Slashdot Mirror
Mobile Homes Are So Expensive Now, Hurricane Victims Can't Afford Them (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Hurricane victims emerging from ravaged trailer parks are discovering that the U.S. mobile-home market has left them behind. In Florida and Texas, dealerships are swarmed by buyers looking to rebuild their lives after hurricanes Harvey and Irma, but many leave disappointed. The industry, led by Warren Buffett's Clayton Homes, is peddling such pricey interior-designer touches as breakfast bars and his-and-her bathroom sinks. These extras, plus manufacturers' increased costs for labor and materials, have pushed average prices for new double-wides up more than 20 percent in five years, putting them out of reach for many of the newly homeless.
As a temporary solution, I wonder if the old FEMA trailers have finished outgassing all their formaldehyde... perhaps someone has a collection of those going.
There is no XUL, only WebExtensions...
That's racist.
Late-stage capitalism is when you can't afford the rope to hang yourself, but your #MAGA hat is subsidized.
In other news...
The guy who Trump picked to head Health and Human Services tripled the price of insulin when he was CEO of Eli Lilly. After the drug's patent expired.
https://www.thenation.com/arti...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Maybe we can buy some cheap trailers from China. They save money by making them out of really inexpensive stuff.
The market isn't being served by luxury mobile homes.
So, it would probably be lucrative to make cheap low-end homes in large volume for this particular market.
Capitalism. How does it work?!
We don't need no stinkin' Dear Leader!
That's a bit over 4% annual rate... that's horrible!!!
(compare that to the price increase of...amm... health insurance in that same time interval... or anything else for that matter...)
Buy an RV then. If the entire idea is something temporary, there's your solution. Cheap, too.
... it just doesn't cost that much to build a house. Assuming you're happy with a basic design, and no frills fittings a house can be built for well under $100,000.
There's no way a pre-fab should cost more than that
Sounds like a market opportunity.
Obviously, the rising price of that insulin drug signals the rest of the economy that there's opportunity in creating a competing, generic version at a slightly lower cost. An evil greedy capitalist will look at that signal and say to himself, "Hey. That's a pretty lucrative drug; I think I'd like to get in on the action." Indeed, this competition results in a kind of cooperation (unbeknownst to the warring parties); in competing, they are cooperating to find the "right" price for the insulin drug, and they are ultimately cooperating to find ever more efficient ways to produce or deliver said insulin to the people who need it.
Capitalism. How does it work?!
We don't need no stinkin' Dear Leader
after all. At least not in P.R.
New mobile homes are for idiots. A house should not depreciate like a car. Rent for a 1000 square foot 'lot' should not run to hundreds/month.
Anybody thinking of going there, should buy bare land and shed to live in until they can afford to build a house. Mobile homes are built like sheds anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Welcome to capitalism, companies make the products they think they can sell (i.e. expensive trailers) and price them at what they think they can get. The people that want something else are screwed. If enough people are not able to get what they want it creates a market opportunity to start a business to cater to them.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
I live an hour north of Houston. Daily on the way to and from work, I pass 4 or 5 mobile home dealerships. About 6 months ago, my wife and I went and looked at a couple of dealerships and priced several mobile homes, as we are thinking about downsizing, buying our own land and living in a mobile home to save money.
What we learned:
- A non-luxury single wide with 3 bedrooms is about $30,000.
- A non-luxury double wide with 3 bedrooms is about $45,000.
- A luxury double wide with 3-4 bedrooms runs from $65-120,000.
I can understand people wanting to have a nice place to live, but there is no shame in living in a starter mobile home until you can get back on your feet. For far less than a house these days, one can guy 3 acres for $60,000 and the mobile home for $30,000. That's $90,000. Ad $10,000 for connecting to electricity and sewer, and another $10,000 for a septic system. $110,000 gets you land and a place to live for far, far less than a house. If you choose to buy a mobile home without land, here in this area, the land rental with hookups will run you about $300-400 a month. A cheaper mobile home runs about $300 a month mortgage and $300-400 a month for land rental and in your in for $700. Add $300 for all utilities and you're in for $1000 a month.
