I'm pretty sure no new mobile home parks have been approved in this area for many, many years and I think that's true for many areas in California.
Heck, even Paradise CA (North of me), which was destroyed by fire entirely and so had many displaced people a year or two after the fire, the city wouldn't approve any area for the siting of trailers to house those who didn't yet have homes.
The primarily motivation for this, uh, bullshit, is home valuation. Home owners, not entirely falsely, believe that a trailer park near them will reduce the value of their homes (so they'll oppose a park even they don't personally think there's anything wrong with them). And there you have it, with home values being a gigantic part of the US economy, they wag the dog of other decisions.
I mean, bless Construction Physics' heart for earnestly trying to find a technical solution to absurd home prices in the US (and some technical solutions are useful) but naturally they have to ignore or gloss over the basic it's all a racket, they want things this way part of current problems.
>The primarily motivation for this, uh, bullshit, is home valuation. Home owners, not entirely falsely, believe that a trailer park near them will reduce the value of their homes (so they'll oppose a park even they don't personally think there's anything wrong with them).
A long time ago a real estate mogul that I'm related to told me this: "Trailer parks are section eight housing for White people. They are to be fought against as hard as we fight against section eight housing."
That stuck with me. Right or wrong, I'm under the impression that a lot of people agree with that statement.
Another issue is financing manufactured homes is often much more expensive than tradditional / stick built houses. I'm not sure how that applies to Lindle / other higher end pre-fab homes. A house on a foundation vs wheels/blocks is another factor.
I agree the situation in Paradise was pretty messed up.
I'm up the hill in Plumas County. Quincy and Portola have multiple trailer parks. Graeagle has lots with manufactured homes on them - but not trailer parks. Outside of a couple of RV parks with a few "full time" residents.
I believe that is because when you finance a house you're financing the land+house combination, with the land making up the majority of value in most urban areas - when you finance a mobile home you are only financing the home, which depreciates (unlike the land component) - hence its a higher risk loan and therefore more expensive to finance.
>>with the land making up the majority of value in most urban areas
I would love to see a source where land value makes up the majority of the value in most urban area's
In my case, my home is worth about 2x the land the shits on, and I am for sure in a urban area. Most of my state is the same
Now maybe for a ultra dense urban area's where single family home would/should be replaced with high density building that would be the case but for the common subdivision in suburbia I doubt the land is the majority of the value
even in the source article of this story, the average Home Price was $370,000 with land cost being $86,000
When a half-burned shell in Walnut Creek, CA sells for a million dollars, the value is clearly having buildable land located near a strong labor market.
I can play this game to, it does not prove you assertion, provide a data sours that should the majority of urban locations are land value heavy
Random Property in Philadelphia [1]
Assessed Value 2023: 257300 / land: 51460 - Structures: 205840
Assessed Value 2015: 186800 / land: 90300 - structures: 96500
So in Philly land DROPPED in value, Structures increased
In Austin they appear to claim Structures s have not increased in value at all in 10 years (very odd) and the 100% of the increase in the value of the land
I bet if I dig into local tax laws I will find some justifications for both valuations methods (meaning the local taxing authorities are manipulating the values for maximum tax revenue)
Just think a bit deeper about it. If you can get an equivalent sqft house built to similar cost of materials of a similar age and similar condition, why would that house be 1/3rd the price in one spot? The land and the property tax rate is the difference.
I understand that some area have massively increased land prices
That is not the discussion, the claim I was responding to said that the MAJORITY of urban homes the value of the home is made up by the value of the land, not the home
I can see that in some very select regions of the nation, but through not the midwest that for sure should not be the case, and I am suspect that the MAJORITY of the nation is that way
Thus my asking for a SOURCE for the claim that was made as my experience differs
So far all have a gotten was 2 cherry picked anecdotes to prove the claim with no actual data backing it, as such i will simply assume the statement is false
"Urban" is too broad of a term in the US where 80% of the population is defined as urban. Needless to say, Hattiesburg, MS and New York, NY are both defined as "urban" areas but have very different ratios of land value to structure value.
I worked for at a loan center about 20 years ago. We had strict rules about lending for mobile homes, which essentially meant no one got a loan for a manufactured home. Which meant you weren’t getting competitive rates for home mortgages, and you can imagine that it just goes downhill from there.
Manufactured homes are going up like gangbusters in BC, but they’re not mobile manufactured homes.
IMO it’s a brilliant system. Prefab the wall and truss structures off-site, where you can use CNC and jigs to build precisely. Wiring, plumbing, sheathing, siding, insulation, possibly roofing, all pre-installed. Erect on-site using a boom-arm delivery truck in one or two days. Do finishing work in a few days. Three three-person specialized crews building a new home every week.
