Don’t Fence Me In : Manufactured homes are no longer confined to traditional parks. Today they’re being used on lots in both urban and rural settings.
Before kicking off for his “Gone” tour in Europe in March, country singer Dwight Yoakam decided he wanted a nicer house at his horse ranch in the Santa Monica Mountains.
The ranch had a dated geodesic dome from the 1960s and an older house that had partly burned in the Malibu-Topanga fire of 1993, and Yoakam wanted something classier, something befitting the ranch’s million-dollar views.
So Yoakam did what more and more home buyers are doing when they seek a new house: He visited his local mobile-home dealer.
Oops, scratch that. He visited his local manufactured housing dealer. Say the words “mobile home” in a showroom these days and you’re likely to be met with a chorus of groans and sighs. Dealers don’t much care for the words “trailer” or “coach” either.
There’s a good reason for their wanting to dissociate from their past. Yoakam didn’t buy a dinky tin can on wheels. After closing his deal earlier this year, he became the proud owner of a 2,100-square-foot custom home with a detached 700-square-foot caretaker’s unit.
The three-bedroom two-bath house was towed to his 10-acre ranch in five massive sections and came fully equipped with oak cabinets, French doors, cathedral ceilings, dormer windows and Corian counter tops.
“Dwight chose to do his own floors, so he has hardwood floors and terrazzo pavers in the kitchen,” said Jack Tobin of Rite-Way Homes, the Santa Clarita dealer who handled the project. “The roof is designed so that at a later date he can add tile.”
Yoakam is doing a major remodeling of his principal residence in another part of Los Angeles, so he was thrilled to learn that his new ranch house could be installed in less than a month. But he also wanted to make sure he ended up with something he could show off to the neighbors.
“He actually took a factory tour, sat there with us and designed the house to take advantage of all his views,” said Sam Bordeaux, owner of Rite-Way Homes. Yoakam’s ranch home was built by Silvercrest, a division of Western Homes, which manufactures about 2,000 houses a year in three West Coast factories.
To the untrained eye, Yoakam’s home is indistinguishable from a site-built house. It rests on a low-profile foundation engineered to withstand earthquakes, so it avoids looking like the traditional mobile home on raised piers.
“The house is superior to many site-built homes,” Tobin said. “It has 2-by-6-[inch] exterior walls, whereas normal construction is 2 by 4, and there is a steel framework underneath holding up all the floor joists.”
A couple of manufacturers still make the old tin cans, but most of their products are exported out of state. The popular new styles in California almost always feature wood siding and pitched roofs.
Already 1.1 million Californians live in 584,000 manufactured homes. Last year alone, 3,083 new manufactured homes were sited in the Golden State, representing about 9% of new single-family homes sold.
And increasingly, home buyers are placing these factory-built houses on their own lots rather than in traditional mobile home parks.
“In California, about 60% to 70% of new manufactured homes are now going onto private property,” said Bruce Savage, director of public affairs for the Manufactured Housing Institute, a national trade association based in Virginia. “Ten years ago almost every manufactured home coming into California was going into a park, but it has changed dramatically in the last decade.”
The full extent of the trend is hard to judge because state records don’t monitor where new manufactured homes are placed.
“The only way we break it down is between those that we refer to as ‘personal property homes’ and those that we call ‘real property homes,’ by virtue of the fact that they have been placed on state-approved permanent foundation systems that turn them into real estate,” said Bronson Berlin, president of San Luis Obispo-based Berlin Research Corp., which tracks manufactured housing sales statewide.
Berlin’s research indicates that 11% of new manufactured homes sited in California were real property homes in 1983. In the first quarter of 1996, 43% of new manufactured housing was recorded as real property, he said.
Furthermore, experts believe that the number of new manufactured homes placed on private property is even higher, because many homeowners don’t want to spend the extra $2,000 to $3,000 that a permanent foundation costs.
The primary advantage of placing a manufactured home on a permanent foundation system is that it allows the homeowner to qualify for conventional financing. There is also often a structural benefit, strengthening the house to better withstand earthquakes. The disadvantage is that the conversion to a permanent foundation increases the homeowner’s property tax liability.
Regardless of the type of foundation homeowners choose, Silvercrest is convinced that the future of the industry lies in private property. Five years ago the company introduced a new line of larger homes specifically for land owners, and since then it has shifted its focus almost exclusively in this direction. Most of the other housing manufacturers have made similar moves.
