Apartment vs. Mobile Home Living?

The problem with apartment ratings is that the only time people think to do them is when they’re really pissed off.
When shopping, ask, “what day do you do pest control and how often can I have my apartment serviced?”
Ask, “how many units do you have and how many full time maintenance people do you have?” you might even ask if you can meet the maintenance staff.
You might want to ask what their turn over rate is. You will throw them for a loop, but knowing how long the average resident stays can tell you a lot about the management. Ask if they have a policy about how quickly they turn over maintenance requests.
Finally, you could knock on a few doors. Ask people if they like living there and how responsive the management is.
Apartment living gets a bad rap, but it can really be great if the management and maintenance staff are good. I have talked to plenty of homeowners who wish they had a manager they could call when the garbage disposal went out or the roof leaked, when the pool needed cleaning and the lawn mowed.

I have never had any problems living in an apartment, except once my husband picked it out without me, and I told him not to get an apartment facing the highway (I knew the complex was right next to the interstate) and he did get a unit facing the road. The noise from the road while sleeping, should say trying to sleep, was very bad. But, the place overall was great, and so has been all the other apartments I have lived in, probably about 5 or 6 different ones over my lifetime. Where I live now the apartments have better ammenities than houses. Community pool, free internet access, gym, etc.

If the apartment is safe and in a good location I think it can be better than a mobile home. It really depends on a lot of factors though. My assumption, which could be completely wrong, is you are less likely to find people pursuing their college degree living in a mobile home, and so your neighbors might be more similar to you in terms of interests and experience in an apartment, especially if the apartments are near campus.

Sounds like your particular landlord is negligent. There are probably good mobile home landlords and there are good apartment landlords. And bad ones.
That said, due to the typical demographics of mobile home complexes and apartments a larger apartment complex may be more likely to be civilized and to be run professionally.

Thanks for the responses. Now I’m just worried about the money situation. I know all the rules about ⅓ of your income and I’ve used rent calculators that all say we can afford $750 rent (and most say we can afford $1000, but I’m assuming that includes utilities?). Right now we pay $500 for rent AND he’s got an extra $400/month medical bill that we’ll be paying off before we move. We’re doing alright, but money is tighter than we’d like it.

Here’s a breakdown of our monthly bills as they’ll be when we would move:

Car Payment – $233
Phone – $100
Medical Bills – $145
Insurance – $230
Gas – $400
Groceries – $600
Electric – $120
Cable – $130

The cable and electric are just guesses. The cable amount is how much we pay now, but it would go down if the apartment complex already offers wi-fi, and we could live with less channels as long as we’ve got our DVR. As for electric, we’re paying more than $120/month now by far because the mobile home is bigger than an apartment and the A/C unit pretty much sucks and can’t keep up with the South Carolina heat. It runs all day and we end up paying $250+ per month for it.

Everything else is pretty permanent and I made sure to round up on things like groceries and gas just to make certain it’s all accounted for. All of that, including the rent of $750, adds up to $2708. Right now we bring about $3400 home per month. So we could do it easily, and we’d have about $175 per week extra. I guess that’s alright, but it doesn’t seem like much. However, he’s working 60 hours per week now, which is why he brings home that much. His job has no immediate plans to cut their hours to 40, but I’m worried what we’d do if that happened. That would bring our income down to less than our monthly bills. He makes $18.23/hour, but they kill him in taxes. My husband says not to worry about it because he’ll always have overtime, but I can’t help but be concerned.

Thoughts on this?

I have never lived in a mobile home, but as someone who has lived in both apartments and houses, I can tell you that the nice thing about living in a house (and this would apply to a mobile home, I think) is that you have more privacy and also, don’t have to worry about bothering neighbors or neighbors bothering you as much. I have had a few apartments, they were all very nice with nice amenities and nice neighbors, and yet in one, the neighbors upstairs would do things like drag chairs across the floors early in the morning (until I told them please don’t or consider purchasing rugs) and in another, I was vacuuming around 11 am and the neighbor next door knocked on my door and angrily told me that she worked all night and this is her time to sleep. In a house, these things are not issues.