I ran all the above numbers with the sales people at the mobile home dealership. I also know someone living in one and I asked them to verify.
When I get closer to retirement, I'm considering it because why have to always work on a house and a perfect lawn. I'll get a mobile home and just live with less and less maintenance.
There is a stigma associated with living in a mobile home, but those who would judge you for living in one are not worthy of your friendship.
It seems like every few weeks there is another story in the press about how an achitecture student discovered shipping containers are hollow inside. Maybe now is the time to see a lot of hurricane proof housing made of steel hi-cubes.
Nullius in verba
The Dear Leader decides what people want AND need.
Then, it turns out that His decision was not based on reality, or did not stay based on reality.
The people begin to suffer, and rebellion stews.
The Dear Leader pours all of His resources into crushing the rebellious masses under his gold-clad heel.
These are the majority of your voters and you're letting them be homeless!
Do something about the cost of trailers, President Trump! Your voter base needs you now more than ever!
The signal is still there; there is still motivation for someone, eventually, to undercut those colluders.
On top of this, the market reacts to the signal in other ways; people start marketing healthy meals and exercise programs, so as to reduce the incidence of adult-onset diabetes, etc. The culture begins to change.
This evolution by variation (supplier competition) and selection (consumer choice) is the "Invisible Hand".
We don't need no stinkin' Intelligent Designer.
saying this implies the cost of Mobile homes has gone up. Manufacturing costs are way, way down. The actual problem is that 30 years of wage stagnation has reduced the buying power of working class people. They can't afford basic shelter.
This is a classic example of an anti-worker wing narrative at work. The breakfast bar adds $200 to the cost of the home. The his and her sinks $500. The cost of the home goes up $10,000. Nobody talks about the $9,200 gap or why people can't afford it. The implication is that poor people are being frivolous with their money, which in turn implies they have low moral character which in turn gives the middle class and rich a reason to abandon them to their poverty because, after all, it's their fault for having low moral character. It's prosperity gospel without the tinge of religion.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you live on the gulf coast or tornado alley, maybe a mobile home isn't your best bet. The main reason the price or new units is so high is because the supply of used units suddenly dropped, forcing people who would have bought a used unit to buy a new one.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Posting anonymous because moderators don't like common sense:
Just because some mobiles are going upscale, it doesn't mean you need to buy that one. Buy a stripped down version or go with a different brand than Clayton.
In housing there is always an upgrade to something nicer. The problem is most people like to cry because they aren't keeping up with the highly in debt Jones'.
Why would anyone with finnancial difficulties be buying new? I was able to have my own car when I was 16 because I bought two identical model year non working beaters ($400 and a $150) and combined them into one 'working' car. In my late 20s I could afford my (then 65 yr old) home because it needed lots of cosmetic work and was in a lower priced neighborhood. Part of the problem that gets people into situations like this is buying items that they can't afford and/or paying for them in nearly predatory installments. It dosent help either when most or all of your expensive purchases only depreciate, trailer homes don't increase in value like real estate.
It's ironic that the mainstream media called 2010~ a housing crisis, and the following years the "recovery." For those of us living in reality, it is the exact opposite.
People think this because they can get stacked 6+ high, but in reality there are only two steel reinforced hoops near the ends that handle all the weight of supporting/connecting to the higher and lower shipping containers. The rest of the shipping container is made out of corrugated sheet metal/thin plate and is only certified to hold up to ~300 pounds. There are big warnings about this on all the used shipping container resale sites online, as well as the wikipedia article on TEUs and shipping containers.
Shipping containers ARE good, cheap, sturdy, and long lasting if taken care of and used properly, but they are NOT suitable for all kinds of temporary or permanent housing and can quickly lose their structural integrity if the wrong area is damaged (whether through physical force or corrosion) and then takes a sufficient impact or loading strain to collapse all or part of it.
