Check for roaches. Also check zoning for things like tie down requirements. Insurance may be hard to obtain as well. Not sure if they are looking to own or rent If it doesn't come with a plot of land you will be paying rent.

 

I live in Maine.

Every week I see ads for homes asking between $500k and $1M. Yet Zillow has shows homes in the same towns that often start in the $30k to $40k range.

I have a dozen apartments with rent starting at $450 a month [includes heat and electricity with a shared laundry room].

I wish your friend luck. She is looking at going from the state with the highest percentage of retirees to Florida. I assume she wants to be around younger people.

 

I live in Maine.

Every week I see ads for homes asking between $500k and $1M. Yet Zillow has shows homes in the same towns that often start in the $30k to $40k range.

I have a dozen apartments with rent starting at $450 a month [includes heat and electricity with a shared laundry room].

I wish your friend luck. She is looking at going from the state with the highest percentage of retirees to Florida. I assume she wants to be around younger people.

She is 61 years old. You rent apartments in Maine ? What areas ? She prefers to be near her daughter who lives in Noridgewok Maine. I told her it's cheaper up around Bangor or north but she doesn't like the idea of being up that way .

 

Thanks, she likes the area around Zephyrhills near Tampa because her friend lives there

 

Nice area actually. I grew up in Tampa but wouldn't go back to live. Too crowded and too many Northern transplants.

 

First I’m not in the real estate business. I know nothing about mobile homes.

Now that we have that out of the way, I’ll take a stab at this. A lot of older people spend the winters in Florida, or retire there. When they pass away or develop health problems, those mobile homes go on the market.

Their kids don’t live in Florida and have no use for a mobile home, 1000 miles away. That’s especially true if they are paying lot rent, taxes, utilities, etc., every month. They are probably looking to unload those mobile homes, in a market that has a lot of them.

I live in Texas. We get a lot of winter Texans, way down in South Texas. They come here, when it starts getting cold back home. They go home when our Texas heat and humidity kick in. It’s the best of both worlds. I don’t blame them a bit.

 

Florida has hurricanes and tornadoes. They don’t play well with mobile homes.

 

I'm a 75 year resident of Florida.
I don't think you'll find ANY PLACE to rent for $500/month.
We are in NE Florida now, for the past 30 years. There are no "mobile home parks" around that I know of.
A mobile home on an acre of land here will be about $1500/month.

 

the affordable mobile homes seem to be more central Florida, up around Jacksonville I don’t see anything. That pattern is very clear on Zillow maps

I did read that insurance for wind damage is going to be an additional $1200 a year minimum and many insurance companies won’t give you flood insurance

 

Our hurricane season here in sunny Florida is June 1st to November 30th.

We call mobile homes tornado magnets. Not a safe structure in a tropical storm.

Do a search on Realtor.com for what's in Florida. You might find an old mobile home that needs a lot of work on an acre for about 350K.

There are some mobile home parks that are cheaper for seniors. Look around the central part of the state. Some have mobile home rentals. You must be screened by their asso., have good credit and have a prove able monthly income. You pay a lot rental fee to the park, some are $800 a month. Then the cost of the mobile home, some old ones you can buy for 75K.

Your friend should come down and visit and explore areas. Look at real estate while here. Florida is the 3rd largest state.

Our summers are humid, muggy and sweltering hot. Its unbearable without air conditioning. We have lightening, and lots of it. It rains on one side of the street, while the sun is shining on the other side of the street. We have bugs and lizards. We have exotic wildlife, alligators, sharks, jellyfish, snakes, big big cats, spiders and cockroaches so big they fly... Winters here the weather is simply beautiful!

 

Mobile homes get hot even here in pnw.
I understand findings a space is harder than getting the mobile home. As property becomes more valuable rent goes up or parks close.

 

Whoa, no Florida IS NOT MORE AFFORDABLE than Maine. No, no, no. If you see mobile homes for $25k they are old. Mobile homes wear out. If people can’t sell them they just abandon them and the park owners try to resell them cheap just to get the monthly rental. When they can’t sell the trailers they demolish them and haul the stuff away, leaving the empty pad. Also they are in parks where you do not own the land underneath and you cannot really relocate the trailer. In this case they rents may be so high the mobile homes are really un-salable. This is where the rift raft and meth heads reside. Have her come down and kick some tires first. Rent don’t buy a trailer without the land.

 

Alaska is in the same boat. And the mobile home parks here are really just mobile slums

samples from one park out near the Air Base.

 

My brother lives in northern Florida, about 30 minutes from a Walmart, bought a trailer on 2 acres for 20K. He is very happy and has good neighbors.

 

If its a cheap mobile home in Florida, then its surrounded by meth heads, rabid freely wandering pitbulls, and criminals.

Where I live in Florida, within 100 miles, if its not $300k+, then its a war zone.

 

Maybe your friend needs to take a trip down there and stay for a few months over the summer. They might get a better taste for it and decide that Maine isn't so bad.

Mobile homes in hurricane alley... what could possibly go wrong... :/

As far as "cheap", you get what you pay for. Those $25k mobile homes are probably priced that low because they can't get anyone to look at them otherwise and they're probably overpriced at that. Oh, the mobile home might be fine (as mobile home quality goes) but where is it? What's the neighborhood like? Has your friend ever lived next to a meth house or a puppy mill? Not much fun.

Lived in south Louisiana for most of a decade, really don't want to go back just for the hurricane threats. I might consider something in lower Alabama but even then, probably would keep it north of the FL line. (My wife has family south of Montgomery and there are times when we consider moving a little closer. But yeah, a cheap trailer, not quite so appealing. They have those there, too.