Did you tell the landlord that your refrigerator is a constant issue? Maybe he would let you buy a new one and take it off the rent. If it’s really bad, and you have a place to store the old one, you can buy a new one, and store the old one somewhere, and when you move out, put the old one back in and take the new one with you or sell it.

@jca We can’t afford to buy a new refrigerator. My dad actually sells used ones, but we don’t feel as if we should have to buy one when it’s the landlord’s responsibility to take care of this. If it’s not his responsibility, we might as well be buying. And yes, we’ve told him several times about the leak. He has taken a strong liking to my husband and for the longest time had him doing free labor in his other properties (laying floors, repairs, etc) until Josh told him he simply didn’t have time to do that anymore. So, I think he feels that we should take care of the problem on our own. But, if we were to sell this one to my dad and buy another one, and then go to him about being reimbursed for the difference, he’d have an issue paying it. He’s very cheap. When we had to have those repairs done after the leak under the house was discovered, they got the cheapest labor they could and the landlord convinced my husband to get his uncle to lay the floors for really cheap. If we ever brought up the A/C issue with them, I know for certain it would never get fixed, which is why we haven’t. Anything to save a few bucks. So we just deal with it and put a towel under there to soak it up. That’ll probably ruin the towel, but what’s $10 over a few hundred?

@livelaughlove21 Your roster of what things cost monthly is much more important than basic rules of thumb like ⅓ income. Also, that rule varies where you live. I think the only thing missing from your estimates, and I don’t expect you to disclose it, is what you already have in savings for a rainy day. Since your expenses are lower now than if you were in the apartment, that means you should be able to save, or have been saving, a nice little bit before the move to make you feel more comfortable.

I think you would love apartment living. If you are in a newer building with energy efficient appliances and windows I bet your utility bills would be less than you expect. If you have a deteriorating refrigerator and AC then I bet those two power suckers are taking WAY more juice than modern ones would. I’m biased towards apartments since I own them.

@Judi makes great points. $120 a month electric bill for an apartment sounds high to me. You can maybe get estimates from the apartment complex. Do you live in a very cold climate?

I would check out some apartment complexes in the area if I were you. You might be thrilled at what you see. You will probably see some really nice, spacious modern ones. Try to find one with on-site parking, as it is convenient.

@JLeslie No, I live in a very HOT climate. South Carolina. Easily 105 degrees with 99% humidity in August.

@JLeslie, I don’t know if that’s high for SC or not. Here in central ca that rate can be expected or even more in the summertime. Last month it was over $500 for my little 1600 sf house.
I just think that @livelaughlove21 is going to be thrilled when she gets away from her slumlord and finds a proactive management company eager to keep her happy.

@livelaughlove21: I bet with the window units running 24/7, and a mobile home not being energy efficient, what you pay for energy is probably average compared to your neighbors.

@Judi Well, in climates that have extreme season change winter utility is way way more expensive than summer, unless heat is included in the rent. Charleston would only have maybe two months of cold winter months. Of course each supplier of utilities charges different rates around the country, my guess is Charleston is less expensive than places in California, but not necessarily.

I agree with you, I think she will be happier in an apartment, as long as the apartment is not owned by a slumlord as well and not in a dangerous part of town. I tried not to be very blunt in my first answer, I was afraid of offending someone, sounding like a snob, or being condescending.

@jca We don’t have window units. We have central air. The insulation just sucks.

So, I have some exciting news!

My husband’s uncle is a loan officer at a local mortgage company and he ran my husband’s credit. He got us approved for a $140,000 loan at a 3.5% fixed interest rate (30 years) and even found us an amazing house that’s two stories, 4BD/2.5BA, with a community pool in a really nice subdivision. He says that, including homeowner’s insurance/taxes/etc, our monthly payments would be around $750.

We’re trying not to get too excited, because it seems too good to be true. But his uncle seems to think we’d have no problem buying a home and affording the mortgage payments, even when it’s only my husband working (he worked out the figures using my husband’s base income, no overtime).

So, we’ll see! If it all works out, we may be homeowners soon.