Many are on lease-hold land with strata expenses for water, area maintenance, plowing, etc. many others on small rural holdings. Sometimes in town, usually in a development with micro-sized lots and ~1000–1200 sq.ft. retirement/starter homes.
Mobile homes are common enough on small rural acreages/homesteads. The new ones are quite nice. New mobile home parks are rare: regulations are undoubtedly a burden, and the cost:payoff too low. Old parks continue to go strong.
There is a clear distinction between manufactured and mobile homes in the USA also. Also, what you are talking about is not called a manufactured home in the states, but a modular or prefab home.
That sort of thing, and one’s where there are standard 2x4xOSB sheathing, flat-panel patterns, and they arrive as a package of walls to be fastened to a foundation or rim joist, and trusses to be placed on top. More or less plug and play. I believe most non-mobile prefab homes have gyproc installed post-construction, not the jointed fibreboard panels used in (older?) mobile homes.
A local homeless transitioning apartment block appeared to use a very modular design, a crane lifting frameworks into place. Now that I think of it, I wonder if those were the same units an Albertan motel chain had been using, that were being constructed locally and shipped off on a flatbed.
Most home construction is still done on-site, with framing being cut and nailed and clad per the blueprint, and various specialty crews coming through in sequence to housewrap, install siding, wire, plumb, insulate, sheetrock, trim, install windows and doors, lay flooring, roofing, etc. It is astoundingly quick when well-managed and there are no supply chain issues.
And then there are ATCO units. I believe the Alberta oilpatch lives in their modular systems.
It looks to be in an unpopulated area. Building offsite using prefabricated elements would make sense even it it were quite costly, because getting builders and tradies out to a wop-wop location to do an on-site build would be even more expensive.
I lived in prefabs twice - both RAF married quarters. Married people were my parents and this was back in the 60s.
First was way out beyond the perimeter track at RAF Jever, in West Germany, the second at RAF Hemswell, in Lincolnshire. Both were actually quite cosy, and we got through the dreadful 1963 winter at Hemswell with few problems. In fact I found them warmer than the brick-built married quarters we moved into at RAF Scampton, after Helmswell.
Prefab is a different animal altogether in the US from manufactured homes. Prefabricated homes are many times built to higher standards than regular homes, and prefab homes are usually permanent with no intention of moving the structure to other sites over their lifetimes. Unfortunately, prefab homes are equal (if not more in some cases) in cost relative to standard “stick-built” homes.
'Mobile Homes' are viewed as for 'White Trash' or 'Poor People'.
Funny the decline in sales seems to have started with the 'Trailer Park Boys'? Obviously it's a coincidence, but these things matter quite a lot.
I can definitely see an opportunity for such homes that are styled to be hip, with modern designs, tucked away in the forest, that kind of thing.
Manufacturers and designers are going to have to create a new perception. If there is a direct economic advantage, they might want to work with city hall / planners etc. as well on this.
It also could be related to the fact that regular homes are getting really nice and expectations much higher.
Irrespective of the economic issues, 'Mobile Homes' are 'Off Brand' and that's at least 1/2 the problem.
Almost certainly illegal. Every jurisdiction has its own idiosyncratic building code to better stifle competition. Having separate licensing and subtly different requirements is a jobs programme for locals.
It's not just more expensive one off homes that are prebuilt in Finland - Over 50% of Finnish homes are now built offsite (or more accurately constructed from 'parts' built off site). This includes both single family wooden homes and concrete apartment buildings.
This is probably a result of: 1) Construction companies are larger and are building on multiple plots with the same concrete apartment building or 10-20 identical or similar wooden buildings 2) The Finnish love affair with family lakeside summer cottages has got people used to ordering a building 'off the shelf'
I think Älvsby houses in the Nordics are closer to what the article is talking about. Their houses are built from large pieces manufactured at a factory and later assembled at the site.
The article is about homes built as essentially a giant camping trailer. The entire home (sometimes in two pieces, as a "double-wide") is delivered to the property and semi-permanently installed, but can still (theoretically) be moved somewhere else after that.
Strange. In the USA, there is a strong distinction between manufactured, multilateral, mobile homes. You can’t use the terms interchangeably. Double and single wides are manufactured homes, but trailer park homes are definitely in the mobile category.
Those Honka houses do look really impressive, but the national average cost per square meter to build a home in the US is approximately €400 which is 4x less expensive than the stated costs on honka's site.
The issue with trailers is that they are built to a different standard, basically designed to depreciate like a car. The modular houses that get assembled on site are almost indistinguishable from many traditional houses.
