupid you can tell me! We have thought about buying land and putting a new mobile/manufactured home on it. I went on the Dave Ramsey site and according to it we could afford around $150,000 home with 20% down. I went on Zillow and Relator to look at what kind of houses were going for that price. Most of them were run down, needed a new roof, walls ripped apart, ect. We are not able to fix up a house like that nor do we want to. A few were really nice but they only had 1-2 bedrooms and almost all had only 1 bath. Plus the didn’t have a lot of land, most were less than an half an acre.

Having land is very important to us. We want room for us , our dogs, future children and maybe a few other animals, garden. Basically we want to have the freedom and space. Most of the homes are right on each other and you’re only getting a small piece of property. We currently have almost 2 acres (we do not own) and I can’t imagine having much less than what we do now. I’d really prefer to have more though.

Now I know nothing about land prices other than it’s expensive. I’ve found a few pieces of land for around $100,00-150,000 for 10-20 acres. They are all different, some would need trees to be cut others are already cleared.

We have talked about buying a mobile home. For $150,000 we could get a mobile home that is double the space, and a lot nicer than any of the houses in that price range. These mobile homes look like a house on the inside. The bathrooms are also so much better than what you get even in a house that isn’t run down. There are also other mobile homes in the $50,000-$100,000 that are smaller but nicer than the houses.

Obviously we couldn’t afford the land and the trailer at the same time. There is no pressure for us to move anytime soon. So we figure we could get the land and then save for the mobile home. Or get the land and use it as collateral to get the trailer.

The only negative thing i see about mobile homes is everyone says they loose their value. I don’t care if it looses its value. We don’t plan on selling it anytime in the near or distant future. If it’s on our land then we would keep it forever hopefully. If in 20 years we wanted a new one then we would just sell it even it’s at a loss and buy a new one. I’d hope at that point it was paid off. Are there other disadvantages i’m not seeing?

A lot of people in our area have mobile homes, i lived in my uncles 1960s trailer when i graduated hs back in 2014-2018. It was a tin can but was in decent shape. The roof didn’t leak, electrical was good. It was TINY tho. In the “master bedroom” it could perfectly fit a queen size bed and one of the long dressers with a mirror attached, you had just enough space to walk around the bed and out the door, that was it! The second bedroom could barely hold a twin size bed. It could have lasted longer but i accidentally burned it down. So if that one could last I figure a brand new one should last at least double the time, right?

I thought If we can get approved for 150,000 I figure we could take max 100K for land, we would honestly probably spend less depending And then take $50,000 or whatever is left and put it towards a mobile home and then add in however much we have saved to finish paying for the mobile home. Can you do that? . Having 10+ acres is us dreaming big.. As in that’s the most we could ever want/afford. I would be okay with having as much land as we currently have. Is this feasible or is it a pipe dream?

The only upside we see to a house is that it won’t loose value and may be built better than a mobile home. I don’t see any other benefit to paying $150,000 for a house half the sq ft of a trailer and that doesn’t have land other than a small backyard.

This may be a dumb idea, or the financial part may not work. I’m not sure how different financing is for a mobile home/land vs a house. Or if they even would do a loan for the land and trailer together.

Edit: when i say built better obviously a brick house is more stable. But the new mobile homes seem to be put together very well. and i trust the quality of the new mobile home as much as i do a house