 

When I lived in Northern Florida it was the same. The answer to why is simple. The supply is huge. There are just so many mobile homes everywhere that the laws of supply and demand take effect.

Plus the older ones last much longer in Florida than they do where the cold is a factor…… So you have lots of older trailers that are depreciated in value yet still perfectly functional.

 

Beware of cheap mobile homes. While the home itself may not sell for much, the lot rent for the property it sits on could be $1,000.00 a month. There's not much in the way of deals when it comes to real estate in Florida anymore, unless it is in the middle of nowhere. Insurance is sky high, so if you are looking to finance the home, expect to pay through the nose for homeowner's insurance.

 

Actually, most of those old ones are uninsurable.

 

My sister and BIL have been near Ft Myers for 9 years. The hurricanes, floods, loss of power for weeks, can be planned evacuation. Critters and bugs aplenty. Lots of Snowbirds too.
The real killer is brutal humidity and summer heat. They are moving back to NW Indiana.
Margaritaville ain't great. Good luck.

 

My sister and BIL have been near Ft Myers for 9 years. The hurricanes, floods, loss of power for weeks, can be planned evacuation. Critters and bugs aplenty. Lots of Snowbirds too.
The real killer is brutal humidity and summer heat. They are moving back to NW Indiana.
Margaritaville ain't great. Good luck.

Sister bought a fix up house and put about $50,000 in it with all new HVAC,water heater, flooring, redone shower and bathroom. My BIL did 90% of install, and it is beautiful. Just hate the above reasons and they are moving. Realtor has 2 buyers and not listed yet. Go figure. $325,000

 

Hopefully she can find a place where the rent is around $500 or less

A one bedroom apartment, in a trashy neighborhood in Pinellas County, might be obtainable in the $800.00 range.

 

Is it hard to get a mortgage for say 30k-45k ? If she could clean up her credit and get a mortgage, then she could perhaps buy a house in Maine up to around 70k and have some money left over. I think she would need an income which would be either disability, Soc Sec, or a job. I told her paying rent in Florida is no different than having a mortage and paying rent to a bank. She didn't like the idea of a mortgage but it may make sense. Ideally she would want to be not too far from skowhegan or waterville is my guess. If you own the property then if you need to sell it and real estate went up then you get an added boost of cash also so we all know it's a better investment

 

The low price ones are mostly uninsurable and can’t be financed on their own. Keep in mind mobile homes are considered in the same class as boats and RVs. They all receive the same decal.

 

40 year Florida resident here and landlord.
I doubt you'll find anybody that will insure a mobile home for wind.
I know of several mobiles that can be had for $5k or so but lot rent is $800 $1000 a month And they are older single wide units.
As far as rentals, go our property insurance premiums Especially for rental properties are absolutely nuts.
I have some commercial rental properties that are <3 miles from the Gulf, Woodframe and cannot buy wind insurance for them.

Our summers are brutal, Insurance and taxes are rising steadily.

 

I've lived in Florida for 75 years, my entire life. I know about hurricanes and flooding.
The last 30 of those on 5 acres with a double wide mobile home. Our home is wood framed, asphalt shingled roof and built to the same Florida Wind Code standards as a stick-built house.
We have survived a number of hurricanes and quite a few tropical storms. Even Irma in '17. She took about half our shingles when she left town, but other than that we've never had damage.

Out here in the country side, the ratio of mobile homes to stick-built is overwhelmingly in favor of the mobiles.

 

Don't buy in to the idea that MHs are "Tornado Magnets". Tornadas hate everything. Before I became an insurance adjuster in 2000 I had done mobile home service work and repairs and at one point had 5 phone book ads in the Yellow Pages.

Kind of my introduction to MHs and tornados was I started working with my friend who did MH factory service work. We were headed up to the Town & Country MH plant to pick up parts in Witchita Falls Tx just a couple of weeks after a mile wide Tornado had went through in 1979.

There was a MH park hit by the Tornado and there was debris and metal siding scattered everywhere and wrapped around the mesquite trees off the road. I thought about those poor people in their "trailer houses" and had bad they had it. We went down the road about half a mile and my bud said look over there, that was a housing district. But you would have never known it because all the houses were gone. All that was left were slabs with plumbing pipes sticking up. Nobody fared any better than anyone else.

45 years ago, deadly Red River Valley tornado outbreak hit Texas

April 10, 1979, one of the worst tornadoes in Texas history touched down. The day has been dubbed "Terrible Tuesday" and the "1979 Red River tornado outbreak."

www.mysanantonio.com

And just a couple of months ago in Sanger Tx a huge area was wiped out by tornados. Tornado's are just bad news no matter what you are living in.

Mobile Homes are probably cheap because of the reasons mentioned earlier about the Snow Birds who die off and the family wants to sell and there are just a bunch of them and they do not hold value like a house does. Nothing wrong with a mobile home to live in. I did for 7 years. could live in another one if i had to or could find some land I wanted to move to. No problem.

 

When we got our SS back payment check we had for sure 20% on some kind of home.

We talked to Palm Harbor homes, liked the model we saw, but when we told them we wanted to own the home and the land under it they basically said forget it and we started looking at traditional homes.

Side note: back in 2004 you could knock 20-30K off a home's price if you went with a one bathroom model (we did).

 

I live here in Florida and also do some RE investing. When you see $25K mobile homes they are usually in 55+ parks and have HUGE monthly fees. As for $500/month rental.....that qualifies you to rent a single room here in Central Florida in not such a great area.

By pure math a $71K 30 year mortgage with 10% down runs $499/month........ most mobile homes require 20% down.

There are areas in Florida around developing smaller town (20 mile radius) that with a little bit of hunting around she can find what she wants.

HK