OK, we’ve just bought some land, 22 acres, in Texas Hill Country. The views are magnificent. Looking west, you see miles of rolling ranch land. Looking east you see – yes, more miles of open, rolling ranch land. This is Texas. It’s beautiful country, sunrise to sunset.
Except when you look at the two singlewides.
Long, dingy oblongs, they have sat, unoccupied, for years. Slowly filling with mouse droppings. Decaying quietly.
So, now what?
What should we do with them?
The quick answer: Exercise the toilet assumption. Flush. Make them disappear. Find a buyer, whatever the price. Have them hauled away. Start over. Build a new house. A real house.
This is the Entirely Reasonable Path.
It’s entirely reasonable, that is, except for two things. One is the cost, today, of building “a real house.” It could cost a fortune. If you can get it done. Remember, we’re out in the country.
The other issue is a vision problem. My wife and I both have it. Most people see things as they are. They know that two mobile homes is not the start for a replay of Peter Mayle’s “A Year in Provence” or its trendy equivalent of a villa in Tuscany or a colonial hacienda in San Miguel Allende.
Would you believe “A Single Wide in Provence”?
But my wife and I aren’t that reasonable. We’re house freaks — we don’t see the wreck that is. We see what we hope it could be. We’ve done this since we met and married, racking up three major home redo’s in Dallas, two in Santa Fe and two in Dripping Springs — seven houses in 24 years of marriage.
Trust me, this is a mixed blessing.
But let’s not dwell on that.
Let’s go back to the money math.
Our singlewides, like most, put three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining area, a living room and a utility room into a rectangle measuring about 15 feet wide and 75 feet long, or about 1,125 square feet if you measure from the outside. Measuring from the inside, it’s a bit less, which is more important than you think.
You can buy a new one, with near “real home” finish out for about $85,000. Maybe $60,000 if you go for lower-quality finish out. That compares well with regular homebuilder costs that would likely exceed $200 a square foot, or $225,000. Now double that, since we’re talking about two of them: $450,000.
The math of redo
The challenge is basic: Can we create a home as pleasing as a $450,000 home starting with two manufactured homes from 1990 and 1997? Can we do it for less than $170,000, the approximate cost of two new “units”? The savings would be nearly $300,000, not to mention lower taxes and lower operating expenses for life.
So it’s an interesting challenge with a really nice payoff.
It also happens to be part of a topic I’ve been writing about for decades — the notion that shelter is the biggest single item in our cost of living. This is universal: rent or buy, country or city, working or retired, young or old. Make changes in your shelter cost and you can make a big difference in your ability to save when young or your ability to spend when old.
A nice wooden box on Walden Pond
This isn’t a new idea. Henry David Thoreau wrote about living in a tiny wooden box by Walden Pond more than a century ago. Today we have the Tiny Homes movement, a throng of people who design to live in trailerable buildings that seldom measure more than 150 square feet. That’s less than the size of a McMansion bathroom.
Less extreme, there are millions of people who spend at least part of the year living in an RV, a recreational vehicle that is limited by regulation to no more than 350 square feet. People from Michigan and Illinois do this in Florida, Texas and Arizona. They happily give up space to avoid the harsh winters up north. Some do it year round because it’s what they can afford. Others do it because their work is mobile.
Whatever the reason, thinking differently about shelter is well worth doing. That’s what we’ll be doing in future installments as I keep you posted on our progress and perils at our 22 acres in Texas Hill Country, a place we call Found Oaks.
Related columns:
Scott Burns, “The Secret of Crystal Bay,” 2/27/2015 https://scottburns.com/the-secret-of-crystal-bay/
Scott Burns, “You, Too, Can Live Near Water,” 3/13/2015
Scott Burns, “Two Ways to Own a Manufactured Home,” 3/6/2015 https://scottburns.com/two-ways-to-own-a-manufactured-home/
Scott Burns, “A Vision Fulfilled in Mesa,” 4/10/2014 https://scottburns.com/a-vision-fulfilled-in-mesa/
Scott Burns, “Living in RV Communities,” 3/30/1999
Sources and References:
2017 Manufacture Housing Facts: https://www.manufacturedhousing.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/2017-MHI-Quick-Facts.pdf
Manufactured Housing Institute https://www.manufacturedhousing.org/research-and-data/
U.S. Census Bureau: Manufactured Housing Survey https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/mhs.html
Henry David Thoreau https://www.walden.org/thoreau/
Peter Mayle, “A Year in Provence” on Amazon.com
Frances Mayes, “Bella Tuscany” on Amazon
Tony Cohan, “On Mexican Time: A New Life in San Miguel” on Amazon
This information is distributed for education purposes, and it is not to be construed as an offer, solicitation, recommendation, or endorsement of any particular security, product, or service.
Photo: Scott Burns
(c) Scott Burns, 2019
2 thoughts on “This Old Mobile Home: Raze or Save?”
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It’s difficult to tell from the picture but it appears one of the homes has an addition.
A suggestion: Combine the two mobile homes by moving one next to the other and connecting them. So in lieu of having two separate homes, each 1125 square feet, you have a single home 2250 square feet. Perhaps engage an architect to help with the endeavor.
Thanks for the suggestion, but we like them as they are. Here’s why. In one home we have our basic living unit as a couple. We have a living room and dining area. We also have a media room so we don’t have a television screen in front of us unless we want it. We have french doors leading to a large covered patio that works to expand our living space in all but the coldest weeks of the year.
The other house functions as our guest house with two bedrooms and two baths. It also functions as my office/library and another area functions as an exercise space with our rowing machine. We like having the second kitchen because it enables us to cook for a crowd when the need arises. Sad to say, it hasn’t been needed since Covid.