On the flip, the regular building codes are insane and drive up costs to address risks that aren’t there, while ignoring obvious deficiencies that are both expensive and long term dangerous. It’s ok to glue the exterior of a house on or put a PVC toilet flange on new construction, but you need to install insane numbers of electrical outlet to prevent some nonexistent fire risk.
you need to install insane numbers of electrical outlet to prevent some nonexistent fire risk
I used to live in a 1940's home and was frustrated with the lack of outlets - I used extension cords (some under carpets) so I could put things where I wanted them instead of near one of the 2 outlets in the living room, neither one located in a convenient place. And it had a single outlet for 15 feet of counter space... if you want to plug in a toaster at the far end of the counter, you'd have to run an extension cord all along the counter (and behind the sink).
Multiple outlets are cheap to add in new construction but quite expensive to add in later, most people wouldn't add a new outlet unless they were doing remodeling (circuits are more expensive, AFCI/GFCI breakers aren't inexpensive).
His comment may have pointed out electrical outlets - which yes is negligible. But it's not the only thing totally out of control. I'm in CA so my requirements are nuts. My wife and I are building a home ourselves. Ever look into category D (earthquake zone) requirements for footer sizes? Look at the indoor sprinkler requirements? What about when you are on a well? Look at water heater requirements - solar requirements (which are fine for me since not connecting to PG&E anyway) If you ever write your own plans for a house, trust me, there are far more insane things you don't know about that exist that definitely raise the price of the house and certainly the complexity of building one.
I am probably looking at $2000 at least just for Simpson strong tie products.
Half of my family is in fire service and we live in an old city - houses don’t burn down anymore for a variety of reasons and haven’t since the 80s. The response to any critique of building code generally amounts to “better than dying in a fire”- it’s intellectually lazy.
For a remodel project I did a few years ago, easily 30% of the costs were driven by compliance requirements that have no meaningful impact on safety. Ended up spending something like $5k in unnecessary plumbing because per code, I cant be trusted to not scald myself in the bath! New lines required copper and flux, because the city code is driven by the plumbers union, etc.
The total cost of wiring a new home is insignificant compared to the overall cost. The cost of all the appliances the electricity feeds is more. The cost of making homes safer, more storm resistant is a lot more.
I've only seen PVC toilet flanges. Not just in mobile homes but in regular homes also. I'm no plumber though, but when I lay flooring in the bathroom I have to pull the toilet. I honestly didn't know there were other choices besides PVC.
Bronze and iron are pretty common. Our house has iron in the basement and pvc in a renovated bathroom upstairs. I expect you’re just luck to have never repaired an iron one. (They are hard to remove)
In my area, I see a fair number of manufactured homes placed on permanent foundations on private lots come up for sale. For whatever reason, they almost never mention the fact that they are manufactured, which I guess must not be a legal requirement. They are pretty easy to tell apart -- vaulted ceilings that end up being very close to door height, strips that cover seams in the drywall, a very clear split down the center where the house was shipped in two parts, etc.
I cannot believe people are either naively buying these homes for the price of a normal house or don't even realize it's a manufactured home.
There is a lot you can do to make these homes nicer but coming from the factory, so much of the materials are sub-par. Most of the "cabinets" are just fronts placed onto thin particle board "frames" that are sloppily stapled together. The plastic plumbing fittings are very prone to wearing down quickly. A lot of the times the bathroom plumbing isn't vented. The windows are absolute garbage. The furnace and water heater are squeezed into a tiny cubby that would probably have to access from a small access door in one of the closets, or maybe two closets, where each side can access a certain portion of it. Sinks are made of thin, cheap plastic. Lots of things can also be built to a code that wouldn't be allowed in other construction -- the electric wires are 3-in-1 wires that snap directly into the outlets, the house's frame is thinner than normally allowed, drywall is thinner, etc. etc.
I think all that is fine if you know what you're getting but I suspect a lot of people don't realize what they're actually buying.
I was told the following by a guy in central California who built his own little subdivision and put a bunch of double wide manufactured homes on 1 acre plots. This was a pretty rural area.
He said that he effectively couldn't find the labor to build even a semi high quality home in that rural of an area. He said anything they'd stick build in that area would be of lesser quality than a decent manufactured home due to lack of good contractor availability.
He also said, and my understanding agrees, that once you bolt it to a foundation, all done per code, there isn't really a clean way to say it's anything other than a house. If the while thing is made to code, meets the national and local building codes, is mounted to a code meeting foundation and utilities, it's a house.
This applies to manufactured homes built as such, not things like travel trailers or destination trailers which people often conflate with true manufactured homes. Rvs amd destination trailers, things that never go off their wheels and often have lattice or other wood skirting around their base to hide the wheels and frame are regulated by RVIA amd meet their codes, not the national building codes. True manufactured homes meet the national and local building codes, it's just the assembly location is different.