@livelaughlove21 That’s exciting! Just beware the taxes sometimes go up, because the house in many counties gets reassessed when in changes owners. Also, you will need down payment money, I assume you have saving for that. And, closing costs can be more than estimated, the lender needs to give you a good faith estimate, but if he does not have a closing date they usually estimate using the 15th of the month, so if you close much earlier or much later in the month the amount can change several hundred dollars.

Also, if there is a community pool there must be some sort of maintenance fee for the community, so check into that. A bigger house will mean bigger utility bills. But, you will get a little bit of a tax break with the mortgage and property taxes.

Again, the only person who can really know if you can afford it is you and your husband. The bank tells you what you can be approved for, but that is not the same as what you can afford always. But, it does sound very very promising! It doesn’t sound to good to be true, but I would maybe look at some more houses before you decide for sure? Unless this one really feels just right, then go for it.

@JLeslie We’re actually going to end up using a nice chunk of our savings to pay off a credit card. His uncle told us that would bring his score from 635 to 650, and as long as it is 640 we can get 100% financing. So that would take care of the down payment, and he said he could waive the closing costs as well. Yes, I think the fee for the pool is $300 per year, so we’ll need to find out when that is due. We’re going to look at the house tonight and we’re told that if we make an offer now, the paperwork would hold off the closing until mid-August. And the first payment wouldn’t start until a month later, bringing us to mid-September, and the payment cycle begins on the first, so we could move in around August but our first mortgage payment wouldn’t be until October. That would be a huge help to us so we can get my husband’s other medical bill paid and save all the money we possibly can before we have to start paying.

I know the smart thing to do is to look at more houses. It’s just that I used to drive through this neighborhood just to look at the houses and I always said I wished I could live there. It’s basically my dream house, and my husband fell in love with it as soon as he looked at the pictures. If it doesn’t feel 100% right after everything is laid out for us, we’ll keep looking or maybe wait to buy a house as originally planned. Even if we love it, the owners may not accept our offer. The original listing price was $180K, it’s down to $150K, and we’d offer $130K in the hopes that we could get it at or under $140K. The house has been on the market for two years, the owners are out of state, and they just want to get rid of it. I just figure if we were going to spend $750/month either way, it might as well go toward a house we’ll own as opposed to an apartment.

I’ve still got reservations as far as money, but everyone seems to think we can do it, including my husband, and starting in December I’ll be working part time (right now I’m not working at all), and I’ll do whatever it takes to make it happen. I’m just a worrier, always have been. But maybe it’ll all work out. We shall see.

@livelaughlove21: That sounds very exciting.

My advice is just to look at a few other houses, even if you love this house, just to see what’s out there. It can’t hurt.

Please post an update as to how things work out for you. It does sound very thrilling. Best of luck to you both!

JCA
The Update Lady

@livelaughlove21 It all sounds very good to me. If you know the neighborhood I completely understand why you don’t feel much of a need to look around at other houses. There will be other costs you don’t expect, like paying for a house inspection and his uncle is waving his closing costs, but there are others that probably are not being waved. There are closing costs associated with the loan, and also closing costs associated with buying the house. The first payment on the mortgage is not due until October, but that is because the earlier payments are paid during closing, which I am sure your uncle is not covering, he is probably just waving his own fees. Or, maybe he is covering it as a gift, that gift is a quite a bit of money though.

I am not trying to be negative, I think it sounds like a great idea, and from what you have written I believe you can make it work. You obviously think these things through and are careful with your money, if the numbers work I say go for it, some of my happiest times have been setting up a new house with my husband with all our things and making it our home.

Do update us. Wishing you all the best :).

JLeslie is right. There are costs associated with buying a house that first time buyers sometimes get upset about. When they hear, “no closing costs” from a lender, they don’t realize that does not include escrow and title fees. Escrow companies have gotten really creative in thinking up things to charge for lately.

Here’s a little update on what’s been going on for the last few days. Thanks to @JLeslie and @Judi for the information about additional costs. You’re right, we were completely ignorant about all of that. We made a list of questions, did some research online, and sat down to speak with my husband’s uncle.

He told us that the $750 per month would include all taxes, insurance, etc. and so we wouldn’t have to worry about the house payment going up. He ran our stuff again and got an even lower interest rate, 3.25%, and locked it in for us. That’s 30 year fixed by the way.

