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Comment by AlexandrB | Hacker News Reader

There's a 15 minute documentary about the takeover of the mobile housing industry by large conglomerates: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9DQa3Ajhzv8

The key takeaway is that many/most of the people living in this kind of housing cannot afford the expense of moving it (video gives a price tag of around $5000), especially on short notice. Older mobile homes may not have enough remaining structural integrity to be moved at all. Meanwhile the land their house is on is rented and they can still be evicted from the land at anytime which typically results in the loss of the home that they "own".

This catch 22 means that residents are seen as ripe for rent and fee increases since moving means losing their investment in the home.

I'm sure mobile housing is great for middle class people looking for a nomadic lifestyle where they plan to move their home from time to time. As low-income housing though, it seems mobile homes are in a nasty grey area between renting and owning.

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"buying a house but renting everything that doesn't depreciate"

This is the main catch that the article skips over.

It's only profitable to rent the things to you that you would be better off buying.

Rental cars, hotel room, and certain machinery/tools? Owning something has costs too, and if you are not interested in learning how to or paying someone else to maintain and secure something, then it can make sense to not buy it also.

I need a vibrating plate compactor once in 10 years, and Home Depot has a stream of customers who need it all the time. I could buy it and rent it to others when I am not using it, but I have other things I want to do with my time. Therefore, it is profitable for Home Depot to rent it to me, and for me to pay a slight premium to never have to worry about it outside the few hours I needed to use it.

Similarly, I have rented apartments in my 20s in places I had no intention of setting down, and buying would have been a waste of time and effort.

I think temporary rentals and indefinite rentals are fundamentally distinct products, so analysing them together doesn't make a lot of sense.

An indefinite rental sounds like a misnomer better stated as “being too poor to buy <x>”. Or maybe “insufficient supply of <x>”. Which, in this discussion would be land, in certain locations.

Considering property taxes, do you really ever own your house?

Paying taxes on something you own in order to support services provided by a municipality is not the same as renting something you don't own. Not to mention that the cost of property tax on a typical home is much less than the rental of an equivalent home would be.

Well sure, but if you fall in a coma for a year, you might wake up homeless (i might be exaggerating the timeframe a bit, but the case stands).

A lot of the time this is simply handled by placing a lien on the property due at sale or transfer. Your kids might not be able to inherit it, but inheritance is another question altogether.

> if you fall in a coma for a year, you might wake up homeless

No, you would wake up, as scythe has already pointed out, with a tax lien on your property--which you could of course remove by paying the taxes owed.

If you own your home, you can't be evicted from it the way a renter can. The only way to force you out of your home would be to take away your title to it. I'm not aware of any jurisdictions where this is actually done for non-payment of taxes, though.

A much better case can be made that you don't fully own your home if you have a mortgage on it, since the lender has the right to foreclose, which means they take title to the property, if you don't make your mortgage payments for some period of time. (Ironically, your property taxes if you have a mortgage are being paid out of an escrow account, so your mortgage lender will see the consequences of non-payment well before your municipality will.)

I'm sure every state is different, but there are places where the state can enforce their tax lein by foreclosing and taking ownership of your property.

It takes years to decades for a tax situation to reach the level of fourclosure on reasons of property tax and if a reasonable issue for health or otherwise the state could even waive it due to non-use.

If your coma is 5 years long then in CA they will auction the property to whoever will pay for it plus the tax burden

Not really and depending on where you live, definitely not. But you have a lot more and very different from rights and responsibilities when you own vs rent.

It is still possible to buy property in the US that is untaxed, usually in very rural areas.

In which state(s)?

Most of the "Unorganized Borough" in Alaska has zero property taxes.

> Considering property taxes, do you really ever own your house?

Your basic point is correct. But, consider that a renter is also paying the property tax on behalf of the owner (+ some percentage profit), so you're always better off being the owner instead of paying it for someone else.

In theory you are hiring the government to protect your home.

Home rental is temporary too, and that’s one of the big benefits.

You're always going to live somewhere.

Moving is easier when you rent, but you still pay rent at the new place. The rent doesn't stop like in the case of tools or hotel rooms.

Some tenancies are temporary, and renting can be beneficial in those instances, but most tenancies involve occupants who permanently live in the area and would buy if it were financially feasible.