If you have an actual foundation. Most MF homes in CA require the XI2 tie down system. Some of the manufactured home installers don't even pour a drop of concrete when they place your home. Most of the time it's gravel with some stamped concrete plates about 4" thick placed vertically as your "foundation".
> I think all that is fine if you know what you're getting but I suspect a lot of people don't realize what they're actually buying.
They realize. They can't afford anything else.
From the article:
> Almost as soon as trailers appeared, they began to be used for year-round living rather than camping trips, typically by traveling salesman or other itinerant workers. In the 1920s and 30s it was estimated that between 10 and 25% of trailers were used for year-round accommodation. And as unemployment soared and housing starts collapsed during the Great Depression, trailer living became more common. By 1937, it was estimated that 50% of new trailers were purchased as permanent shelter.
The "van life" trend should have been a huge warning sign...
There are, or used to be a few decades ago when I last checked, some surprisingly well built factory homes. They're not all mobile home quality.
Concerning quality, my sister bought a tract home in WA state a few years ago and the quality was comparable to a mobile home. The appliances were as cheap as possible, cabinets were poor quality, and even the home placement on the non-rectangular lot was very odd. The back fence was about 2' from her rear door, despite having a huge side yard to the right and left.
Some of the things I wanted in a manufactured home are ILLEGAL. I thought it was extremely strange that I would have to get a ducted HVAC system. Under floor heating is for some reason literally illegal (unless you retrofit it) and I am still scratching my head as to why.
> Under floor heating is for some reason literally illegal (unless you retrofit it) and I am still scratching my head as to why.
Mobile homes generally have little no insulation of any kind underneath, and their subfloors are exposed to exterior air, so the heat would be quickly lost to the outside environment.
You could in theory make a highly insulated subfloor on a mobile home (i.e. 2" of polyiso foam board) on which you could install electric or hydronic heating, but you would then lose a significant amount of already limited ceiling height.
> Mobile homes generally have little no insulation of any kind underneath, and their subfloors are exposed to exterior air, so the heat would be quickly lost to the outside environment.
Almost every one I've worked on has a 3/4" sub floor (probably cheap press board), loose fill insulation in between the 2x6 joists, then plastic (5 mil maybe?) attached to the under side of the floor joists. That plastic tends to be very ripped up so much of the floor has exposed or no insulation under it.
Having lived in a mobile home for a couple years, I can say that a large part of my hatred for OSB/particle board comes from that house. It seems pretty much every mobile home i've ever been in suffers from sponge floor, which is the OSB degrading to the point that the carpet is providing more structural support. Eventually the flooring gives way, and its becomes possible to stick ones floot through the floor.
When I was living in that home (as a Highschool student) one of the things I spend many hours doing is ripping up the floors and replacing them with actual plywood, which seems to be significantly more robust when used as a flooring material.
They’re convenient if you have a large electrical box and you need a pigtail anyway (e.g. you’re jumping off the box to feed another outlet), but not really a win otherwise. If you buy them, get the stranded version for an extra dollar or so and consider using lever nuts to make installing it even more pleasant.
These are “self-conainted” and don’t go into electric boxes. They’ll a hole gets cut in the drywall and the outlets have ears that push out to attach it to the wall. The wire goes through the back and then the back cover gets tightened and the pressure cuts into the wires to juice the outlets.
Supposedly you can just press the insulated wire into the splicing jaws but I've found that only works about half the time and I need to slit the insulation for the splicing jaws to make contact. And then sometimes the screw clip things that hold it in the wall get messed up so it probably needs to be ripped out of the wall, which means the wall needs repaired before putting it back in. Regular outlets are preferred.
That’s... bizarre and not particularly safe looking. A UL listed name brand old work box costs under $3. A UL listed name brand outlet costs less than $1 (or rather more if you want a nice one — $3 gets something entirely respectable). A cover plate costs $0.50 or less. A nice Klein wire stripper costs $20.
So for about $7 I can buy a terrifying mobile home outlet that uses insulation displacing contacts and has serious risk of making an accidental high resistance connection and also puts the insulation right next to where heat would be generated. Name brand UL listed parts cost less, can be safely reworked without risking losing the wire behind the wall, almost certainly work better (and the tamper resistant versions protect against little kids to some degree), and have actual respectable contacts for the wire.
Heck, even throwing in a torque screwdriver to make the connections correctly will amortize away quite quickly at any sort of scale. But a 110 punch down tool will not make those evil connections on the mobile home part — are you supposed to bang on it with a flathead screwdriver or do you need a fancy spring loaded tool that may well cost more than a nice wire stripper?
The $7 cost is substantially lower for the manufactures buying these things at scale. That would apply to outlets and work boxes, too, but I'm assuming the retail / wholesale difference is much higher with the mobile home parts.