He is waiving the origination fee and incorporating many other closing costs into the loan itself. He said he’s estimating that our out-of-pocket costs would be less than $500, which is definitely doable. This would include the appraisal fee and inspection fee.

We looked at the house I mentioned and it actually went into foreclosure a few days ago. That seemed to be a whole new headache and it would take probably 30 days just to see it and make an offer. It wasn’t all we thought it was either. So, we looked at three other houses, one of which is in the same neighborhood that I love. It’s brand new, comes with a 10 year structural warranty, 2 year plumbing/electrical warranty, and the standard 1 year warranty for everything. It’s listed at $139,900 but was appraised at $162,000.

We’re working with a realtor that’s very close to my husband’s uncle and she’s trying to get us the best deal we possibly can. She says she knows the builders/realtor and can get us a few extras OR get the price dropped. But we have decided, after looking at a couple other ones, that this is the one we want. We fell in love with it, and you just can’t beat that warranty. Now we’re just waiting on the realtor to get back with us probably tomorrow evening to discuss the details. She says that, if everything goes as planned, we can be in that house in 30 days.

We’ve decided to move in with my parents at the end of this month until the closing date. That way, we can save as much money as possible in case the out-of-pocket expenses are more than what we were told. My husband is working weekends to save extra money and we’re going to sell some of our unwanted stuff too.

Hopefully within a week we’ll have the ball officially rolling. I’m really excited and hopeful that everything will work out as planned.

Congratulations!!
I don’t know about your area, but here, new homes don’t usually include the back yard landscaping. If your realtor is negotiating extras, and that’s not included you might want to ask. Some people don’t get around to doing it themselves for years.
Also, double check how your state does property taxes. Here in California it is tied to the purchase price, but in most places its tied to the value. If the value goes up the taxes to up. Probably not more than you would expect rent increases to go up, but I would hate for you to get upset with your husbands uncle if the payments went up and you didn’t fully understand how the property taxes work on your area.

@Judi The backyard is already done. The extras we’re wanting are blinds, a refrigerator (a stove, dishwasher, and above-range microwave are already included), and ceiling fans in the living room and master bedroom. And I’ll be sure to ask his uncle about the taxes. As long as it waits for the new year to go up, we’ll be fine. By then I’ll be working again. Part time, but anything will help.

Our realtor knows a guy that lives in that subdivision that does fencing (live and security) and she said she’d tell him to look out for us and even said he’d put fencing around our yard for dirt cheap. I guess having connections pays off sometimes. :)

Oh, another thing. My husband is going to move up his exemptions on his W-4 from 1 to 2 since we’re married and I’m dependent on his income. So, he’ll be getting more per check, which is good considering they take out nearly 33% of his check in taxes and insurance. And we’re excited about the tax break that comes with owning a home.

I agree with @Judi you can’t count on property taxes not going up. What county and state are you in? If you don’t want to say, you can google for yourself the property appraiser, sometimes called property assessor for your county and state. The official government site, not some private appraiser trying to get business, and learn how property taxes are calcuated in your county and how often they are typically reassessed. Since the house is being appraised higher than your sales price it might work against you; although, I doubt the county would appraise higher than the purchase price the first few years.

Hi, @livelaughlove21 that’s terrific that you have a great solution developing !

Don’t get too excited about the “tax break that comes with owning a home.”
The deduction is better than a sharp stick in the eye, for sure ! But you get it only because of the expenses of mortgage interest and real estate taxes, which you don’t pay currently.

The amount your income taxes will reduce is not the same amount as mortgage interest and real estate tax, it’s only the same percent of those as your income tax rate. You’ll pay less on income tax but more than that goes out the door for the mortgage interest and real estate tax. With any luck you’ve already figured that out &/or have been advised thoroughly about it, and are fully aware of all the financial implications of owning a home.

Anyhow, welcome to the great adventure of home ownership. I hope everything falls into place for it to work smoothly and that you find it practically and personally rewarding.