[citation needed]

I have no doubt there are plenty of people who rent permanently in an area but would rather own. But "most"?

Half of renters are under 40; according to one analysis, half of renters are young folks just looking for what they can afford in a place they're not sure they want to settle into yet: https://www.naahq.org/who-are-todays-renters

Granted all this is in the US, where homeownership rates hover around 65-66%. I sadly (happily?) don't know anything about the rent/own dynamics in places I have not lived.

By area, I mean a metropolitan area, and I think most residents of a metropolitan area at any given time have no active plan to leave that metropolitan area.

Yes, I understand what you mean, and I am disagreeing with you that “most” (as in > 50%) renters who have no active plan to leave a metro area would rather buy, but don’t because they can’t afford to. Some, sure. But doesn’t seem like it’s “most”.

Are you sure? Rent and mortgage are pretty similar per month but if you move every few years the home will cost you a lot more.

Moving has extra costs associated with it, but you still build equity. After ~30 years, you don't have to pay a mortgage anymore.

Any money you saved from renting better go straight into your IRA, because you're still going to be paying rent when you retire. 30 years of mortgage is a lot cheaper than 60 years of rent.

> most tenancies involve occupants who permanently live in the area and would buy if it were financially feasible.

What exactly do you mean by “if it were financially feasible”? Like yeah, if a mortgage were cheaper than rent, of course renters would do the cheaper thing.

I mean if they could afford it.

Human's are naturally short housing. Owning a home closes the short. We unfortunately don't have a suitable financial product to "own" shelter, but not be bound to a location.

I'm kinda surprised that a suitable contract for permanent fractionated ownership of an abstract housing unit which you can live in doesn't exist. Granted it's a complex set of incentives to balance.

You can invest in REITs that own residential property.

I can't live in a REIT.

It is called a citizen's dividend paid through land value taxes. It means everyone gets an equal share of land on the planet.

Even if you have plenty of money to just buy the apartments and houses you want to live in in Germany, you must pay a tax on the purchase which is effectively a tax that only owner occupiers who move frequently pay, which massively advantages long term landlords over owner occupiers.

Moving every 8 years means paying a lot of taxes if you want to own the property.

Agreed. It is a lot cheaper overall to buy used rather than renting something - especially when you plan to use it for years

Even ignoring things like renting skis, why do so many people rent their homes?

They are paying for a service. They don't want to worry about maintenance, they want to be able to move frequently, etc.

There are broad swaths of non-rural residential spaces which are zoned to excluded most mobile homes. These facts are part of what is driving the popularity of "Tiny Houses on Wheels".

Whenever my wife and I buy a piece of land, we always make sure to be certain that no mobile homes will be allowed anywhere near the borders.

Why?

One version I've heard is the concern that land value will decline if neighboring property turns into a kind of holding grounds for run-down, ill-maintained old trailers. It does seem like our vernacular in this space is ripe for change; perhaps "homes on wheels" is teasing open that door...

After living in a mobile home park for most of my childhood, I don’t want those kind of neighbors.

The folks that think it’s wise to spend $70k+ on a trailer are often the same folks who think it’s ok to have multiple broken down cars in the yard and/or multiple unfixed and unrestrained dogs running around and/or the worst of all: people who don’t see the irony of waving a Gadsden flag right next to their thin blue line flag.

I can confirm, just down the street there are two mobile homes. (Within less than a few minutes walking distance, before they were evicted, one of these homes had several instances of domestic violence, repeated calls to the animal control who on entering the house found several dogs days into starvation eating their own feces from hunger (they also would growl and bark at anyone attempting to walk or bike down the road). They were close enough that every so often we could hear the angry yelling for hours on end as the woman and her partner(s?) would fight. The other one, while quieter has approximately 3 unused vehicles, assorted junk, and lots of other good stuff dangerously close to spilling on to the neighbor territory, I'm living in a very rural state and can assure you this is the norm

I’m well aware that it’s the norm unfortunately. You could have just described any of my mothers numerous neighbors.

Your objection to the second neighbor is that he he has lots of his stuff inside the limits of his property?

Behaviors like this generally lowers property values, it's the reason most (all?) HOAs have rules against this among other things.

It’s a trade off.

One of the benefits of living in a rural area/area without HOA is that you can do many things that you wouldn’t be allowed to elsewhere.