I'm also going to guess that these are much faster to install that proper outlets and work boxes. I've never seen one of these things get built but I'd guess the ability to quickly throw up drywall and then be about to float these outlets wherever need be (similar to old work boxes), without needing to put boxes on studs and drywall around them is a considerable time savings. They may also have tooling that makes making those single wire connections much faster/reliable than you'd be able to attempt to do at home.
An inspection is required for most home purchases that are financed. The inspection report would clearly indicate the construction type. If buyers aren’t reading their inspection reports, what can you do?
I don't think this is accurate in the US. Yes, FHA loans require inspections, but they are WELL under half of all mortgages, and I am not aware of any other major lenders or loan programs that require inspections (there probably are some, but I have never encountered one in many home purchases and sales). Most do require appraisals, but an appraisal is very different than an inspection, and usually the buyer does not see the appraisal report (as the actual customer is the lender, not the buyer).
It’s really simple- real estate is the only casino where you are almost guaranteed a leveraged payout in the long run.
So as soon as houses became an investment, the way to maximise profit is not to go for the cheapest but for the most expensive house you can afford.
I thought people stopped thinking like this after 2008/9. If not, maybe 2023/24 will teach them. When people buy a house and sell for more, they don't include property tax, mortgage interest costs, maintenance costs in their mental calc of profit. Sometimes they include renovations costs, sometimes not. They also don't factor in their next house they buy is inflated too.
> I thought people stopped thinking like this after 2008/9
Why would they? It's not like it stopped in 2008. If you bought at the _peak_ in 2007 and held, in pretty much every area in the UK you're currently _way_ up, particularly if you leveraged yourself.
> When people buy a house and sell for more, they don't include property tax, mortgage interest costs, maintenance costs in their mental calc of profit. Sometimes they include renovations costs, sometimes not.
And people who make this argument often fail to consider the alternative costs, e.g.renting (which here in the UK is likely to be ~30% greater than the cost of mortgage interested to cover affordability checks), and leverage. You know what beats a 10% return on a 20k investment? A 100% return annually on a 20k investment.
For a £200k property in the UK, you could buy it in 2017 with a 20k downpayment, ~£1000 in fees, on a mortgage with 2% interest rates, and it would _very_ likely be worth £240+k right now even without any renevation work.
> They also don't factor in their next house they buy is inflated too.
You're assuming that people are selling to buy bigger houses, or that the rises are spread equally across all pricing bands. If you take my parents as an example, they bought a family home in late 80s/early 90s, sat on it for 30 years, and then downsized to a smaller home. The "inflation" of their house was far more than the inflation of the house they moved into. Also, the ceilings are loosely capped with earnings (since 2008 here at least) - stress tests for lending mean that in practice for the last few years, banks have been lending a maximum of 4.5-5.5x of borrowers income, so the cap is loosely set based on that.
A lot of people in the US who bought shortly before the US housing crash in 2008 paid a lot more money than what they can sell for. Sometimes they can't even get half.
This is plain false. I would love a zillow link to show one single example of a house in 2008 being worth more than it is today. Housing in most of the US is up 20-40 % in the last two years alone and the crash in 2008 was around 20-40%.
This is trivially easy: this home was sold in 2007 for 2.9m and was just recently solid for 1.8m 7 months ago. Top of market took a huge beating in 2007-2008.
I'd start by looking at places that had huge real estate bubbles like Las Vegas or are far enough away from anything interesting (like all the shitty Bay Area suburbs).
For a lot of not great reasons I've a condo in one of those shitty Bay Area suburbs. Four units in this complex were listed for sale this year. Two sold for a bit under 500k, and two are still asking well over 500. So yeah I'd say the upper bound currently is $500k. Pre-COVID prices were in the low 400s.
I've checked out the property tax bills for my neighbors, and, yes, some have an assessed value of well over $500k. They've been underwater for about a decade.
I never quite understood this, as housing is generally a market you can’t exit. So what’s the long term investment goal, to buy big now and downsize later for a profit?
in america, I owned a trailer or what's called a mobile home. what killed it for me is the places you can put one (lots of NIMBY) and the lots you can lease for one have exorbitant fees for water/sewage and land. its all the worst parts of renting rolled into a $60k home.
IMO the only good option for a manufactured home at this point is to drop it on a nice piece of acreage out in the sticks. No pesky zoning or NIMBY problems, and you can spend your money on the land instead.
Well, it's "just expensive" because most developed countries happen to develop the same stupid incentives for making housing difficult. Even if you exclude everything that's health, safety and environment.
And after awhile you trailer becomes to old to accept into a new park so it is captive in the park you are at and they can increase fees on you forever.
Even if you could find a park for them, after about 20-30 years they can't really be transported because the materials/glue/calk/etc they are manufactured with literally cracks, breaks and even disintegrates.