The real solution for hurricane areas is deflective angled surfaces, structures made out of concrete, and either multistory homes that reach above the worst case flood failure level, or a floatable foundation and pylons that can allow the house to flow in the case of flooding, while still being dense enough to withstand hurricane or tornado category winds.
While the floating foundations might require some work, especially when combined with concrete or geopolymers, the concrete house concept has 50+ years of modern architectural technology behind it in the middle east and given sufficient investigation can probably be made cost effective if not cheap in hurricane country. Given the devastation enacted recently in the Gulf and Carribbean and adjoining regions, there should be plenty of motivation to do so and a way to ensure that the majority of rebuilt housing is capable of withstanding future adverse weather, while also remaining hospitable well into the future given sufficient ventilation (the largest danger with concrete buildings behind earthquake damage or land shifting.)
The low-end models are still there, as always. More expensive models are also available, which increases the AVERAGE price.
The manufacturers haven't abandoned their primary market, people who are broke because they have don't think long-term, so they do things like spend a ton of money on something that falls apart in a few years rather than putting 10% down on a house which will go up in value.
If a government uses its bully pulpit to subsidize insulin, then what that government is actually doing is subsidizing unhealthy lifestyles, and thus the problem will only get worse. There needs to be a correction in society; either new methods of manufacturing must be found, or people must adopt a healthier lifestyle.
Oh yeah, killing diabetic people really improves public health! Who cares about people with Type I? Maybe next time they'll remember not to be born with any congenital problems!
He means RV not mobile home
Firstly, trying to protect someone from himself will always lead to Tryanny.
Secondly, Nobody said anything about neglecting Type I diabetes; you know who is killing those with congenital diabetes? The obese, who refuse to stop stuffing their fat faces with sugary death!
Get the fatties off insulin, so that it's cheaper to treat genetic diabetes!
But the goverment can do both. Subsidize insulin for those how already need it, and to promote healthy lifestyle
to prevent diabetes.
2. I understood OP perfectly; I'm agreeing with OP.
1. Socialism requires a dictatorship; if each individual could choose how to allocate his resources voluntarily, then it would be capitalism, not socialism. In order for a "socialistic" organization of society to work, it must be built atop capitalism (people must be able to allocate their resources to it voluntarily); otherwise, it is guaranteed to result in the insidious growth of a Tyrannical, dictatorial cancer.
Florida imposed a moratorium against new mobile home parks (and probably new placements of mobile homes as well) after the hurricanes in 2004 and 2005. I'm not even sure you can find a place for your mobile home even if you were to buy one.
But they are built to crumble quickly so you'd be lucky to get 5 good years out of one anyway.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
...pushed average prices for new double-wides up more than 20 percent in five years, putting them out of reach...
I'm having trouble with the math here. Over five years, you'd expect about a 10 percent increase due to inflation. So the "average" double-wide is only up about 10% over inflation. And that's looking at the average--are all mobile homes more expensive, or did the distribution of motor home sales just shift? Remember, the average goes up if the share of sales of high-end homes goes up, even if the low-end homes remain the same price. We're not told what the liveable-but-not-fancy homes cost, or how (or if!) that has changed with time.
Really, though, the more important statistic is buried in the linked article.
...pay for the bottom fifth of earners is stagnating. Even after a modest pickup over the past two years, those households have seen their income fall by 9 percent since 2000, to $12,943 in 2016, based on inflation-adjusted Census Bureau data.
(At least they inflation-adjusted that figure.) The real problem is that the poor - including the working poor and retirees - are getting poorer. Even if housing weren't getting more expensive, they still wouldn't be able to afford to keep up.
~Idarubicin
America will never be the same.
Gov subsidy is bad enough, but gov promotion of a healthy lifestyle is downright dangerous.
If you try to protect someone from himself, you'll just end up with Tyranny.
