Quality of Used/Repo Mobile Homes

I am in the market for a couple of repo/used mobile homes. Checking to see if anyone has a prefered list of homes by quality?

Like which manufacteures use a solid plywood floors vs. chip board with standard order homes?

I am trying to minimize my goose chases of looking at repo homes that may have cheap flooring - expensive rehab cost.

At moment looking at a 1999 Southern some distance away, tyring to leverage resource time on value of looking at it or not.

Help or such prefered list would be appreciated as well.

Thanks!

Tim D

I’m not aware of anyone that has a list of ‘standard specs’ by manufacturer by year. But I would argue that it does not much matter.

For instance, you might come across a house with 3/4" plywood floors that has water damage, and it would need more floor repair than a well-maintained home with particle board floors. You really need to inspect each home. The way to lever your time is not to screen-out homes based on what you think their condition was at the factory a decade ago, but rather to hire someone off CraigsList to go inspect a home you are considering buying. Hire someone in that town ‘far away’ to go inspect. Have him/her take photos of every room, crawl under the house to inspect the floor, make sure the A/C works, etc.

It is the condition of the home today that is relevant, not what the home was like at the factory.

My 2 cents worth,

-jl-

Well said.

Do you hire a home inspector, or just some handy man type?

So far we’ve had little need to go more than 50 miles to find good-quality used homes. We have our local General Contractor go inspect them for us. We pay him $35/hr. If we ever need to go scouting 100+ miles for a home, we’ll hire someone local to that town off CraigsList.

The problem with ‘real’ certified Home Inspectors is that they want to do all sorts of tests and inspections and charge $300/house. That might be money well-spent on a $250k site-built home with a ‘tricky’ foundation, etc. But we think that level of inspection and expense is overkill on a simple $15k mobile home deal. We’ll hire, for $50, an eager-beaver college kid with an iPhone who wants to get into real estate. With a quick bit of coaching and real-time texting to us of photos, he’ll do a most adequate inspection job.

Your mileage may vary,

-jl-

All greatly appreciate the response to my post. I currently pay manager $50 to $100 to go have a look depending upon distance. I value his view point point vs. hiring outside inspector, since he has an idea of the contractors needed and rough estimatge of cost to repair home.

Just trying to reduce amount of leg work and time of sending manger here and there.

Thanks!

Tim D.