AKA, moving one creates a lot of dynamic stress that breaks the roof seals, flooring, plumbing, etc. Leaving them sitting its possible to maintain them such that they remain waterproof, but as soon as you move it, they need a new roof coating at a minimum.
Its largely why they lose value too. They need to really be treated as prefab, placed on a foundation and built around. Only one ends up replacing much of the thing over the long run as mobile home parts aren't as generic as normal houses, so one gradually has to replace the lightweight fixtures/windows/etc with normal builder grade hardware which weights significantly more before the mobile home specific parts become unavailable.
Buying up the trailer park/land is becoming an increasingly predatory business model for investors, precisely because it is impractical/impossible and a poor economic decision to move manufactured housing or trailers.
One thing I think they could do to make them more popular would be to ship units as modules without roofs. It would add some complexity to the logistics, but in my opinion one of the big weaknesses of manufactured home design is the limit on roof design resulting from the need to tow them down the road. If the roof was built on-site it would give them a more traditional design that would expand the appeal.
There is a market for buying and selling used mobile homes. I've worked on a few already this year, getting them ready for tenants after they have been bought and moved. Maybe not a large market, I don't know. And I'm sure it's very location dependent. Lot rents are (edit: mostly) only in (some) trailer parks, the vast majority of mobile homes that I see around here (southern Mississippi) are not in trailer parks.
It's not uncommon to buy a piece of rural land and drop a mobile on it. I've even seen folks do it so they have a place to live while they build a traditional house.
I've even seen people go so far as to brick around the pre-built home to hide what it is or to comply with some sort of code. Sometimes, they'll match the brick on the house that was built, and keep the pre-built for an in-laws suite type of thing. One of those, "we already have this thing and we're not going to get much from selling, so what do we do with it now" scenarios.
There are hundreds of thousands of those all over the American West, going back well over a century. Typically, it starts with a shed over the trailer that the house is then built onto.
Even after the bedrooms are built, the bathroom and kitchen serve until plumbing and fixtures go into the main house. Once the house is built, there is no value in removing the trailer, and it becomes guest quarters. With a proper roof over, it can last a long time.
But enough decades later, it is torn out to make space for a back deck.
Many of these can be seen along cross-country Amtrak routes.
Around here (DC suburbs out to Appalachia), it’s a mix of both. The closer to the city, the more likely the mobile home is in a trailer park. Though there aren’t many left - most that I’m aware of have been bought/closed/redeveloped.
In terms of increasing the supple of affordable homes for people who are in suburban or semi-rural areas, mobile homes really are a mixed bag, for the reasons listed (which is then exacerbated by PE firms buying up parks and milking the residents dry).
For used mobile homes (caveat emptor), this can be an advantage if the structure is usable, since the buyer essentially gets a “free” or very low cost livable structure with a septic field included.
Fast depreciation is an advantage to the used market buyer, since prior owners took the hit.
The depreciation is a result of the value to the buyer, though. They’re a PITA to maintain because everything on them is an odd size and made from the worst possible material.
Unlike a permanent home which has mature ecosystems for completely refurbishing them, a better bet with a mobile home is to use it up and throw it away.
> everything on them is an odd size and made from the worst possible material
I've found that outside of light switches, electrical outlets, and bath tubs, much of the stuff is the same or similar (2x3 instead of 2x4 or 2x6 walls for example, or 1/4 foam instead of plywood sheathing) than regular houses, and can be purchased from Lowe's or Home Depot at regular prices instead of super high prices from the only mobile home parts store around here.
Yeah, I was going to comment the same thing. I’ve lived in multiple regions where there is plenty large, owner occupant lots where the structure is a mobile home. The mobile home park/ground rent model is definitely not the only model in use for these structures.
This is true in a lot of areas of Texas. The mobile home dealer will even help you find land. You typically have to have a water well and septic system installed on the land.
I see these mobile home land packages come up for sale on Redfin all the time. They do appear to appreciate in value if they are clean and taken care of, but not as much as a site built home. I have even seen some successful flips.
I guess the main drawback is that they are typically located on less desirable land and the lifespan of the house just isn't going to compare favorably to a site built house, but at least they are affordable.
I wonder if some of the quality and reputation issues could be fixed if the road constraint were removed. Then more robust building code rules could be required and enforced.
The way to get rid of the road constraint would be airships, as discussed in a HN submission in the last week or so.
If that worked, than manufactured housing could change the granularity: subassemblies would be worth building in a factory and moved onsite (imagine a stack of 8’x12’ walls, already drywalled and with code compliant electrical fittings) or, on the other direction, multistory building could be transported the way doublewides are transported and then joimed in situ today.
Modular buildings tick all your requirements and are ubiquitous in the US.
