Mobile homes. It’s not a mobile app for controlling home appliances (though some might think of it). It’s a real house that is assembled in a factory and then delivered to the building site where it is installed. That’s why it is also called a manufactured home. The idea might have seemed bizarre some decades ago, but now manufactured homes are quite a thing: About 10% of young American families prefer this type of house to the site-built ones.
So, what’s a mobile home? You can learn more about it on mobilehomelife.org, but first, let’s get familiar with its concept.
If you’re looking for affordable mobile homes for sale, ACE Portables offers a variety of options to suit your needs.
What Makes It Mobile
It’s not as mobile as a smartphone or even a car. You can’t drive it away every time you want to change the location. More than that: This house is connected to amenities, so both its installation and moving require certain permissions and specialists’ involvement. So what makes this type of house mobile?
The answer is the same thing that makes it manufactured. A regular house is built on the site, from the foundation and up to the roof. A mobile home is manufactured from the base to the roof in a factory, and then it’s transported by trucks to the site where it is installed and connected. No wonder this concept has gotten so popular in America, the country that remembers the pioneers’ stories.
Pros and Cons of Manufactured Homes
So, what makes people choose manufactured homes now? The pros are obvious, and for many, they outweigh all the cons. Let’s list the most important ones:
- Mobile homes are cheaper, being more than twice more affordable than site-built ones. You won’t get a loan as big as you’d get to buy a site-built house, which smoothens the difference;
- Mobile homes are well-resistant to natural disasters. It sounds like a paradox, but so it is. Partly it is because the quality is better controlled in the factory than on the site;
- Manufactured homes come fully equipped, and connecting them to amenities is usually a matter of days;
- You can choose the type of house you like right in the factory. You can also see the reviewed model from the inside and the outside, knowing that your one (should you stick to it) will be identical, unless you order some changes.
Critics of this type of house often quote the reasons why they’d never buy one. The reasons are mostly the following:
- Manufactured houses are not built to last; they are rather a temporary solution (though in fact, many of them function for much longer than the average designated 20 years);
- Manufactured houses aren’t eco-friendly, as they require much more heating to maintain the temperature within these not-so-solid walls. Partly, it is so, but it can be fixed with special heat-preserving solutions;
- Mobile houses are less mobile than, say, RVs. Yes, they are. But they are not supposed to move around each year or two. “Mobility” here rather means the ability to deliver them to the building site when assembled and then relocate them once or twice;
- Mobile houses are harder to expand if you need to do it. So, should your family grow bigger than you expect, you’ll need to find a larger house instead of expanding your current one.
All these objections have their reasons too. Yet, the pros are more important for customers who vote for manufactured ones.
Mobile Home or Manufactured Home?
Now, the terms are used interchangeably. Legally, though, the ones that are built after May 15, 1976, qualify as “manufactured houses,” and those made before the date are dubbed as “mobile houses.” The date is the one where the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued the regulations these houses should comply with.
The very fact that mobile homes built before 1976 still exist sounds very optimistic. Hope so are you if you decide to buy (or at least consider) such a home.
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