Besides, how good has the government been at subsidizing the poor and yet also promoting more productive choices in life?
Those who comprise the Dear Leader will let you know. They have the exact, precise answers to all that ails; they have the Intelligent Designs.
Absolutely. Meanwhile, those same people arguing for government non-interference in the health industry are the same people who saw no problem with the same government bailing-out the high-end of town following the GFC.
They are completely blind to their bias.
If you rent. That's it. Period. Please consider the following...
Trailers are made with materials and specs much different than a traditional house.
- Thinner walls which means, thinner doors, thinner windows, less insulation
- Higher energy costs to heat & cool than a traditionally built space of same size
About the only thing that is the same between a traditionally built home and a mobile home is the electrical system, panel, outlets, switches, wires etc...
Mobile homes are built cheaply and not made to last like a traditional house (yes, there are plenty of shady builders out there that build shitty traditional houses too).
Mobile homes depreciate in value as soon as you purchase and take delivery of them - not dissimilar to the average car.
Mobile homes almost always decrease the value of the land they are on.
Mobile homes are not permanent structures - I could see this as a pro in some circumstances
If you have your own land already you will be much better off in the long run building your own home with traditional materials as it becomes a permanent structure on the land, and therefore increases the value of the land.
"thereby reducing the pressure placed on insulin supplies."
The price did not go up because of excess demand for insulin. The price went up because of excess money demand by the neoliberal profit-maximizing accountants who manage the engineers who produce insulin.
"If, instead, a government uses its bully pulpit [...]"
"There needs to be a correction in society; either new methods of manufacturing must be found, or people must adopt a healthier lifestyle."
Isn't the second sentence bullying? Why should I prefer the bully of capitalism to the bully of government? Is capitalism mandated to provide for the General Welfare? Is the government?
That's basically just a demonstrable fact.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
in a mobile home are way, way down. Often they can't get full time work. We've lost millions of manufacturing jobs since NAFTA. Budget cuts to make way for tax cuts have decimated infrastructure spending and with them lots of blue collar jobs. The folks who lost all those jobs competed for a shrinking pool driving wages down and causing employers to higher lots of people and work them on an 'as needed' basis since they were desperate enough to put up with it. And all this is before we talk about the multi billion dollar wage theft going on (google it, it's more than every robbery in the country).
Inflation is a very different beast for the working poor than the middle class. When we say 'inflation' we mean economy wide, but we don't really factor in affordability and practical buying power.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Easy solution, don't rebuild. You don't need a home anyways. Just live out of a van down by the river.
briging back Shotgun shacks for trailer trash.
> My neighborhood is one of the cheaper neighborhoods within 32 miles.
Sounds like an interesting discussion. Which city is this that we're using as our example?
> But you can still live in this area in a mobile home on a $36,000 income.
Yes, on a $36,000 income you can buy a double wide from one of these manufacturers for $100,000-$200,000. Or, for $45,000-$65,000 you can buy one that's five years old, and save a hundred thousand dollars. Buying a double wide from the manufacturer is stupid 95% of the time.
You still have to rent or buy the land separately, so the total monthly cash outlay isn't THAT much different from a site-built home, just the end of the story is way different. Most people would be better off, long-term, with a 1,500 square foot house than with a 2,000 square foot trailer, for the same monthly payment.
Buying or renting a 20 year old mobile home is a totally different story. For a short time I lived in a single wide that I could have bought for $1,500. That's totally different than the $55,000 someone paid for it new.
If a quick solution requires Tyranny, you can keep it.
It will take as long as Freedom demands.
> (unless you are buying an FHA home or are using the VA mortgage, or are buying a HUD home)
Which is kinda like saying "all programmers are males (unless they are females or maybe something else). :). FHA, VA, and HUD combined make up a significant portion of purchases. My first house was none of the above and I had bad credit. I put 5% down. My second house, on paper I put 10% down but I actually only paid 6%. Again that wasn't FHA, VA, or HUD, and I had medium credit.
