When looking to purchase a mobile (trailer) home, or as they are recently called, manufactured homes, it is in your best interest to pay for a whole house inspection. A whole house inspection can cost anywhere from $200-300 depending on where you live. Ask friends for referrals of reputable home inspection companies or make several reference calls from the Yellow Page listings. Search under the category heading of “mobile home” or “manufactured home. The few hundred dollars you spend up front could literally save you thousands of dollars!
If you are looking for a home situated inside a manufactured home community, it will often times have a main office or club house. Ask the staff in the office who they would recommend to perform a home inspection for a potential new home purchase. If the office staff are not very helpful or friendly, you should think twice about whether you want to live in that community.
You can also ask the sales agent of the home who their office recommends for inspections. However, don’t be surprised if they tell you that you don’t really “need” an inspection. YOU DO!
Make it a priority to find someone who specializes in home inspections for manufactured homes. The manufactured home inspector would be more knowledgeable with respect to the nuances such as going under the mobile home to inspect the belly, the piers, or even drainage. These are things that a regular home inspector would not have to deal with so these important items might get overlooked, or important details simply missed.
Try to locate mobile home parts suppliers near where the home is situated. Chances are good there will be at least one store near you to service the community. These are the stores you usually have to shop at to find specific replacement parts that you would not be able to find at Home Depot or Lowes. For instance, bath tub fixtures and faucets have different types of fittings that you can easily find at the manufactured home supply store. When you visit the store, they will usually have some sort of cork board or bulletin board where contractors will pin up their business cards.
The contractors offer all sorts of services from repairs to inspections. The advantage of hiring a contractor is that they can give you a very good estimate of what something will cost to repair or replace since they are doing those jobs themselves. They may even offer to do the job at a reduced cost because you originally hired them for the home inspection. You can ask the service clerk at the store who they would recommend to do a house inspection.
Fly spec everything! Be as throughout as you can be. A brief checklist of things to keep in mind, inspect the following:
-all the cabinets in kitchens, bathrooms
-the roof, condition of the shingles, the skylights, the vents, are there enough vents
-windows, open and close every single one. See if any stick or are hard to open and close.
-plumbing, test all the faucets.
-hot water heater, determine how old it is. If more than 10 years old, it will probably be needing to be replace sometime sooner rather than later. You don’t want 40 gallons of boiling hot water running into your kitchen or bedroom which then can potentially cause immense damage to the carpet and floorboards underneath.
-air conditioning system, if in the winter time, get a clause in writing to your buyer’s contract that allows you to get repairs done when spring/summer comes around and there is something wrong with the a/c unit.
-try all ceiling fans, electrical outlets
-look for signs of water damage by seeing if any cabinets or wood is warped.
I hope this article will help you make an informed decision regarding the potential purchase of a manufactured / mobile home. (I learned these things the hard way as my sales agent told me I didn’t “need” a home inspection. I later learned that there were quite a few things wrong with the house, but all to my detriment the sales papers were already signed and the sellers long gone.)
