Has anyone built a modular home?

[Lil' Peach]

My husband & I are at the end of our ropes with the house-buying process. Hardly anything we've looked at has even remotely interested us.. and the ones that we do like are so ridiculously expensive and still have lots of things that need to be fixed or replaced.

A couple of people that we know have purchased beautiful new modular homes that we really like. For a little more than purchasing an older home, we could custom build our own and move into a brand spankin' new place.

I have always been kind-of "iffy" on manufactured homes, although I honestly don't know why. :confused: We took a couple of tours through models and I'm really thinking this may be a great idea.. but I'm hoping to get some opinions from people who own one already or just have advice for a newbie. We're thinking we'd have to wait until next year so that we wouldn't have to finance the land.

So.. can someone help me out with advice or at least point me in the right direction? Thanks in advance.. :)

[ButterflyJen]

We're actually in a similar situation right now. The houses we can afford need work, aren't big enough, or are old (like our last house) and we just don't want to deal with the headaches anymore. Doesn't seem to cost that much more to build, so we are looking into it!

We heard of a good program through Homestead Homes (http://www.hhoa.net), where you are the builder and help build equity by doing some of the work yourself. We're hoping to meet with someone this week to discuss our options.

I'll be watching this thread to see what others have to say!

[mandersald]

hi there-
we bought a modular home. it is not a new modular home (1995) but it is new to us!! i LOVE our little house. while i think it looks a little like a manufactured home from the outside, i think a lot of the newer styles are much better about this. you can't even tell from the inside, except in the basement, but even that requires a knowledgable eye.

when we had our home inspection, the guy who did it for us said that sometimes modular homes are built even better than traditional homes.

that being said, i think there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing the modular home. we also have some family that did a bigger, newer modular home, and their house is beautiful!!

good luck!

[fuzzy]

We didn't do it, but seriously considered them.

Overall, they seemed like a good deal. They were generally well constructed and customizable (if that's even a word).

We had my husband's cousin look at them with us. He's a master carpenter and general contractor. His mai concern with them is the roofs. He said the roof are "hinged", so that they can fold them up, ship them, and then unfold them at the building site. He claims (I have nothing to back this up, just passing along his opinion) that the hinges compromise the integrity of the roof and you should be perpared to replace/do major repairs on the roof earlier than if you were in a stick built house. But, that said, it doesn't mean that it wouldn't last a good while (say 10-15 years instead of 20).

[mb1197]

We considered a modular home when we first started looking. I like a lot of the new styles and of course the price is so reasonable for the most part. However, we decided against it after speaking to our mortgage broker. He said that although modulars can be pefectly ok the resale value is never as good as a stick built home simply because of the stigma attached to them.

[SweetRed]

Another couple from Massachusetts here looking to build modular next year!

We are about 98% sure this is the route we want to take. We currently own a home that is just begging to be demolished and rebuilt, and for us, this looks like the best route to take.

Several of the builders we have "interviewed" have given us addresses of homes they built, and when we drove by them, you would have no idea that they were modular. None. They looked like every other house in the neighborhood.

Although we plan to stay in this house a very, very long time, we have asked our mortgage rep about mortgages and resale. She said (and we've heard this from several other people too), the resale value around here is rarely affected by the fact that it's modular. In fact, a lot of people here in Massachusetts know how energy efficient modular homes usually are, and that becomes a plus in the resale process. Maybe we're just ahead of our time? ;)

I'd love to share experiences and advice moving forward if this is the option you decide to go with. We're at the phase of figuring out how we want to finance and we hope to pick a builder by the end of the year or early next at the latest. If you don't mind me asking, who have you looked at and do you have any strong opinions on any? I don't know where in MA you are (we're in the Boston suburbs), but I know many builders cover the entire state.

Good luck!

~ Kay

[bunnybeth]

My parents built a modular home from Wausau Homes (http://www.wausauhomes.com/) back in late 1987. They still haven't had any major problems with it at all- roof or anything. Plus it looks the same as all the other houses in the neighborhood.

As a kid when it was built, I thought it was great fun to watch the house take shape in a single day. (My parents let us skip school to see it even.) And, it totally freaked out some of the neighbors who saw our foundation in the morning and came home from work to see a full house up!

[Lil' Peach]

We are in western Mass and have been talking with reps from www.BardenHomes.com and www.TheHomeStore.com The Home Store is local to us. They built my MIL's house which is your basic ranch style home. However she has completely remodeled the inside and it is so gorgeous! Our only "issue" is the cost of land. We inquired about a half-acre parcel that is in a pretty good location but about died when we heard the asking price - over $80k!!!! That's way too much for us if we are going to do this within the next year or so. We are still house-hunting now and hope that something will come up. We put an offer on a house we LOVE and I don't think we're going to get it.. yesterday we upped our offer to $11k over asking price and STILL haven't heard anything! And our offer expires at 8pm tonight. The market is just so crazy!!!

[kiddo]

We looked into building a modular home. My ILs live in a mod home that was built around 1990. Mod homes are solid constructions and go up super fast.

We decided against it mainly because we found a house we loved before we found land we were interested in. One thing I didn't like about mod homes is that at first the price seems very reasonable, but upgrades add up quickly. And the model homes they have usually have a lot of upgrades in them. Since we can do a lot of work ourselves, it made more sense for us to buy an all ready built home and do the upgrades ourselves.

[CisforCookie]

New to these boards, but would like to revive this thread as we are currently building a modular home. Is anyone out there doing this right now? We're acting as our own contractors for all the subs, so I'd love to hear from others who are dealing with the insanity like I am. :eek:

[Kanga]

cisforcookie I'm not going through it right now, but a modular home is something we have considered. I would love to hear about your experience, specifically what things you did to save money or things that you didn't bother saving money with because of the hassle it would have caused.

And how do you go about finding land? Did you hire a realtor, look in the paper, or some other way?

[ADSigMel]

I'm thinking modular might be the way for us to go, too. I assume the price is a great deal more than a manufactured home, but is it as much as a stick built house?

We're only looking at it as a temporary thing until we save up enough to build our dream house, and then we'll probably use it as a guest house or something (it would be a very small modular home, since we should only need it for a few years).

I don't know anyone that owns one, or really where to start looking for resources in the area where we would want to build.

[LeslieR]

I am researching this option right now. I would really love to hear more information about the total cost when it's all said and done. I'm trying to figure out if this would be a better option for us money-wise. New construction in our town starts at $699,999. It's a joke. It would be so fabulous if we could build a home to our specs for a lot less.

[PinkMartini]

Yup! It looks like when my FH and I move (hopefully this year) we'll be starting the process into building a mod home. My father had one built 2 years ago on his land (2 acres in town) and I swear, you can not tell it's a mod home. Looks JUST like a stick home. Absolutely beautiful! And he saved so much money by not buying a house (lives in SoCal) already built. With the way housing prices are right now, it just makes more sense for us to build a home to our specs instead of spending an outrageous amount on an already built, old home...

[justHB]

There are a lot of pre-fab homes nowadays that are based on pricipals of green design and constrcution. They're definitely catching on in California.

http://www.livemodern.com/sunsetbreezehouse/
http://www.modular-experts.com/
http://www.prefabs.com/modern_prefab_homes.htm