My Dad retired and Mom a “home maker” sold their big house at the end of 2005 to buy a brand new double wide “mobile home” with the intentions that it would be their home in town and they would travel 1/2 the year in their camper. Sounds like a plan and their dream.

Well, Mom decided she was not keen on the “mobile home” thing and Dad decided it was best to “upgrade” it as best he could. Oh, forgot to mention that when they set up their insurance they did not take their time and state their belongings and other assets…under insured.

In the Spring of 2006 they bought a huge barn $4000 for the back yard (they were accustom to a 2 1/2 care garage), $1500 in landscaping AND $10,000 in porch that pretty much wrapped around the home (oh, not on owned land, in a home park). As stated earlier, under insured and to add to that they are now $15,000 more uninsured.

In November of 2006 they lost it all in a tornado that hit. Lets just say, $30,000 does not replace everything they owned and up until the first of this year they were still paying for the beautiful porch and yard barn.

My parents went from living a middle to upper middle class lifestyle to struggling to pay the bills on a monthly basis.

Ouch! Lets just say, even though I was renting at the time, I doubled my renters coverage AND took pics of assets and have them in a “safe” place just in case.

I remind them all the time at least they were not home and not injured but that does not take away the anguish my Mom feels every time she sits down on the $100 second hand couch (when she is accustom to chenille) or the frustration of fighting with the press board dresser drawers (when she had the luxury of cherry bedrooms sets). Yes, it seems materialistic when you put in perspective that they were not injured but lets face it, you work hard all your life to have something when you retire…now they have what they had when they were first married. Very little.

And maybe it’s just the area I live in, but in the last 7 years I’ve seen three parks close, and stories run pretty rampant about elderly people in the parks who don’t have a lot of options. Sure, there’s a payoff, if there’s not enough notice given. In the state of Oregon, at least as it stood 7 years ago, they didn’t have to pay you anything, if they gave you 18 months notice, though.

A lot of the people who had to move were people who lived on little more than social security and owned their homes outright. There’s no way they could find a place to move that cost less than their space rent. And other parks won’t take older homes. So the residents are stuck.

That’s been my experience here, and the laws may be different from state to state.

For the record, manufactured homes have government regulated construction standards (as opposed to local inspections of standards for stick built homes) and can qualify for standard mortgages under certain conditions. Since that is definitely not my area of expertise, I am not going to try to describe those conditions.

Additionally, it isn’t as simple as it sounds for a community owner to sell the property and evict all the residents. In most cases, the owner (even the largest, nationwide companies) has no desire to displace the families in the community and the process would take place over a fairly long period of time. That isn’t to say it wouldn’t be a major disruption for most residents, but it is very unlikely to happen. From my personal experience, we did consider closing up a property, but did not do it because we could not find a suitable property to which we could relocate the families in our existing community (the owner was unwilling to consider selling unless the families could be relocated).

I appreciate you sharing your story (I think my dumbest purchase is probably a $900 crib for my first baby that wasn’t slept in until she was several months old, when I definitely did not have the money to pay for it, but that’s another story), but I’m glad you had several good years in the home.

Meanwhile, the trailer took a direct hit from a tree during Hurricane Rita. It’s still structurally sound, but my brother and I think there is a leak and that it’s affecting the wall underneath the plastic layer (what would be wallpaper in a real house), based on what it looks like from a certain angle. Dad’s speaking of when he passes away, how he wants the trailer sold and then the proceeds split between me and my brother. But with trailer depreciation and the condition it’s in now, and Dad blowing us off when we mention there might be something wrong, I doubt there will be anything left financially.

I mean, I don’t *care* in the end, I would be too torn up over losing my dad, but if his intention was to pass something on to us, this was not a good way to do it.

Off the top of my head, I would have to say that is was the 2004 (2003?) Kia Sedona. We said we’d never buy another new vehicle again and we did. It got horrible gas mileage (14 mpg) which really ate up our budget and about a year later we had to pay Kia $1,200 to take it from us b/c they would only give us $12,000 for it. We had to sell it so that we could move and buy a house. What a huge money loss!