One of the dangers is that your neighbors can do the same.

Is there any data/studies that proves that derelict properties actually drag down adjacent property values? My own anecdata and property valuation suggest otherwise, but I hear the property value line often enough that I would like to know if it’s true.

It does if it changes the character of the neighborhood which is a pretty tall bar to cross.

So if you are in a little subdivision and suddenly a yard sprouts cars and weeds, you may find your property prices affected.

But if half the properties are like that (or big enough you can’t see one from the next) probably won’t affect anything except that property itself.

If it reduces property values then it effects others

If it limits what someone can do with their own property than it affects others…

People generally like to have aesthetically pleasing views with their surroundings. Heaping piles of junk in a yard is considered unsightly by many, and often associated with other problems.

Shaming people because they don't want to live next to a scrap yard isn't helpful or appropriate.

Telling people what you find acceptable about the aesthetics of their home and property is the flip side of the same coin…

I don’t want to live next to a junkyard property, but I dislike restrictions on my property even less, so I choose to live in an area where I can do what I want, and my neighbors can do what they want.

If you have a dislike of “unsightly” properties, the solution is to live in a place where that is not allowed, not to try to impose your will on others who are living in a place where that is allowed.

Let’s be honest: it varies widely. There are parks with age restrictions: they tend to be okay. There are parks that do enforce their bylaws, including visual appearances, and they’re pretty good. A well-managed small park of newer double-wides and larger pads can be a nice place to live.

As with all housing, there are good neighbourhoods and bad. Hell, my in-law is in a nice millionaires neighbourhood and his immediate next-door neighbour is a swinging cokehead wife abuser who throws ragers every few months. It’s hell, but the properties are all freehold: short of a lawsuit, ain’t nothing to be done.

I shouldn't have specified "mobile home parks." In my personal experience, the people who buy plots of land and move mobile homes in are often worse than anything you'll find in a mobile home park.

The park I grew up in had some rules and regulations, but everything goes whenever you buy a plot of land out in the county.

Ah, yes, the infamous small acreage with an old, failing mobile home. I grew up in the wilds. Many of the people were not living in town for good reason. It was not an environment packed with high-functioning people. A lot of abusive families. A lot of hard-scrabble survival.

My family bought one of the very first lots in a new lake front property development way back in the 60s. After a very slow sale of these other lots in the development, the developer halved the size of the lots and opened them for mobile homes. The lots sold, the mobile homes moved in, and my family's property valued plummeted.

There were more than a few neighbors that fit the very stereotype you imagine, and they were the ones that lived there full time. Most of the direct neighbors were just weekenders (as were we).

That sounds like Lake Martin in Alabama.

sounds like a good outcome to me. more affordable housing and all it costs is a drop in the resale value of vacation homes, (that also comes with a drop in property taxes for those same vacation homes.)

Well, unless you're a sucker that saved whole life to buy that home and now half the value is worse and neighbourhood is shit...

But maybe we shouldn't let private companies decide on things like land usage in the first place...

Who has the right to live and move where is a problem older than humanity

older than humanity?

i guess in the sense that we aren’t the only animals to enforce territory. on the other hand we probably are the only animals to have conceived of “rights”.

I'd say a wolf has the right to eat a "visiting" wolf.

It's attitudes like this that have caused my wife and I to build our forever home in the middle of a a huge plot of land. The house will not be visible from the road and I'll be able to fire a gun in any direction without worrying about hitting anything or anyone. We've both grown weary of allowing our comfort to be dictated by neighbors and however they decide to behave on a particular day.

Talk to your lawyer - if you do it right you can use your Roth IRA to buy even more land outside that boundary as an “investment property”.

Concentrating your risk: the absolute opposite of investment diversity. The usual advice is to spread your risks with your retirement funds.

The goal isn't to use it as an investment, it is to abuse the Roth IRA rules to get a larger buffer.

A Roth IRA is a long term retirement investment for when you are 60. “A Roth IRA is an Individual Retirement Account to which you contribute after-tax dollars. While there are no current-year tax benefits, your contributions and earnings can grow tax-free, and you can withdraw them tax- and penalty-free after age 59½”.

