Expanding the house search... manufacturered?

curtis73 wrote: YES. I love it. I think I can accomplish this with an existing structure. If I could find a big space and build a small living area in one end, or partially loft some of it, I would be so happy.

What about older commercial buildings that could be converted? Small warehouses, old mills, stables, old theaters or churches all seem like good candidates. Around me, it's not uncommon to see them sit as an empty shell that could be ripe for an appropriate floor plan. A firehouse would be about perfect I'd think.

I guess we're drifting away from the Modular stuff though.

STM317 wrote:

curtis73 wrote: YES. I love it. I think I can accomplish this with an existing structure. If I could find a big space and build a small living area in one end, or partially loft some of it, I would be so happy.

What about older commercial buildings that could be converted? Small warehouses, old mills, stables, old theaters or churches all seem like good candidates. Around me, it's not uncommon to see them sit as an empty shell that could be ripe for an appropriate floor plan. A firehouse would be about perfect I'd think. I guess we're drifting away from the Modular stuff though.

Drifting is fine.

I have found a few candidates for commercial space, but there are some big drawbacks. There is a huge church for sale in downtown Harrisburg for $150k, and an old HVAC shop in Dillsburg for $149k. Problem is, they both have taxes nearing 5 digits per year, banks won't help me finance without about 50% down, and I don't even want to think about how much it would cost to replace a roof on a church when it goes.

Plus, the HVAC shop I think is zoned industrial, which means no living in it. Zoning is of course different in each town, but generally speaking I can live in up to C2. Technically I can live in C3 or C4, but only if it is multi-family housing like an apartment complex.

There is one fire station that was rezoned residential and its only about 4 blocks from work. Its not for sale, and the last sale was in 2008 for something like $500k.

Church for sale

HVAC shop for sale

In reply to curtis73:

Yep - zoning is the big problem there. And while you can sometimes get buildings rezoned, a large structure like that will usually get zoned as multi-tenant building, not a single owner residence. Keep in mind, the zoning board is looking at any change from a tax-income POV.

Now, depending on the building, that could work. You take the ground floor for an apartment/garage/shop and refit the upper floors into apartments. Maybe even refit the street face as offices or retail if the location is right. Of course, if this were easy/profitable to do to a particular location, a developer with much deeper resources would have likely done it already.

I have a modular, its a two piece. My father adn I are a GC, we tried one to start and have done 7 or 8 now. One was 8 moduals.

Modern modular buildings are very well built. They are built to the same building codes as every other building in the area they are installed in. But they are generally stiffer, they need to be transported, and picked up by a crane without falling apart. Often LVL's or doubled rims are used, there is a bit of wasted space at wall connections as they are double thick, and same at floor lines as you need both a ceiling and floor system.

I would happily do modular again, its quick, house stays dry, and are good quality. I think i had a "build thread" for my house on GRM somewhere. My house was built by Guerdon , but they only do commercial stuff now.

I just fund this yesterday, thats my house going in.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/ApcF7taYMaE

In reply to curtis73:

I'd be looking for Ag zoning if I were you.

Regarding AG zoning, it can limit your financing options, as some banks won't lend for properties zoned agricultural. The ones that I spoke with that were comfortable financing the land did so at a higher interest rate. This of course affects you with the original purchase, but can also scare away potential buyers down the line.

In reply to STM317:

Which only matters if you are building a residence.

Curtis has a large down payment, is willing to live in a double wide, and only actually cares about the barn. That's an Ag buyer, and anything he does to the property would still be attractive to future Ag buyers.

He could do what he wants with the property without code enforcement interference, even generate revenue. The land won't decrease in value, and he could later decide if he wanted to sell his double wide with the property, or move it.

Everything he wants to do would be seen as decreasing property values in residential or commercial zoning.

Ag zoning.

Agreed on the Ag zoning for the use reasons, just not the price reasons. Ag zoned land usually gets bid up by Amish cash buyers around here, or kept for leasing.

I will keep my eyes peeled, though. Last one I saw was 1.3 acres with no road front, no sewer, no septic, no water, won't perk, no electric for $47k. Not really a bargain when I can find 1 acre in town with a livable house and 2-car garage for not much more than that.

In reply to curtis73:

Wow. That's crazy. Good usable Ag land sells all day for about $1600 per acre. As much as you want.

... although, if that really is the going rate, it would still hold its value. 1 acre is all you really need, and a 50% down payment should secure a land loan. $5K would buy a clean used RV, which would leave you $30k for a shop.

