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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

"Today, many residents rent semi-permanent space for such homes from land owners, creating an unfortunate side effect: an incomplete form of ownership."

That applies to apartment rentals too. But if you can't afford to buy or to get a mortgage it's a feature, and not a trivial one. I lived in a trailer park for many years, and the savings over an apartment made a large difference in my lifestyle and cost of living, which helped me eventually become a home-and-land owner. If someone had "helped" me by preventing this unfortunate side effect of incomplete ownership, it would not have been helpful. My ownership of the trailer but not the land was much better than owning none of it.

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I lived in a mobile home for 6 years. 920 square feet purchased for $50,000 with $600/month rent on land. I live in New Jersey where apartments cost no less than $1,200 in my area.

Simple calculation says I saved about $40,000 so far while living in a better environment and space. Buying a house in this area costs no less than $200,000 and land taxes come out to ~$500/month anyway.

I highly recommend mobile home living for just-married couples.

ps - our community does not allow people to rent their homes out, so everyone who lives here takes care of the property well. I suspect this may be an important feature for better quality of life in such a community. And there are no trailers -- all homes are stationary.

I have some relatives who lived in a trailer for a dozen years or so. However, it definitely provided my relatives a considerably better quality of life at a considerably cheaper cost than nearby apartments.

I know that after speaking to them about it, their only real regret was that there was no real equity in the home since they sell like vehicles -- depreciating assets. They bought it for $40k, sold it for $5k, and paid about $500/mo in rent for the land.

They were forced to move when the land owner decided to get out of the mobile home tenancy business and sold their property to a developer.

> Simple calculation says I saved about $40,000 so far

That only works out if you can sell your mobile for $50k - typically (there are exceptions based on location and market conditions, but typically) mobile homes depreciate in value, while 'fixed' homes appreciate.

6 years ago if you'd put that $50k down on a 200k house, you'd have had a ~1k mortgage and a home that has appreciated to ~240k, instead of a mobile home that has depreciated.

The housing appreciation is overrated: your house is worth more, but so are all the other houses you want to buy when you move. And people complaining when the housing prices fall also confuse me: so what, the house you buy when you move is cheaper too.

The trailer home I bought was built in 1984. With all the people moving out of NYC into New Jersey, similar mobile homes in my development have sold for $80k. I may end up selling for a similar amount. Though I do think you're right and it is typical to lose money when re-selling a mobile home.

As a side note: I paid 0 tax when purchasing it (it's not a house, no house tax). My "closing" expenses were $40 to get the title registered at the local DMV / MVC (Motor Vehicle Commission). It's pretty nice.

Theoretically the same can be said for all homes as property tax in effect means the state owns your land and by default your home. Michigan recently had a spate of bad news events where tax commissioners were confiscating and selling homes for even small amounts. Worse the homeowner, if receiving any funds at all from the sale would see a paltry amount.

I look at it this way, how long do I keep my home if I stop paying the nearly four thousand a year property tax? I count myself lucky as family friends in up North pay three times that for a postage stamp lot and older home

Furthermore, there are a bunch of good reasons to rent rather than buy, especially if you're younger. I've lived in the same (owned) house for over 20 years now. But, when I was younger, I moved around. And, even when I ended up living in the same place for about 10 years, I appreciated knowing I could up and move without a whole lot of friction.

ADDED: And for most homes, you have maintenance, utilities, etc. (And for a condo, condo fees.) I don't have a mortgage but my house still costs me something >$500/month.

This only makes sense if the market is flat-to-declining. Otherwise, for then a mostly flat market this is bad financially - when you pay your mortgage, you are also building equity. It’s a small amount initially, but the share grows over time as balance and the required interest shrink. Depending on if you took a 30 or a 15 year loan, the 10 years in one place would have either given you a decent amount of savings or a close to paid home. If you need to move, sell and take your equity less costs of sale, still better than just your rent deposit.

Yes, but that 10 years was right out of my second grad degree and I had no savings (and a little debt). There's no way I was jumping right into buying a house/condo even if I wanted to, which I didn't. And housing was fairly flat where I was living at the time. I also just wouldn't have wanted the effort associated with a house at the time.

In addition, at least here the taxes and fees add another 10 to 15 percent. If the house does not increase at least that much in value within the time you live in it you lose money, plus the trouble and work of buying and selling.

>the same can be said for all homes as property tax in effect means the state owns your land and by default your home.

Every year I show my wife and kids the 14-15k dollar property tax bill and tell them isn't it nice that we get to pay all this money for the privilege of owning a home here (DFW).

But no state income taxes in Texas.

FYI that is over four time the maximum property tax in The uk and that includes the 10 mill plus mansions in London's embassy row.

Edit its 4x not Twice is misremebered

Yes, no state income tax but they make up for it in other ways.

To be fair, half of my property taxes $7.8k go to fund schools. Someone has to pay for the artificial turf football field and 8 million dollar sport facility at the middle school (grade 5-8).

I live in a township with no local income tax, so property tax funds everything local -- public schools, local + county roads, local police, county sherif, fire department, libraries, etc.

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