All Forum Posts by: James Lewis

Looking at a pretty cheap doublewide right now that needs to be moved. What kind of expenses are involved in this? Is the fee greater the farther it has to go? I don't have a spot for it to go yet, but right now the home is a little over 100 miles from where I am. Obviously I don't want the thing to be right beside my house and it could be 30 miles from here with no problem.

Any advice is appreciated.

And no, I don't yet know what year it is. From the pictures it's got some years on it, but I don't know if it's up against the 1976 limit or not.

Thanks.

Thank you all for the great advice. I did go see the home, which I found out is owned by the park owner. It did need some work. A window was leaky, so there was a trail of mold from the window all the way to the inevitable soft spot on the floor.

One of the previous tenants had decided to take a wall out and make it a 2 br, but they'd not done anything about fixing the hole in the paneling where the old wall had been.

Most of the electrical outlets in the home were hanging out of the wall.

The water heater had leaked, so more of the floor was rotten. I didn't ask if the water heater had already been replaced or if that was the leaky one.

Most of the inside needed a coat of paint. There was one large, obvious patch in the ceiling that was ugly as sin.

The outside of the home was OK. It's an older home, aluminum siding painted yellow like an Easter egg. It needed to be power-washed, but that's no big deal. Owner said the top needed to be resealed.

He was asking $2000 for it. I told him if think about it.

Got a call the next day saying they'd sold it. I'm not too torn up. It would have been a lot of work to get it fixed up, and give the age of the home combined with relatively high lot rent, I'd only have been able to gross $150 a month. I don't think I could have flipped it for much more than breaking even.

I did learn a lot, though. Good experience. Thanks again for all the great advice. I'm still looking.

Saw an ad on Craigslist this afternoon: "2 br/1 ba. Needs some work. Set up in park. $2,000."

I called and talked to the owner. Older couple who had been renting it out (I think, will know more tomorrow). Set up an appointment to go look tomorrow at 5. According to wife of owner, the repairs are pretty cosmetic.

Thanks to daylight saving time it was still light so I drove down to look at the home. It's not a pretty one, but it's nowhere near the worst I've seen. Didn't get to see inside, but the outside looked ok. Could definitely use a good pressure wash.

The lot rent in this park, which is a B to B-, is $350 with water included. My concern is how much am I going to be able to charge for rent if the lot rent is already that high? I realize that it depends a lot on what standard is for this area, but I've been to so many parks and the lot rent varies by well over $100 from one park to another. It's hard to know what I can reasonably charge in rent.

So what should my questions be for the owner when I go to look tomorrow? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.