@JLeslie Property is reassessed in my state every five years. From my understanding, the assessed value is the fair market price multiplied by “the appropriate corresponding ratio.” 4% of that value multiplied by the millage rate (the example given was .256) is the amount of yearly property taxes due. A friend of my husband’s just bought a $180,000 brand new home in the same county and pays about $700/year in taxes. Our house was appraised at less and we were estimated at $750/year, so I don’t see why it would go up before we buy the house. I know property taxes can go up as the years go on, but in five years when it’s reassessed, I’ll have graduated from college and we’ll easily be able to afford a higher tax rate.

And something you said confuses me. “Since the house is being appraised higher than your sales price..” Aren’t all homes sold at or below the appraised value? If the house is appraised at lower than the sales price, I was under the impression that they won’t allow you to buy it at that price – or it opens up a can of worms in some way.

@livelaughlove21 The county appraiser will appraise it and then the millage rate (the percentage you mentioned) will be applied. Houses very often sell very very close to the appraised value. It does need to appraise for the same or higher toget your mortgage, that’s probably what you are talking about and that is correct.

Who, or which appraiser is your realtor going by? Why was the house already appraised?

I do agree the county will most likely use the sales price, and if they only adjust things every 5 years you’re doing ok. When you buy the house cheaper than the others have been selling, you wil bring down the appraisals for the neighborhood slightly most likely. Unless the neighborhood sells a lot of houses in a short period of time if it is 3 every six months, your house will become one of the three now used to figure appraised values.

@JLeslie It was appraised because it was just built. We’re having it appraised again, of course, and that’s the one the realtor will use. Our appraisal fee was actually waived, which was pretty cool. The neighborhood is fairly new and growing rapidly, so I’d assume they do sell quite a bit in short periods of time. The house next to the one we’re buying is nearly done and being sold as we speak. And there are 2–3 more lots around ours where houses will be built soon.The average selling price of the houses in that neighborhood is actually a bit higher than the price we’re buying ours. It was a “Great American” special that was going on for the month of July.

@livelaughlove21: It sounds like a great house in a nice neighborhood. I think it seems like a place you’ll really enjoy living.

@jca I hope so. I’m still expecting something to go wrong. It always seems to work that way with us, so I tried not to get too excited about the house yet. Yeah, didn’t work. :) I’m ready to move in tomorrow.

@livelaughlove21 I am a little confused, but I am not trying to be challenging. Just to be sure you don’t get a surprise, the only appraisal that counts is one done by a licensed appraiser. The appraisal doesn’t much matter for the realtor, and I would think she would stuff a high appraisal in a folder after showing it to you, since a high appraisal would work agaist your power to negotiate down a price. Not that the realtor is doing anything shady, she has no obligation to show it to the other realtor or builder. The only people very concerned about the appraisal is the mortgage company.

Any “apprasial” done by a realtor is not an appraisal. That is just a comparative market analysis. I have never heard of a house being appraised just because it was recently built. But, maybe in some parts of the country they do that.

@JLeslie That was just a mistake on my part. I didn’t mean realtor, I meant lender. We’ve already made the offer on the house and it’s been accepted, so there’s really no more negotiation to be done on the purchase price. We got it down to $138,500 (from $139,900) with quite a few extras thrown in that were not included in the original price (blinds throughout, refrigerator, ceiling fans, etc). The appraisal is being scheduled by our lender, who is my husband’s uncle. Our realtor is a close friend of his. We were given the original appraisal value, or at least that’s what they called it, of $162,000 by the builder of the home when we were looking at it, but another appraisal is being done during the closing process.

@livelaughlove21 Well, it certainly sounds like congratulations are in order! Very exciting. This sounds like a much better choice than “apartment vs. mobile home.” Funny how everything changed so fast. Let us know when you are all moved in and settled.

@JLeslie, there may have been some sort of appraisal done for construction financing, or, if it has been vacant a while some sort of transition financing.
I agree though, the only appraisal that matters is the one that the lender orders. I like that the lender no longer gets to choose their appraiser. (At least here in CA.) They are assigned at random.
I agree that the new appraisal will doubtfully come in higher than the offer because it can’t be worth more than someone is willing to pay. That’s ok and normal @livelaughlove21

@Judi I hadn’t thought of the constructions financing. Good point.