Land that had a Repo'd Mobile Home

Every once in awhile you run across land that has had a home on it in the past but it has been removed. Sometimes a house burns down but usually it is a mobile home that has been moved. Since these properties have all utilities already on site, they are usually popular.

Mobile homes are frequently foreclosed on and lenders use this as an excuse to tighten up lending on them. One of the reasons is that mobiles don’t usually appreciate in value, usually it is the land only. So if a person buys a stick built house and runs into problems making payments, if they have lived in the house for a few years the equity should protect them. But often with a mobile there is no equity, especially when the person bought the mobile new off the lot on a zero down loan.

But what is the story of the people who used to live there? This particular piece of land is in Roy, Washington. It used to have a mobile on it. Well they wanted to sell in 2000. They had it on the market at $124,900. It didn’t sell, so they switched brokers. It still didn’t sell. So they took it off the market and lived there a few more years.

2004 rolled around and they were having problems making payments. They put it up for sale at $129,000 with no takers. So they switched brokers. Then it was on the market for over a year and still didn’t sell, even though the agent wrote “seller motivated” in the marketing remarks. Then they got foreclosed on and the bank came and took their home away.

They purchased under a land contract and the seller ended up with the land back.

I’m guessing that the amount of money they were asking was the amount just to get them out of the place free and clear as it was a pretty consistent amount over the 5 years.

I’ve never met a person who has a mobile home that has said that they thought about resale value when they bought it. I bet it sure looked nice in the showroom. A person should always think about resale value because you never know what will happen to you in the future that could affect your ability to make the payment.

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Mobile Home Foreclosure