“In California, the product we sell is pretty close to 100% on private property,” said Jesse Carrasco, general manager of Perris-based Golden West Homes, a division of Oakwood Homes, which builds about 26,000 manufactured homes a year in 17 factories nationwide.
A cursory explanation for this shift is that most mobile home parks are at maximum capacity and no new parks are slated to be built, making few spots available in land-lease communities.
But for Maxie Wiley, a diesel truck saleswoman, park living was never even a consideration. She and her husband, Carl, had already built a custom home in Santa Paula. They were planning a new stick-built home on their six-acre parcel in Ojai when they began investigating alternatives.
“We took tours of several factories where they build the manufactured homes, and we were impressed with the quality that was duplicated every time,” said Wiley. “When you build a stick-built home, you don’t always have as much control.”
Wiley was also impressed with the efficiency of factory production, which allows dealers to offer a multitude of options and floor plans at bargain prices. She and her husband ended up selecting a manufactured house of almost 3,000 square feet, for which they paid $140,000.
“I think we did every upgrade possible, and we have not found any one thing that we’ve been dissatisfied with,” Wiley said. “Because of code requirements, we had a stick-built garage, and we’re not as impressed with that as we are with the house itself.”
John Kwon, general manager of AAA Sunshine Homes in Oxnard, where Wiley purchased her home, believes the experience is a common one. “Especially near the coastal areas, buyers tend to find out what the prices of all the options are, with the main option being a stick-built home. When they feel it’s too expensive, they come to us and learn that we are substantially lower than comparably built homes. When I say comparably built, I mean down to the studs, insulation factors, electrical, plumbing, the whole structure of the home.”
According to the Berlin Research Corp. and the Real Estate Research Council of Southern California, the average cost of a median-sized 1,570-square-foot manufactured home is $59,487, or $37.89 a square foot. The average cost for a comparable house built on-site is $78,672, or $50.11 a square-foot. Both figures exclude land costs.
The appeal of manufactured housing extends beyond dollars and cents. Patrick Gaines, a part-time contractor and law student, wanted to help a friend whose home had burned down in the heart of Los Angeles, near the Coliseum.
His friend needed a place to live as soon as possible, so Gaines approached Golden West Homes about putting a manufactured house on the city lot.
Gaines selected a three-bedroom home that fit nicely on the property, but at first the city Building and Safety Department questioned its compatibility with the neighborhood. “It took me three months to explain to the city of Los Angeles that this was not a trailer, it was a manufactured home with a full kitchen, a living room, a fireplace, everything,” said Gaines. “After I took a picture down there and showed them the plans, they finally approved it.”
In 1987, the state Legislature passed a law allowing multi-section manufactured homes to be placed on any residential lot in the state. Under the law, local government has the authority to regulate roofing material, windows, exterior siding and eaves, but it cannot require anything that it does not require of the site builder.
Sometimes housing authorities need to be reminded of the legislation, said Bob West, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute in Rancho Cucamonga.
Recently, Los Angeles has become more open to manufactured housing dealers.
One of the first to do business in Los Angeles was Fullerton-based Housing Alternatives, which offers a program by which first-time home buyers can buy a new manufactured home with as little as 5% down and have it built to their specifications on a qualifying in-fill lot.
“It took us three years to get the ball rolling,” said Mike DeFalco, vice president of Housing Alternatives.
Mike LaChapelle turned to Housing Alternatives’ program after his house in the Crenshaw district was destroyed by the Northridge earthquake. “It’s a great idea for someone who’s starting out or who’s lost their home and can’t afford to rebuild from the ground up,” said LaChapelle, who selected a three-bedroom house built by Baron Homes in Ontario.
LaChapelle, an auto mechanic, paid $127,000 for his new home to be built and installed. The price included complete landscaping and a site-built garage, but what amazed him the most was the speed of the process. “It took three months from the time I signed papers to the time they finished,” he said.
Sunset Industries of Alhambra is another dealer successfully bringing manufactured housing to the inner city. To date, the company has developed more than 25 in-fill lots.
Coral and Robert Gaitan, for instance, had an old 1 1/2-bedroom home on their lot in El Sereno. “We tore it down and put in two new manufactured homes, each with three bedrooms,” Coral Gaitan said. “My husband and I live in one of them, and my sister-in-law lives in the other, so we get much more use out of the lot this way.”
