How to sell a mobile home

So I buy, sell, and broker mobile homes. I've been doing this for over 6 years in Texas and California. I've looked at a lot of mobile homes and met a lot of mobile home sellers. One thing that's struck me is that very few people know how to sell a mobile home. And why would they? It's not a clear cut path like it would be to sell a site built home. In that case you usually contact a Realtor and have them handle everything. Realtors do handle mobile home sales in some areas, it's not all that common. And while there are brokers like me who will help you sell your mobile home, we're a rare breed as well. (If you live in Texas and need help selling your mobile home call me at 512 534 8040!)

So for the most part, if you're selling a mobile home, you're going to have to do most of it on your own. And that's a scary thought for most people. But it doesn't have to be! There are some basic steps you can take to stack the deck in your favor and allow you to sell your mobile home. You can watch the video below or read my summary of 5 tips to help sell your mobile home below that.

Step 1: Declutter your mobile home. Without a doubt one of the best things you can do to help sell your mobile home is to declutter it! What I mean by this is get rid of all your junk and as many personal items as you can. Put it this way: if you haven't used it in the last year, get rid of it! You can have a yard sale, give things away to friends, put items in the "For Free" section of Craigslist or use a junk removal service like Got Junk.

Step 2: Talk to your park manager. Obviously this only applies if you live in a mobile home park but most sellers I talk to are in this position and very few of them talk to the park manager. This is a big mistake! The park manager talks to potential buyers all day long. They constantly have people coming in the office, calling them, and emailing them. Don't let this resource go to waste! You can even have the park manager broker the sale for your mobile home for a commission. I've done this several times and they found me a good buyer quickly because they were motivated to make some extra money themselves.

Step 3: Be realistic with your selling price. I've watched many a home stay on the market month after month because the seller wouldn't budge on the price. You need to find out what homes have sold for (not what they're listed for, but the actual selling price) in your area or park. From there you price your mobile home accordingly. Keep in mind the painful reality that a mobile home is a depreciating asset: it loses money over time. So while you may have spent $10,000 redoing your kitchen, that doesn't mean your home is now worth $10,000 more. It's a tough pill to swallow but it's better you do it now.

Step 4: Advertise your mobile home online. The very fact that you're reading this proves that online marketing works. Most statistics I've read state that over 80% of people looking for a home start their search online. This number will only go up over time. The best places to advertise are Postlets and Craigslist. They're both free sites that will get your mobile home in front of a lot of eyes. You don't have to put your home address on the listing if that bothers you.

Step 5: Put a For Sale By Owner sign on your yard or your home. This might seem really obvious but you'd be surprised how few people actually do it. Most of the time you will sell your mobile home to friends or family of people who live near you. But this can only happen if they know your home is for sale. So tell them!

That's it for now. If you live in Texas, I can help you sell your mobile home, so don't be a stranger! Carter Buys Mobile Homes

Austin mobile home broker

So I'm excited to announce that as of March 19, 2015 I will be an Austin mobile home broker! Now I should say that the correct term is manufactured housing broker, but most people don't know what manufactured housing means. The more common term is mobile homes although that term is not technically correct. After June 16, 1976 all mobile homes built in the US were now subject to new standards and were renamed manufactured homes. But for some reason, almost 40 years later the term hasn't stuck. But many times people don't even know what a mobile home is either. So let's discuss!

If we look mobile homes in trusty Wikipedia we get the following:

In the United States, this form of housing goes back to the early years of cars and motorized highway travel.^[1] It was derived from the travel trailer (often referred to during the early years as "house trailers" or "trailer coaches"), a small unit with wheels attached permanently, often used for camping or extended travel. The original rationale for this type of housing was its mobility. Units were initially marketed primarily to people whose lifestyle required mobility. However, beginning in the 1950s, the homes began to be marketed primarily as an inexpensive form of housing designed to be set up and left in a location for long periods of time, or even permanently installed with a masonry foundation. Previously, units had been eight feet or less in width, but in 1956, the 10-foot (3 m) wide home ("ten-wide") was introduced, along with the new term "mobile home".^[2]

The homes were given a rectangular shape, made from pre-painted aluminum panels, rather than the streamlined shape of travel trailers, which were usually painted after assembly. All of this helped increase the difference between these homes and home/travel trailers. The smaller, "eight-wide" units could be moved simply with a car, but the larger, wider units ("ten-wide", and, later, "twelve-wide") usually required the services of a professional trucking company, and, often, a special moving permit from a state highway department. During the late 1960s and early 70s, the homes were made even longer and wider, making the mobility of the units more difficult. Nowadays, when a factory-built home is moved to a location, it is usually kept there permanently and the mobility of the units has considerably decreased. In some states, mobile homes have been taxed as personal property if the wheels remain attached, but as real estate if the wheels are removed. Removal of the tongue and axles may also be a requirement for real estate classification.

Technically, a mobile home and manufactured home are different entities. A mobile home is always constructed prior to June, 1976. Homes constructed post June 1976 are almost categorically known as manufactured homes, meeting FHA certification requirements, and come with attached metal certification tags. Mobile homes permanently installed on owned land are rarely mortgageable, whereas FHA code manufactured homes are mortgageable through VA, FHA, and FNMA.

