Trailers: the new chic?
By badbadivy
You've probably already seen the articles about million dollar trailers in Malibu. But trailers, or "manufactured homes", as the trailer salesmen call them, are becoming hotter as time goes by and housing prices get progressively more expensive. Even though the real estate market has slowed significantly, people on the lookout for affordable housing are turning more and more to manufactured homes.
I know people who have double-wides that are twice the size of my house. And they're on 3 times as much land as my house is on, and they have a lower house payment than I do. Sounds good, but I'm still concerned about things like getting blown away in a tornado, and being called trailer trash. ;)
What do you think? Would you ever buy a trailer? Pros? Cons? I wanna hear it!
[photo credit: USA Today]
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DesigningMom
Personally I think it depends on the park ones trailor is in. I've seen some that yes are nothing more than trash. Partly because the owners have not put anything into them. Why should those living there feel any different.
Then there's ones like this one....http://www.mmhp.com/Photographs.htm that the common areas are very well kept and I'm sure the owners of the homes there are encouraged to keep their own lawns up to speed too. It sad they all can't be kept up as well as this one. If I needed to live in an area because of a lower income I'd look for a place like this before I'd rent an apartment again.
felisaudis
I think where they get parked dictates alot about their 'feel' of being trashy or not. So often they are sandwiched in an ugly neighborhood, and there it doesn't stand a chance. But, on your own property, facing the best view (and not lined up like dominos) I have seen some really nice homes. My aunt had a double wide in Michigan with a huge deck and lots of raised flower beds. Couldn't even tell it was a trailer from the road.
I think if you are the kind of person to take care of your things, and take pride in whatever you touch, it wouldn't be a problem. If you move in thinking it's trash, it will become trash quite quickly.
Yetiwisdom
There are lots of companies that manufacture homes at their sites to transport to the build site to assemble. I learned that the big benefits of this are obviously the economy of scale, the manufacture under controlled conditions (IE dry, which is something of note here in Pennsylvania where onsite builds can be very wet, causing a lot of water absorption into the wood during the build), and the speed of build.
That said, out manufactured home has served us exceedingly well and I would highly recommend the option to anyone. No one can tell that our home was built in a factory somewhere except experienced builders and this sturdy home has stood here since 1974 and will likely remain for many years to come.
Trailers, on the other hand, have one major difference from manufactured homes - they're mobile. That is, they generally sit on a base that can be disassembled and moved to another location (on a trailer) as the owners' needs dictate. I also think they're generally close to "complete" when they arrive at the site, where a manufactured home may require a significant amount of assembly.
Are they chic? That's for the owner/buyer to decide. Both are a great deal less expensive than custom builds and the argument could be made that they are more durable in the long run.
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malleron
Yeah, I'm with you guys...Having spent 20 years in Texas and now in Florida where people actually dream of living in a trailer park, I can't get past the "trailer trash" taint either.
However, I can see why manufactured housing is so attractive, especially to those in ultra-crazy real estate markets who really want or need to own *something* instead of rent. I mean, if you spent years in crappy apts paying rent that amounted to a house payment, wouldn't you seriously consider a manufactured home if it meant a much lower payment AND your own land? I actually might, depending on how tired I was of renting.
However (again), I can also see a trend emerging in terms of taking something typically considered "lowbrow" and doing it in such a way that makes it modern. It wasn't that long ago when "country" decorating made people throw up -- but Pottery Barn takes a modern spin on it and suddenly people love it again. I can see that happening for manufactured homes, especially if they're built with green materials. I mean, take a look at the prefab building coverage in Dwell magazine sometime -- can you tell me the difference between this and a manufactured home built to modern standards?
badbadivy
bohring
Can't say I haven't thought about getting one out of desperation from lack of inexpensive housing choices around my university, but being from a small town in Oklahoma originally, I can't shake trash-connotation from countless craptacular trailer's I've seen. Also, on my last visit there, I notice a lot of people have added the fake plastic brick foundations and they looked ridiculous. It got me thinking, what is there to really do to a trailer besides that? And maybe lots of patriotic yard decorations? Not much.
So, I don't know that I would ever consider a trailer "chic" unless a ton of money was spent gussying it up, in which case the price factor would be gone, and the appeal of living in one along with it.
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