I'm starting to understand why people are looking at alternative housing.

[rainbowd4c]

I just sat at the kitchen table and got rid of a couple thousand dollars and I didn't even leave the house. Most of it all bills. After paying our house payment which was $1681.42 then a $212.32 electric bill I'm starting to understand why so many more people are starting to move to the idea's of living in a RV, travel trailer or van living. I was watching video's of people who do this stuff and now I have Brent addicted to this as well. And it has us thinking about what we might want to do when it's time to retire. Granted we have a few years. Who knows. I always thought I would hate this kind of life but after looking at how some people keep their trailers or RV's I truly think that I could be happy. And when I see what some people pay a month it's even appealing.

Aside from the financial aspect. It would maybe take a hour or two at the most to do the cleaning and no lawn to upkeep.

I am truly more and more starting to understand it. It's something that Brent and I have started to discuss when it comes to options for retirement.

Anybody else feel this way?

 

[fan-of-fans]

I just want a house that I can afford the payment, taxes and insurance on. I want a small yard, a decent kitchen, and a garage. I have no interest in the RV or van life or living in a literal SHED.

But despite saving by for 13 YEARS, because I didn’t buy before 2020, it’ll never happen.

Inflation and the doubling and tripling of home prices and everything else should’ve never happened. I just want the ability to have a stable life and own a home like my parents, grandparents and all of my aunts, uncles and cousins have been able to do.

It shouldn’t be this difficult. The fact that I’ve had to save for 13 years just to even consider owning a home in what is supposed to be a low cost of living area shows the absurdity of this all.
I have no idea how the younger generations or those who never even got the ability to save anything can achieve it.

I don’t even know how we fix this without deflation, which will never happen. Everything is just gotten too expensive for people just trying to get by.

 

[rainbowd4c]

A friend of mine did bought a double wide modular in a more upscale trailer park. He got a great price
The actual mortgage with insurance is like 400.00 a month. The lot rent is like 385.00 and that covers his property taxes water and sewer, garbage removal and a few other things. He has a small manageable yard and is happy.

Our mortgage could be a lot worse. But we bought a foreclosed house so we got a great deal and escrowed property taxes and homeowners insurance.

 

[fan-of-fans]

I saw a rare foreclosure pop up today that is actually a nice house. But I’d need to replace the roof just to get insurance and thus a mortgage, like so many on the used market. And then there the question of what will insurance cost? Will I be able to afford or even continue to get insurance over the life of the loan, especially here in Florida?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire country sea insurance rates double or more with the next renewal, after the destruction from Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Insurance is becoming a major boon to homeownership, even for those who bought before homes became so unaffordable and have a lower interest rate. insurance is making even their mortgages unaffordable, let alone those trying to buy at todays prices and rates.

The roof issue now says that insurance with not issue policies with roofs over 10 years old. It’s not just a Florida thing anymore. It even happens in other states like CA now as well. Gone are the days where people could just patch and replace any blown off shingles. I remember my parent’s old roof lasted over 20 years, and never leaked. They just replaced any damaged shingles with matching ones. Insurance never said a peep. Gradually they got stricter. Now, you have to pony up $25-30k every 10 years or even less just to keep your insurance. Even if the roof looks fine.

Renting has major advantage there, although you don’t build equity, can’t update or modify the property, and (generally) are in something smaller/not as nice as you’d be buying.

 

[kloveland]

Location, Location, Location and Time Period..

As with everything there are variables. I purchased my house in 2014 it's about 1700 square feet. My monthly payment is not that high. My sister purchased roughly the same type of home, same square feet same area and her monthly mortgage payment is a lot higher than mine.


 


However, homeowners' insurance will keep going up as natural disasters increase. I replaced my roof last year it cost me $11,500.00. Abest roofing wanted $28,000. Luckly, a man in my congregation owns a roofing business. It was all out of pocket with no help from State Farm.  I really feel for the individuals who can't buy homes right now. 