Many people who could not afford a traditional site-built home or did not desire to commit to spending a large sum of money on housing began to see factory-built homes as a viable alternative for long-term housing needs. The units were often marketed as an alternative to apartment rental. However, the tendency of the units of this era to depreciate rapidly in resale value^{[citation needed]} made using them as collateral for loans much riskier than traditional home loans. Terms were usually limited to less than the thirty-year term typical of the general home-loan market, and interest rates were considerably higher.^{[citation needed]} In this way, mobile home loans resembled motor vehicle loans more than traditional home mortgage loans.

Mobile home vs Recreational vehicle
The thing that gets most people confused is they think a mobile home is a Recreational Vehicle (RV). Many times when I tell people I buy mobile homes, their first question is, "Aren't you scared they'll just drive off with it?" I always smile at that idea because while a mobile home can be moved, it costs thousands of dollars to move it and thousands more to set it up somewhere else.
Once again from Wikipedia:

Most modern dictionaries give one of the meanings for the word caravan as "a camper equipped with living quarters". They in turn give one of the meanings for camper as "a recreational vehicle equipped for camping out while travelling". The earliest caravans were used for practical purposes rather than recreation, such as providing shelter and accommodation for people travelling in search of an audience for their art, or to offer their services to distant employers, or to reach a new place of abode.

In Europe, wagons built to live in, rather than just to carry persons or goods, were developed in France around 1810. They were used in Britain by showmen and circus performers from the 1820s; but Romani people only began living in caravans (vardos) from about 1850.^[1]

The covered wagon that played a significant part in opening up of the interior of the North American continent to white settlement from about 1745 was a type of caravan. A well set-up wagon provided its occupants with living quarters as well as a means of transportation for themselves, plus their supplies and equipment.^[2]

In Canada, the earliest motorhomes were built on car or truck bodies from about 1910.^[3] By the 1920s the RV was well established in the US, with RV camping clubs established across the country, despite the unpaved roads and limited camping facilities.^[4]

In Australia, the earliest known motorhome was built in 1929. It is now in the Goolwa Museum, where it has been partially restored. It is recognized by both the National Museum of Australia and the (Australian) National Motor Museum as being the first motorized caravan in Australia.^[5]

Between the late 1920s and the early 1960s, some South Australian railway maintenance gangs working in country areas where they were required to live on-site, were accommodated in caravans built by the department instead of thetents they had previously used. These caravans were built like short railway carriages, about 6.1 metres (20 feet) long; but had wooden wheels with solid rubber tyres and ball bearings.^[6]

In the US, the modern RV industry had its beginnings in the late 1920s and 1930s (shortly after the advent of the automobile industry), where a number of companies began manufacturing house trailers or trailer coaches, as they were then called. Often, these started out as mom and pop operations, building their units in garages or back yards. (One of these early manufacturers, Airstream, is still in business today.) Though tied to the mobile home industry in the early years—when few units were longer than 9 metres (30 ft) long, and thus easily transportable—the 1950s saw a separation of the two, as (what are now referred to as) mobile homes became larger and more immobile, and thus largely became an entirely separate industry. During the 1950s, in addition to travel trailers or trailer coaches, manufacturers began building self-contained motorhomes.

Mobile home vs modular home

Mobile (manufactured) homes and modular homes are very similar in that they are both built in factories then moved on site (vs a traditional house that is framed on site).

Once again from Wikipedia:

Differences include the building codes that govern the construction, types of material used and how they are appraised by banks for lending purposes.^{[citation needed]} The codes that govern the construction of modular homes are exactly the same codes that govern the construction of site-constructed homes.^{[citation needed]} In the United States, all modular homes are constructed according to the International Building Code (IBC), IRC, BOCA or the code that has been adopted by the local jurisdiction.

Your Central Texas Mobile Home Buyer

So I buy mobile homes in central Texas. And I feel the need to write about this to let people doing some type of sell my mobile home central Texas search know that I'm the guy they can contact for such things. Now this might not be too interesting to must people. So feel free to watch the video below instead. It might not be too interesting either, but it's short.



It's a quick and hopefully relatively painless 3 step process for me to buy your mobile home.

1) I come look at the home. This is basically a chance for me to evaluate the home and the location. Most of the homes I look at are in mobile home parks. So the park itself is very important in determining the home's value. I also need to see if any repairs/renovations will need to be done on the home.

2) I crunch my numbers. This basically means I figure out what I think I can re-sell your home for then work backwards. I subtract the repair costs, the holding costs, and the profit I would like to make from the anticipated re-sale value. From there I have my offering price. I'm always willing to show you all the numbers I'm working with so you can at least see where I'm coming from with my offer.

3) You decide whether we do a deal or not. At this point you are in the driver's seat because it's up to you to say yes or no. I'm not a high pressure sales guy so if you need time to think it over, that's fine by me. I've had people wait almost a year before accepting my offer and I still paid them the same price I had given a year earlier.

As far as where I buy mobile homes or what exactly I mean by central Texas, I live in Austin. So anywhere within a 60 mile radius of there is fair game. And starting in mid March, 2015 I will also be offering mobile home brokering services anywhere in Texas. So I can help you sell your mobile home anywhere. I really think my ability to sell homes is what I"m best at. I'm really looking forward to expanding out into the brokering world very soon. And like I said, this will be offered in all of Texas, not just central.

When I start brokering mobile home deals what I will do is figure out what your bottom line price is. From there I will offer than anything I can get above your bottom line we split 50/50. I think that's pretty fair and it motivates us both to get the highest price possible for your mobile home.

That's all I've got for now. Take care until next time!

R36360