The Manufactured Home Buyer's Handbook

By Wes Johnson

This handbook details the steps the shopper must follow when buying a manufactured home. It offers advice on choosing a dealership, negotiating with sales people, understanding mortgage options, avoiding common trouble spots in setup and delivery, and customizing the new home. Included as an appendix are the addresses of the state agencies dealing with consumer concerns about manufactured housing.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786422092
• ISBN13: 9780786422098
• Release Date: September 2005
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Length: 236 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Must Read Guide Written for Consumers, by a Consumer

Currently a renter, I am starting to think about buying a home in the next few years. As such, I'm in the beginning stages of examining all my options, including manufactured, modular, and stick-built new home construction. I've pored over a number of home buying and construction guides over the past six months, but unfortunately, there are few books that deal solely with manufactured homes. Thus, I was ecstatic to learn of THE MANUFACTURED HOME BUYER'S HANDBOOK by Wes Johnson. Given the lack of consumer guides to manufactured housing, THE MANUFACTURED HOME BUYER'S HANDBOOK truly does fill a void in the existing literature. THE MANUFACTURED HOME BUYER'S HANDBOOK is a must-read consumer's guide to the ins and outs of buying a manufactured home. The author outlines the process of purchasing a manufactured home from start to finish. He covers every facet imaginable, including shopping around for the right home; selecting a reputable dealer; customizing your home to order; bargaining for the best price; financing your purchase; overseeing the construction and setup of your home; and dealing with any problems that may arise along the way. Throughout the book, Mr. Johnson maintains a good-natured but cautionary tone, resulting in an informative and enjoyable read. Unlike many comparable books, THE MANUFACTURED HOME BUYER'S HANDBOOK is written for consumers, by a fellow consumer. Wes Johnson doesn't work in construction, nor is he a salesperson for a manufactured home dealership. Rather, his knowledge of the industry comes from his experiences shopping for and purchasing his own home. As a result, he doesn't sugarcoat the shortcomings of the manufactured home industry. Not all of his experiences were pleasant, and Mr. Johnson is frank and open about the obstacles he faced - as well as the ways in which he triumphed over dishonest salespeople, sub par construction, and careless setup crews. While some of the information in THE MANUFACTURED HOME BUYER'S HANDBOOK might discourage consumers from investing in a manufactured home, this is a good thing - manufactured homes aren't for everyone. Instead of trying to push a particular product on readers, the author offers ALL the facts, good and bad, to help you make the choice that's right for you. This is perhaps the book's biggest strength - Wes Johnson is an advocate for you, the consumer, as opposed to home manufacturers or dealers. THE MANUFACTURED HOME BUYER'S HANDBOOK is divided into fourteen chapters, each of which deals with a different aspect of the process: Doing Your Homework; Custom Ordering Your New Home; Illustration of a Customization; Dealing with Salespeople; The Devil Is in the Details: Responsibilities and Contracts; Cases from the Manufactured Housing Board; Who Owns the Bank?: Financing; The Walk-Through(s); Solid Foundations; The Setup; Final Analysis; When Things Go Wrong; Indoor Air Quality; and Making Your House a Home. The author also includes several appendices: Samp

This Book Saved Our Bacon!

Saving our bacon is the nicest way I know to put it. This handbook told how to check your marriage wall studs before your home is assembled, and we found our support studs were broken in half! Our new home was seriously defective despite all the promises about wonderful quality. Thanks to this book, we were able to get a replacement home ordered! Without it, we wouldn't have even caught most of our problems until it was too late.

The Best Investment You Can Make

If you're shopping for a manufactured home, The Manufactured Home Buyer's Handbook is absolutely the best book investment you'll ever make in your life. Don't set foot on a dealer's lot without it! It will walk you through the entire process, and tells the real story behind the manufactured housing industry and HUD. It also goes on in detail about how financing and insurance differs from that offered by traditional housing. What you don't know really CAN hurt you! Without this thorough and well written guide, my wife and I would have probably made the biggest financial mistake of our lives. With it, we got a really great deal on a good home. We estimate we saved over $15,000 on the price of our double-wide, and by the time financing is considered (not only are we saving the interest we would have had to pay on that $15,000, but because of the book we also found a lower rate) we easily saved over $50,000 altogether. I can't recommend The Manufactured Home Buyer's Handbook highly enough!

Terrific Book

This was just a terrific book. Expected it to be boring because of the subject matter, but it wasn't. It was actually very easy to read and often humorous. The energy efficiency tips alone made the book worth reading. This book is filled with great tips throughout, and has a lot of unexpected information! We think we'll save a lot of money on our new home now. The [...]There are descriptions of all the chapters.

By Far the Best Consumer Book on the Subject

I've read 3 books on how to purchase a manufactured home and browsed through several more because I heard there were a number of tricks and problems you needed to be aware of. This is the best book by far! We've been shopping for our home for several weeks now, and have seen example after example from the book come to life, only in many cases we wouldn't have recognized what was really going on without the book. We'll save thousands of dollars on the price of our home and on financing (I thought Burnside's book was worthless in this regard). It's laid out logically, just as the customer goes through the entire process, they can follow it in the book. It's also very well researched and well illustrated. The chapter on the home's setup is a little frightening, but we can't wait to check our new home against the potential list of problems listed there in Chapter 10 to see if our home is really built the way we were promised it would be. Apparently, frequently you don't get what you pay for with manufactured housing. This book is worth its weight in gold, don't buy a manufactured home without it!