 

[rainbowd4c]

One of the reasons our house payment is so high is because in Stevensville is because of the school and the neighborhood we live in. It is because of these two things that our property taxes are so high. Lakeshore I think is ranked in the top 50 schools in the US and is constantly undergoing some kind of renovation. Our neighborhood is one of the most sought after neighborhoods around. So that is another factor for our property taxes. But the good news is that because of the work we have done (new bathrooms, kitchen, roof and windows) the value skyrocketed. If we were to sell tomorrow we would come out ahead.

 

[vacmadman]

insurance and taxes

One thing I have learned about homeowners insurance, is you need to change insurance companys about every 2 to 3 years to keep the cost down. Insurance and taxes are the biggest factors to drive up your house payment. I just did it myself. My homeowners insurance went up to over 3,000.00 a year, and is now about 1,300.00 a year.

I changed insurance companys right after I had all my roofs replaced by the previous insurance company house, back house, shed, and patio roof. That helped greatly to bring down my cost on the new insurance coverage. Keep an eye on the escrow, and try to stay ahead of it to help keep your payment under control. If I hadn't done this my payment would have gone up by over $200.00 per month....crazy!

 

[panasonicvac]

We're gonna drop our insurance and switch over as soon as we get our roof replaced. State Farm has just been crazy for over a year now. They keep on refusing to help fix our roof when we have roof contractors and adjusters showing we have wind damage from severe windstorms which means they're liable to help pay for it. But they'd always stick with one person they sent over who says it's sun damage and we should be the ones to deal with it. We were lucky enough to have them cover our water damage from earlier this year because of the roof. Despite having a really good coverage, they'd send out the cheapest contractors to fix our walls, ceilings, and bathroom. Could've done a better job but at least it's something and we were going to redo the master bathroom anyways which would've been more than what we planned on spending. Our other insurance paid for the roof at our storage garage from the same storms since we share that with one of our neighbors and they use Progressive.

My area has also doubled if not tripled the prices and it's likely going to get even worse in the future. Like Cole, I've saved up to buy or even build a house. But unfortunately I've already put those plans on hold, this happened because a cousin of mine got laid off from Beachbody earlier this month and just decided to sell his dream home that's being built due to financial uncertainty.

 

[wstonehockertv]

I always hated insurance companies, especially the commercials.

 

[bagintheback]

I was looking into tiny homes today myself. I've been considering long-term plans to move to Maine after falling in love with it on a long vacation and it's a safe-ish haven from climate change apparently. It seems like unless you own the land outright, the cost of buying land and what is essentially a trailer isn't that significantly cheaper over buying a house, especially with the mortgage issues and everything.

I'm a 90s baby and this is a very important issue for me and my friends/generation. It just seems impossible to buy a home today without generational wealth and/or having two high income earners to pay the mortgage. I think this is going to be a massive political issue in the coming years. Even more than it is now.

 

[wstonehockertv]

Aren't trailers supposed to be more affordable?

 

[bagintheback]

This was the one I was referring to; a high end "tiny home" new from the factory is close to 100k. And the interest rates are higher than a traditional mortgage. Plus you need to buy or lease land if you don't already own some.

Tbh I haven't done a massive amount of research on this, but it was something I was looking into this week and saw this thread.

https://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/tumbleweed-models/aspen/

 

[wstonehockertv]

You know, there do exist trailer parks.

 

[tolivac]

Those homes are just too claustrophobic for me----I want SPACE--as on Star Trek "Space is the Final Frontier!"Plus these places have NO space for storing your favorite things and hobbies.Love my new 2100 sq ft NEW house!!And it has plenty of space!!!

 

[fan-of-fans]

I thought about buying a small mobile home similar to that. They have around here what they call “park models”, usually 1 bed 1 bath, and they’re pretty nice inside. Some are 2 bedroom.

As you say, they’re still quite expensive (over $100k) and then I’d still have to buy land, install septic/sewer, central water or well, and electric.