Putting 20% down on each house after your first is really good idea, in most cases. It's in no way required.
Some readers may wonder about the difference between the 10% down that is listed on my mortgage and the 7% I actually paid. I didn't need a real estate agent to drive me around looking at houses, so I used an agent who refunds half the commission to the buyer, 1.5% of the sales price. I also priced in a seller concession of 1.5% - the seller gave me "back" 1.5% of the money at closing. That covered 3% for the down payment, so I needed to cover 7%.
Ever heard of a demand curve? All else being equal, as the demand for a given product diminishes, so does its price.
If the demand drops so low that a loss of economies of scale increases the price dramatically, then that would be a very good thing: That would mean that very few people need insulin medication.
At that point, insurance makes sense as an industry; hell, at that point, we can even talk about governmental subsidies.
It's basically poor and middle class divided by politics fighting each other for 0.5 percent of the 1 percenters material benefit by way of favorable political domination.
And even then I am not sure that it isn't the full 1 percent doing it for ego points or wagers over who can convince the plebs, proles, and peasants to vote for the more ridiculous campaign promises without their candidates losing.
America is doomed thanks to having successfully replaced physical, legal, social and mental bondage with almost entirely mental bondage. Those who can't think for themselves can't step out of line, after all.
Markup is the key ingredient in price, not demand. Demand for oil has risen steadily, linearly, yet prices rise and fall at the whims of producers as they throttle and expand supply for political and psychological reasons.
The demand curve is a fiction, a myth told by high priests of neoclassical economics. Supply and demand is far less a factor in pricing than arbitrary psychological factors.
My backup plan is a yurt.
Not if generic manufacturers can't obtain the name brand product for bioequivalence studies.
Huh. That's actually a thing? Offhand, I can think of a handful of ways around it, most of which involve finding people who already take the name brand.
From "Daraprim" on Wikipedia:
Without bioequivalence studies, a generic medication is ineligible for the Abbreviated New Drug Application. Instead, as I understand it, the manufacturer must go through the process of a full New Drug Application. This requires clinical trials the same as those of a brand new drug.
Before you go on about liability, one would imagine there'd be less liability with a clinical trial of a "copy" of a known-safe drug than there was with the clinical trials of the name brand when it was first brought to market.
In order to establish to the FDA that your drug is "a 'copy' of a known-safe drug", you would first need to obtain samples of "a known-safe drug" against which to prove bioequivalence.
the drug patent is the only legal barrier to entry; once that expires, there is none.
Mylan still holds patents related to EpiPen. The company continually improves the safety and effectiveness of its autoinjector mechanism by making novel, useful, and non-obvious improvements and applying for patents on these improvements. So even if you've made a generic of EpiPen version X, that's not the approved medical device anymore; EpiPen version X+1 is. It's like in 1997 when the FDA banned Seldane (terfenadine) in favor of its successor Allegra (fexofenadine) the same month the generic for terfenadine was due to come out.
the necessary bioequivalence studies require a sample of the existing medication provided directly by the company, and not simply purchased from a pharmacy, which Turing could decline to provide.
Well that's fucking bullshit. For starters, a sample provided by a pharmacy is less likely to have been tampered with than a sample provided by the manufacturer to a competitor. The second point I would make is already made in the quote; a pharmacy is less likely to decline the purchase.
I did not know that was the case but, now that I'm aware, certainly hold the position that it should be changed. That's clearly a bought law.
Mylan still holds patents related to EpiPen...
Mylan is run by a group of absolute scumbags. I very much enjoyed the look of terror on Heather Bresch's face as she testified before Congress last September. I watched the whole thing; it's the first time in my adult life I've intently watched CNN. For the record, though, generic adrenaline autoinjectors are available, FDA-approved, and considerably cheaper than the EpiPen. If you have insurance, the generic may not be on the company's formulary; but, then, you have insurance and should only be paying your copay for prescriptions, anyway. If you don't have insurance, or your insurance won't cover the EpiPen, you can have your doctor write the prescription for the generic.