There are technical (aka, legal) differences between “modular building”, “mobile home”, “trailer”, “motor home”, and “recreational vehicle”.
“Manufactured home” is a trade association term and useful because a manufacturer might build both modular homes and mobile homes on the same assembly line and they may even be hard to tell apart because most of the difference is in the paperwork.
For large objects the road constraints are more significant so when the constraint space opens up new opportunities emerge. And a lot of housing is needed!
Even if the safety were better than cars, being physically in the air is terrifying to most people. That’s not a deal breaker, but it’s certainly a hurdle. If you’ve been next to someone on a plane who had to down a whole bottle of xanax (metaphorically) just to get through the flight, you realize how traumatic it can be for some people.
And then you’ll get stories like “mother of five perishes with all five due to airship failure”. Tesla has had relatively few such horror stories, and look how much it’s impacted them. (On the other hand, “how little it’s impacted them” might also be accurate.)
But I really want to know what you mean by airship. My mind immediately went to FF7 Highwind.
I took it to mean transporting the pre made houses by airship instead of over existing roads.
Less traveling public, more heavy transport.
By removing the “must ship by road” requirement, you could have many more shapes and sizes for the prefabricated home components. Transport of the components by airship would be one way to avoid roads.
(It brings a whole host of other issues too, so it’s not something I find all that practical, but I’m not the parent)
....I think they mean delivery and transport by airship, versus delivery by road.
I don't see how that would work, given mobile homes weigh roughly 50 pounds per square foot, and that probably doesn't account for personal belongings and furniture. Even very large cargo helicopters seem to top out around 20 tons.
As far as I can tell, it's a standard which just means that the building needs very little energy for heating or cooling. It mostly comes down to making the building very insulated (as far as I can tell--not saying that's the complete story, but that's a big factor).
They are designed to reduce energy requirements (especially heating and cooling) by at least 75% to 90% compared to regular homes and ideally by 100% by capturing and holding heat in the winter and blocking heat in the summer. They tend to have thick walls, triple paned windows, and be air tight.
Passive house atleast here means a house that generates more energy then it consumes. E.g very well insulated house with solar power, ventilation that gives back energy etc.
Much easier. I assume the GP means something like SIPs, which are machined, insulated panels which fit together super tightly, with precise holes for windows etc. Typically, once the groundwork is done, they can be easily assembled in a few days. They then make then look like normal houses with a suitable external facade.
When I first got into construction a couple decades ago, I was working for a roofing and siding contractor doing a new development. Houses were going up so fast that as soon as we finished one house, the next was one ready for us. My recollection is probably about 12 to 15 weeks start to finish, which is approximately in line with your 100 day number.
Although, if you already have the land, you can potentially buy a mobile home, have it delivered and setup, utilities hooked up, and move in within a week, for a lesser overall price. There are a lot of tradeoffs, though.
Why are manufactured homes not more popular in American cities with very inflated housing prices? I read that they are unpopular because the cost per square foot is actually more than stick-built, but that is for the average cost around the country. In an inflated market, I would expect buying a vacant lot and putting a really nice manufactured home on it would be vastly cheaper than buying an existing house, and much quicker than waiting for a contractor to have a schedule opening.
Here in Southwestern VA I’ve seen an interesting trend: people are buying yard barns. Sometimes very large yard barns and are converting them into living quarters. These are folks that don’t have a ton of access to capital or financing but they can scrape together enough for a barn, insulation, a window AC, and plumbing. They’re getting by with them because they’re not sold as livable structures but who knows how safe they are. Mobile/Manufactured homes are too expensive I guess.
If you watch the video, they explain that they are all designed to be moved if the owner wants to, just like a mobile home. They are in just mobile homes but with more attention paid to aesthetics.
They can be movable without being mobile homes (any house is movable, it’s just a matter of how easy they are to move!). Legally, they definitely aren’t classed as mobile homes, they aren’t permanently attached to a chassis. You can probably get a mortgage for them, for example.
> (One statistic you sometimes see is that at one point mobile homes made up 60% of total new houses - this is incorrect. At one point mobile home units were around 50% of the number of single family homes built.)
I understand this is just a footnote in the article, but could somebody explain me what the distinction is that the author is making here? I especially don't understand the italicized "number".
I read it as statement about mobile units being half compared to built units - so a third of the total? But it's incredibly ambiguous what they mean, I agree - number vs total is a weird bit to focus on if the problem is just an apples/oranges comparison.
I think the emphasis was just too short. I think they're saying manufactured homes were 50% of Single Family Homes. Of all housing constructed some is Single Family Homes, a free standing detached residential building. This is distinct from attached residential housing like duplexes, condos, and apartments.