Bringing in the two new homes, which are identical in size and layout, cost the Gaitans $202,000. The project included grading, landscaping and the installation of indoor sprinklers to meet city requirements for multiple housing on lots.
Land owners are quick to see the advantages of this type of upgrade, but a greater challenge is making such opportunities available to prospective buyers who don’t own a lot.
The solution is a “land-home package” loan that allows home buyers to choose the manufactured home they want, find a parcel of land the home will fit on and finance both purchases at the same time, often with rates comparable to conventional financing.
“This is a program that really didn’t come into being until 1992-1993, when we brought the product to the market,” said John Dolphin, vice president for investor and public relations at St. Paul-based Green Tree Financial Corp.
Land-home financing enabled Myra and Jim Callaway, a retired couple in their 60s, to put their dream home exactly where they wanted it. They chose their favorite three-bedroom model built by Fleetwood Homes of Riverside and put it on a five-acre parcel in the scenic Anza-Borrego desert. “We looked for land for a long time, and when we found the right piece, we got the whole thing financed together,” said Myra Callaway.
Scott Grusky is a Los Angeles freelance writer.
Buyers’ Checklist
Although advances in construction have eliminated many of the problems that gave earlier manufactured homes a bad reputation, buyers still need to be well-informed to negotiate the best deal. Here are some important tips to keep in mind when shopping for a new factory-built home:
* Know the building site before choosing a model. If you are considering land-home financing, you don’t need to own the site, but you should be aware of the lot dimensions and the zoning requirements so you can select a home that fits the property and meets all applicable codes.
* Recognize the limitations of manufactured housing. In certain locations, like hillsides and narrow lots, it is not cost-effective. Furthermore, most manufactured housing is confined to single-story applications.
* Treat the process as if it were a search for a new car. Manufactured housing retailers have much in common with car dealers. Prices are negotiable and retailers are competitive, so visit as many showrooms as you can and ask lots of questions.
* Familiarize yourself with construction lingo. Learn about studs, joists, R-value of insulation, subcladding, glazing, siding, trusses and shingles.
* Take a tour of the factories. Most of the manufactured housing builders conduct regular tours that are open to the public. This is an excellent way to see how the homes are constructed as well as to become familiar with various upgrades and options that may not be displayed in the showrooms.
* Once you’ve chosen a model, get comparable quotes from several retailers. The quotes should include all the upgrades you want, plus transportation of the house to the site of your choice and setting it up for move-in.
* Find out what the “extras” will be. Retailers often charge an additional fee for the steps and skirting necessary to complete your new home. Your lot will usually require further work, such as grading, utilities, landscaping, decking, porches, driveways, walkways and awnings.
* Ask about the warranties offered by the home manufacturer, the retailer, the transporter, the installer and the appliance manufacturers. Learn what is and is not covered and who performs the service under the warranties. Have the retailer explain the difference between his responsibilities and those of the other parties involved.
* Check the references of everyone you deal with. Ask for names and addresses of former customers. Find out if these customers were truly satisfied and if after-sale service was readily provided when needed.
Helpful Resources
* State of California, Department of Housing and Community Development (909) 782-4420. Oversees permitting, codes, standards and state-approved foundation systems for manufactured housing.
* California Manufactured Housing Institute (800) 765-7500. Provides information on manufactured home builders and retailers in California, including a free home buyer’s kit.
* Manufactured Housing Institute (703) 558-0400. Publishes “How to Buy a Manufactured Home,” a comprehensive booklet available free on the Internet at https://www.realty.net/reference/govdocs/manuhome.html
* Better Business Bureau (714) 527-0680. Tracks complaints lodged against manufactured housing retailers and publishes the “BBB Consumer Information Series: Buying a Manufactured Home.” Download at https://www.bbb.org/pubs/manfhome.html
* American Assn. of Retired Persons (800) 424-3410. Publishes a product report called “Manufactured Housing,” which can be downloaded free at https://www.aarp.orc/manhovl.html
* Golden State Mobilhome Owners’ League (800) 888-1727. An advocacy group primarily serving manufactured housing owners who live in mobile home parks. Visit their Web site at https://www.cwo.com/~gsmol/
* Manufactured Housing Global Network A comprehensive Web site with information on manufactured housing associations, builders, financing institutions, publications, parts, services and retailers. https://mfdhousing.com
* Automated Builder (805) 684-7659. A magazine providing detailed reviews and information on major production home builders, including manufactured housing builders.