The only places you'll see the "approved device" issue come up are schools and other government-run institutions, which already get them for free (or at cost) through a Mylan-sponsored program. In that case, you can't really complain about the price of the name brand, as nobody could undercut them in the first place. While I still think Mylan are complete scum, I'll chalk that program up as something good they've done, at least as long as sugh institutions are legally bound to purchase only from a pre-approved list of name brands.
It's like in 1997 when the FDA banned Seldane (terfenadine) in favor of its successor Allegra (fexofenadine) the same month the generic for terfenadine was due to come out.
Now that just reads like a conspiracy theory once you read up on the actual history of terfenadine.
That's not to say none of what you're alluding to actually happens -- I'm certain it does -- but you've chosen extremely poor examples. You chose a drug with a generic available and a drug pulled over legitimate safety concerns.
The fexofenadine patent expired in 2001, Allegra is still on the market and there are generics for it. The real story is that the manufacturer attempted to suppress the release of terfenadine generics by claiming that they infringed on the fexofenadine patent because fexofenadine is the active metabolite of terfenadine. That's right, they claimed that people taking terfenadine generics were violating their patent by manufacturing fexofenadine in their bodies; of course, this also meant that people taking the name brand Seldane were doing the same, but I'm guessing they didn't stop to consider this.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Mobile homes are the most incompatible-for-live-in-a-natural-disaster there is. We shouldn't be encouraging mobile home use. We should enable storm-resistant housing instead.
Sounds like there's a market for no-frills prefab homes. You know, like decades ago, when the mobile home started.
I wonder if they're illegal?
Tiny homes have sure been facing some challenges. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tiny...
Apparently, it's better to chase homeless people out of your city than to allow them to live indoors in structures that you wouldn't want to live in. (Some people express their compassion and pity in odd ways. Ways that look a lot like disgust and hatred to some bystanders.)
If permitted to exist, new makers of down-market mobile homes could produce low-cost housing for low-income people, filling the niche ignored by a certain billionaire. Is this not happening?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Tiny Homes now?
In Texas, it cost (sticker) $12,995 for a trailer that I would absolutely feel comfy in.
I've priced 5th wheels, travel trailers and toy haulers.
Right now, you can get on https://www.pplmotorhomes.com/, as they are the best 3rd party seller I've seen, and find stellar deal at under $9k. (No connection to them... they are the best I've found for Texas.)
I was worried after Hurricane Harvey about just this, and it isn't true. I started pricing travel trailers from them in May, and prices havent changed, nor has the demand changed.
People are looking for non-popout trailers.... ghetto/old shit, to continue their ghetto lifestyle. Good luck, holmes!
People either learn, adapt or exploit.
You know our advanced health care has allowed these congenital problems to simply propagate and further degrade the gene pool by allowing people that would have naturally died before reaching reproductive maturity to survive.
Note, I'm not advocating anything here, just making an observation.
> buying a house or a new-ish trailer just isn't in the cards for you. In fact you'd be lucky to buy a crappy old trailer for $5000 ... Then you have the crappy car that needs repairs every couple weeks. And just try and buy food after all that. This person woudl LOVE to think "long-term" you jack-ass.
I lived in trailer worth $1,500 while riding a bicycle to work flipping burgers. So I can understand not being able to afford a new house. What didn't do when I couldn't afford a new house is I didn't spend half my check on a new double wide which would depreciate $25,000 in the first five years. When you're broke is exactly when you can't afford thousands of dollars of depreciation every year.
Instead I thought long term - I lived somewhere that not only wouldn't leave me more broke by depreciation, but it was so cheap I could afford to save some of my burger-flipping money for a long-term goal. A year and a half ago I bought my family a 3,500 square foot house using the money I didn't spend on a $80,000 double-wide plus $200 / month lot rent that would be worth half that much a few years later.