If you build 50 duplexes and 50 SFHs you've got 150 residences. If 50% of the SFHs are manufactured homes then you've got 25 manufactured homes out of 150. If the article is correct there's erroneous claims that manufactured homes are 60% of new "houses" which with my made up numbers would mean there's 90 manufactured homes out of our 150.
From the values of each, you can tell that multi-family units are a larger portion of residential construction. How much larger would require more research as on a per unit basis, multi-family units are cheaper per family than a single-family unit.
Essentially, manufactured home in this case, even if they were 50% of single-family home construction, would be less than 25% of total family units constructed (single-family units + (singe units being construction in multi-family buildings).
Has anyone thought to create a portable factory that can be set up near a new housing development to mass produce components for the houses being built? You’d basically just need a big tent with something to do the assembly on like large roller tables like they use for trusses. You wouldn’t need huge cranes for assembly since you could do smaller segments.
It is easier to build a factory and build homes with components that are standard sized and them ship that out on to the site. This also makes it much easier to have electrical and plumbing done nearly completely (with the final hookups on site) in a place where you can centralize the tasks to ensure a constant stream of work.
The heavy machinery on site is less of a problem than needing to move all the tradesmen around, down times, and the logistics of sourcing and moving the materials rather than the product.
The big advantage of desktop 3d printing is that one machine can print infinite designs with no retooling cost in between design changes. This advantage is lost when the item you’re printing is the too big to be moved, and assembling the machine is a significant construction project by itself. And customizable design is not a hard criteria for low cost housing.
It’s a neat demo, but I don’t see how that process could be leveraged for cost savings as is.
It also apparently takes significantly longer than just building with cinder block.
So, yah its interesting, and the rounded corner things, along with the hollow walls are "neat" but much of the cost of single story homes isn't the first story walls is it? Its all the finish work/etc that still will need to be done.
So, its hard to see where any cost savings can come from if they are optimizing a part of the design that contributes a minority to the total cost.
3D printing housing is exciting; I'm also optimistic about the future of modular architecture, in which walls (or even room-sized units) are manufactured and transported to the construction site, plumbing/electricity already included, and assembled like Legos. Nexii (https://www.nexii.com/) is working on something similar. It seems there are significant construction cost reductions, faster to build, and easier to repair, although the space of possible buildings is more limited than in the 3D-printed approach
California has infrastructure (water, sewer/ waste treatment. power etc for 20m people and a population of 40m, one of the big reasons more 'affordable housing' (including the mobile home rip off) does not get built there, but other parts of the US have large numbers of very lucrative mobile home parks
Thank you, that is a really good critique of container homes.
My idea was to do a 2x2 stacking, breach the center walls and reenforce them with iron. No need for insulation if you live where the cimate is tolerable year round. No matter what there will be a lot of new iron welded, I didn't know iron was considerably expensive. I think mixing wood with iron is the cause for all this, if not pure iron then brick makes more sense for an insulation layer than wood+foam. You might say the container is useless then, but it really isn't, it provides the frame/beams that hold everything together. With traditional houses you have to use wood at some point which is what I dislike.
But overall, the cost of houses is the biggest motivation. Land+construction if it can be done under $100k then why be forever in debt over a $500k (if you are lucky) house.
No he doesnt. He lives in his private jet or mansion. duh. but he did buy a Casita and have it deployed in his backyard at spacex. He also said it was cool on twitter
I just want them to start making shipping containers such that at their end of life they can be turned in to housing without a bunch of work. No toxic materials for the floors. Window and door spaces pre cut and bolted over rather than needing to be cut out after the fact, access panels to run electrical and plumbing. A whole system that is designed to be used first as a shipping container and later as a modular home.
Shipping containers just structurally aren't that great at being houses, I feel like. They're pretty much cardboard boxes made of steel; very minimal and purpose built. The basic structure isn't that vital to a house being a house, usually it's everything else (insulation, plumbing, flooring, etc.)
I assume that a shipping container is only at end of life one it starts rusting and loses structural integrity. Not sure anyone would want to live in it at that point.
I'm pretty sure no new mobile home parks have been approved in this area for many, many years and I think that's true for many areas in California.
Heck, even Paradise CA (North of me), which was destroyed by fire entirely and so had many displaced people a year or two after the fire, the city wouldn't approve any area for the siting of trailers to house those who didn't yet have homes.
The primarily motivation for this, uh, bullshit, is home valuation. Home owners, not entirely falsely, believe that a trailer park near them will reduce the value of their homes (so they'll oppose a park even they don't personally think there's anything wrong with them). And there you have it, with home values being a gigantic part of the US economy, they wag the dog of other decisions.
I mean, bless Construction Physics' heart for earnestly trying to find a technical solution to absurd home prices in the US (and some technical solutions are useful) but naturally they have to ignore or gloss over the basic it's all a racket, they want things this way part of current problems.