Most places here won’t let you install a mobile home or construct any home below a certain square footage. So I’d probably need some acreage to get away with it.

And as you say, there’s not any storage space, so I’d probably have to have one of those steel building/garages built for storage/parking.

Here in Florida of course is the issue of hurricanes and generally you shouldn’t stay in one during a storm. Some people do, but I wouldn’t want to.

Ultimately, it just made more sense to buy an existing concrete block home, that had what I was looking for. Of course the issue is the cost.

I’d really like to have a home built, I definitely don’t need a 2000 sq ft house, but 1200-1400 sq ft with a 2 car garage is what I’d love to have. And NOT in an HOA!! It’s just the cost of construction has gotten crazy. A friend locally that owns a construction company told me $150 a square foot, plus land and site work and that was in 2021. So for what I wanted or would be $230,000 just for the house, plus land and fill, and probably septic/sewer and water/well would be extra. Probably close to $300,000 in the end!

Plus it’s gotten more expensive is they’re now charging impact fees again and if you need a septic tank it has to be to the new code which is more expensive too.

By comparison, my aunt built her house in 2005 for $69 a square foot!!

 

[panasonicvac]

I wouldn't mind living in a mobile home. But if I ever did, there'd have to be certain conditions. Like where it's going to be located at, amount of space I'd want/need, a garage or at least a carport roof, central ac/furnace, dishwasher, washer and dryer, a central vac like what this person has done, etc. I have a DrainVac Little Giant so that'd be an excellent choice for it. One of my grandparents had a home that looked similar to a mobile one then they later extended and added a garage, that'd be my ideal choice to have as a mobile style home unless if I ended up moving there in the future since it's being used as a rental. But my ideal dream house would be similar to my other grandparents but with some design differences. It's a four bedroom three bathroom home with lots of open space, perfect for storing collections as what Rex pointed out. Best of all, they have storage sheds if your collections extend and/or prefer to store them there instead of inside the house. I wish I could buy that place along with the hunting cabin when my grandfather goes but I know that'll never happen unless if I won myself a lottery.

 

[rainbowd4c]

At PanasonicVac. The only way you would be able to put a central vacuum in a modular home would be with an attached garage or basement. A basement would be more idea.

Brent and I love the idea of buying property and building a tiny home and living off grid. I even have all the plans drawn up. However as it is we have a wonderful beautiful big family and we are really only looking for it to get bigger.

However we are looking at the possibility of buying Brent's parents house. They want to downsize and do the RV thing. This would work better because the house to my in-laws is paid off so it's total profit for them and it's a family home to Brent and I. I grew up there and obviously so did Brent and his sisters so it's still keeping it in the family. And it would be a lot more affordable.

 

[panasonicvac]

That link I shared above is someone who installed a central vac in a mobile home where the washer and dryer used to be. I really like that set up. And again that DrainVac Little Giant I have just like his would be excellent if not a perfect choice for a mobile home because it's compact, lighter weight, powerful, and quiet. But if I ever moved into my grandparents' house that again looks similar to a mobile home, it'd have something else instead like a Dirt Devil since they had a Dirt Devil upright and hand vac when I was younger so having a central vac as a Dirt Devil would take me back. I'd also install in inlet valves that are made by Hayden as they used to make them for Hoover and my grandparents owned a Hoover Steamvac. I'd have the powernozzle as a Centec QuietDrive as they owned a Panasonic made Kenmore upright. And I'd have the RugRat for the turbo brush as Vacuflo (the makers of Dirt Devil) used to make them for Kirby as my grandparents owned Kirbys. They did owned a Shop Vac so I could get myself another one for the garage. They did owned a Bissell before the Hoover so I'd get a Bissell Big Green as a carpet cleaner. And they did owned a couple B&D Dustbusters so I'd get one with Power Connect batteries.

 

[wstonehockertv]

Here's the thing guys, I can't see myself being a homeowner due to the stress associated. Also, I refuse to have any credit score or equity because being in debt sucks. And property taxes can go kiss my rear end.