Mobile homes on Foundations

Often times when we have someone looking to build a house on a very tight budget they ask us about putting a mobile home on a foundation.  I discourage it.  While a mobile home is less expensive, I completed manufactures house on a foundation can often cost more.  Yet it still happens all the time. Many businesses in our industry want you to focus on the house cost so they show you how much less expensive the house is with a mobile home, what you will learn later it that the site construction cost of putting it on a foundation is a lot more.

Mobile homes are designed to be supported under the trailer frame every 8 feet as opposed to a modular that is design to be supported on the perimeter (the foundation).  So to build a mobile home on a foundation you need to install steel beams every 8′ across the foundation.  In addition to the cost of the steel structure you will need to build the foundation higher to give head room under the house.

There is one other really important piece of information.  For most people their home becomes their biggest savings account they have.  You live in a house for 10 years, pay your mortgage and the value grows. Ten years later you find that you owe a lot less then your house is worth and you have an added $50-100,000 in wealth just by making your payments.  That happens because the value of your house increases over time.  However, Mobile homes depreciate. So in the case of a mobile home 10 years later your find that the house value does down at the rate (or faster) then you pay down on your mortgage.  So perhaps you save $5000 on the purchase of the house but 10 years later you could have $80,000 less in value.  Not a very good investment.