Should I update my mobile home and sell or attempt to rent?

[Kyle Swarts]

Hi guys, I have a 3 year old mobile home that i owe around $34,000 on. It is 3 bedroom 2 bath. Located about 5 minutes from a nice elementary school in our district and literally 2 minutes from the highway. In between 2 towns, one small and one middle to upper size. My mortgage is $530 a month with a lot rent payment of $245. I'm really wanting to get into real estate, but I dont want to over leverage myself and I want to take advantage of house hacking via multi family home using FHA.

If I were to rent I believe I have to do a decent amount of remodeling. I would want to rip up the carpet in all bedrooms, the floating tile in the kitchen/living room/bathrooms and lay down water/scratch proof laminate. Thinking cheap ceramic tile for the bathrooms(they're not very big). Want to pull off the trim, remove the center pieces of where the dry wall connects together puddy and paint the walls, give it more of a home vibe. Countertops need to be replaced, cabinets maybe sanded and repainted, they're still holding up. Need to do work on the front porch/back porch and both doors(settiling damage from the trailer park moving our home under contract). Last but not least, I'd like to do some landscaping around the house just to give it some curb appeal.

Clayton homes who we purchased from used nice LOOKING, but CHEAP materials in this trailer. Things began to fall apart right out of the first year warranty we had on the property. So if I were to rent, I'm looking for good quality material to reduce renter damage to the property. I take pretty decent care of my things and weve managed to do some damage still.

My main question is, is it even worth it to put the effort in to do all this to rent? Should I do these in Hopes of giving my house more equity and just try to sell it? I really really dont want to live here any longer. Its realistically too small for long term living with 2 children.

Any tips are greatly appreciated! Thanks guys!

Clayton homes who d enough quality to get you in, but within a year it was falling apart..