For many people, their home and their retirement funds are their two biggest assets. If most of your retirement fund is tied up in real estate next door to your home, then the risk profiles are interlocked. That could be worthwhile for other benefits (avoiding bad neighbours), or because you want to chase the rewards of swinging for the fences (concentration also has the chance to win big), but that needs to be weighed up against the financial downside risks of severely concentrating your asset portfolio (a big loss on both the home property asset and retirement assets would be horrid for many people).

We’ve already bought the land fortunately. I’m just building up another nest egg before I start construction while I clear out a home site and improve it with trees and a road and such in the interim. We don’t take on debt so it’s going a bit slower than one would expect.

Don't make any modifications to the land until you are ready to build. I don't know what the full definition of "unimproved lot" would be, but clearing land for construction site, adding roads, etc definitely sound to me as improvements. Those improvements will have a not friendly affect on your taxes. If your plot is big enough, add the minimum number of head of some sort of animal to possibly qualify for ag exemptions.

Lots of games to be played that you might be unaware of to keep from slowing the growth of that nest egg.

Because in the extremely broken system we're living under, poor neighbors decrease land value.

Whenever I buy a piece of land, I make certain there are as few restrictions on the use of that land and that no NIMBYs or HOA types are anywhere near the borders.

I don't blame you. HOAs are the worst. I've never owned property with an HOA.

Then how do you ensure mobile homes are not allowed anywhere near you? Overly restrictive zoning areas? At any rate, many of my own family members have lived in trailers or currently do, and I'm rather disgusted by your comment above.

All of the land we’ve bought has included clauses from the sellers that require that no mobile homes are allowed to be visible from the road. It’s the community working together to keep things pleasant.

I grew up in a mobile home so I know firsthand what I’m trying to avoid.

I’m not responsible for your emotions. But if me sharing my opinion about living near a mobile home truly does disgust you, perhaps you’ve had enough internet for the day.

You shouldn’t allow me to have that kind of power over your mind. I’m just a stranger after all.

>You shouldn’t allow me to have that kind of power over your mind. I’m just a stranger after all.

You are actively seeking out legislation that imposes this "power over your mind".

You appear to be mind-reading. Deed restrictions and covenants aren’t legislation

Exactly. In California every county I've researched thus far prohibits living in a home on your own land that's not on a permanent foundation, unless there is a home under construction on that lot and the mobile home is merely temporary housing (if any of you know of any counties in California that don't prohibit this, please let me know). I've even looked at counties quite far from the populated metro areas, and I've encountered the same restrictions while reading their zoning laws. Even the jurisdictions that have allowed "tiny homes" typically only allow those on a permanent foundation and must be registered as ADUs (accessory dwelling units) and not as main properties on the lot.

I live in an apartment near Silicon Valley and would love to have a house with a garage for hobbies, but buying a house anywhere near the area in a safe location is prohibitively expensive for me; I'd have to go either deep in the Central Valley (think Fresno County and beyond), the Sierra Foothills, or the Mojave Desert to find affordable places.

Since you seem to have researched this, how does "permanent foundation" interface with the structure on top of it, legally?

I.e. what does zoning say if you pour a concrete slab, drop a mobile home on it, and then bolt the home down (for some definition of bolt)?

I'm not an expert on building codes, but here are my assumptions based on what I've read thus far regarding zoning for residential properties:

1. The structure built on top of the permanent foundation must comply with the building codes of the municipality that the permanent foundation is located in. This requires obtaining permit(s) before bolting the structure onto the foundation.

2. The municipal planning department will have some definition for what would be a legally permissible foundation and what constitutes "bolting down."

There are many companies that specialize in the building of mobile and manufactured homes that are compliant with state- and local-level building codes. But it's very important that people do their proverbial homework, making sure that the mobile/manufactured home does truly comply with the regulations of the intended permanent location.

That tracks. My understanding is that part of the genesis of mobile homes was the industry lobbying for exclusions to residential building codes "because mobile homes are mobile." So I'd expect any mobile home (read: excluding prefab or factory-built) would fail a standard code check.

The city of Oakland recently legalized tiny houses on wheels.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/eastbay/article/Oakland-legalize...

It seems to me this is an issue with how we approach this kind of housing, rather than an inherent issue with this housing. For example we could use community land trusts to hold land in a not for profit organization to provide land for mobile housing. A big part of the problem you are describing is a problem with landlords, not with the housing.

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