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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...
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.
An RV even half the size of a mobile home would probably be at least three times as expensive.
On the other hand, when hurricanes come your way, you can move out of the way.
Another solution is to move somewhere else, a place without fucking hurricanes.
#DeleteFacebook
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 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.
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.
> Or, they just make a pact and keep the price high, which is the more realistic approach.
Might work for something like insulin, not so much for mobile homes or RVs.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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!
You're probably joking, but lets assume you're not. Ever try to put a trailer in a shipping container? You end up shipping a lot of air across the Pacific. Otherwise I'd bet the Chinese would be doing this! Now, if we could make assemblies, ship them and put them together over here, you might have something: Made in USA (some foreign parts).
...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
Insulin is cheap to make. You can do it with less than $100k of equipment bought new or slightly used. Insulin can be produced using bacteria grown in bioreactors â" and they have a good yield. Iâ(TM)ve seen it being made, and understand the entire process. The problem really is the market entry requirements.
The microprocessors being used in computers today are much more advanced and require far more capital intensive manufacturing equipment than what was used 2 decades ago â" yet the cost has reduced. There is even a DIY Open Insulin project of people making their own insulin. The insulin we have today has changed only slightly over the years (donâ(TM)t buy any BS that itâ(TM)s dramatically better), but the cost has skyrocketed. Obviously some nefarious force other than laissez faire competition is at work.
The difference between a mobile home and a prefab is 15 minutes with a cutting torch.
In 'no-mobile homes' areas, they cut the axles and trailer hitches off. Instant legal 'prefab'. But building codes still exist.
Better prefabs do exist, but at the low end prefab = (mobile home - wheels).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.