You'd have about $25k financed, and the ability to move at will.

In reply to SVreX:

Stop filling my head with good ideas

Yeah, I just checked again. If I plug in a search or 1/2+ acres of land and a max price of $25k, it turns up three properties in a 50 mile radius.

1/2 acre for $35k
.98 acres for $48k
2.2 acres for $80k, but its 40 miles away.

Seems to be about $50k/acre unless you go 100 miles out in the sticks. I had tried to buy THIS HOUSE on one acre for $63k, and immediately adjacent to it is a 1 acre vacant plot for $47k. My thought was to finance the house and pay cash for the property, but the house went under contract before I could make an offer.

SVreX wrote: In reply to curtis73: Wow. That's crazy. Good usable Ag land sells all day for about $1600 per acre. As much as you want.

Semi-interested. Is that a local listing thing? Or is the internet of some utility?

In reply to SVreX:

I wasn't arguing that it's a bad fit. Just wanted to lay it all out there so Curtis can decide if he's willing to go that route or not.

If I could get land for $1600/acre, I'd probably be buying it up pretty quickly. Around me (rural Midwest), anything moderately sized and priced below about $10k/acre seems to sell pretty quickly. In some cases, really large lots (100+ acres) in undesirable locations can drop closer to $5k/acre. A wise-ish old man once told me "They make more people every day, but they're not making anymore land."

In reply to STM317:

I look at the rising cost of tillable ground vs. the plummeting home prices in small towns, and expect that in the coming decades we'll see some communities razed and converted back into fields. It's been happening with older farmsteads for over a decade.

SVreX wrote: In reply to curtis73: Wow. That's crazy. Good usable Ag land sells all day for about $1600 per acre. As much as you want.

It depends on where you are. Where he lives in PA, there's not only competition from the Amish, but also rich folk from DC and MD who will buy farms for investment and as weekend get-a-ways. The lower taxes drives up the values. Hell, there are some who live near Harrisburg and commute to Baltimore.

I've had similar dreams, but more in the Poconos/Lehigh Valley area. However, open land values are starting to go up there as well for much the same reasons. The difference being the buyers are from NYC.

STM317 wrote: In reply to SVreX: I wasn't arguing that it's a bad fit. Just wanted to lay it all out there so Curtis can decide if he's willing to go that route or not. If I could get land for $1600/acre, I'd probably be buying it up pretty quickly. Around me (rural Midwest), anything moderately sized and priced below about $10k/acre seems to sell pretty quickly. In some cases, really large lots (100+ acres) in undesirable locations can drop closer to $5k/acre. A wise-ish old man once told me "They make more people every day, but they're not making anymore land."

Yup, $10k here if you are buying parcels. No one sells one acre, or really less than ten.

Usually one acre stays under the radar in Ag zoning around here, but its almost always no perk, no utilities, and no road front, so to get all of the above plus right-of-way is cost prohibitive.

Anything over 2 acres of Ag land is priced to sucker in big-city developers. They'll pay $150k for a couple acres, then build 6 or 8 houses on them and sell them for $400k each.

There is one of these about a mile from my current house. 3 acres started being developed into houses. You had the option of buying the land and bringing your own builder. A 1/8 acre lot was $145k.

mtn wrote: Add dormer windows and a custom built porch and it makes it hard to tell it isn't stick built. Not sure that that will help the resale or not.

Rule of thumb is that the less it looks like it's ready to be towed off on a semi truck, the less it will lose value. Something that can pass for stick built both inside and out - particularly if it doesn't have that characteristic low pitched roof or pasteboard interior walls - may still decrease in value, but not as much as something that is obviously a double wide. A far end example of manufactured housing would be the Sears catalog homes - as near as I can tell, those don't carry a resale penalty at all.

I did one summer job as a data entry clerk at a loan office that specialized in manufactured housing loans. Never saw an application for buying a used modular home, but most used double or single wide homes depreciated like Dodge Calibers. Of course, that also means that a used mobile home, if properly maintained, will have less value to lose in absolute numbers.

One other thing to point out here that I just realized: My grandpas vacation place sold for $190k on the water in 2009. It had 3 buildings--2 car garage with apartment, modular home, and 1 BR cabin. Basically think of it as a modular home with a garage and another sleeping quarter cabin. Dad just bought a place 500 yards away this year. Cost? $190k. It has a brick house with two car garage, 40x60 out building, and a "shed"--1 car garage basically. Functionally very, very similar places. Dads place NEEDED to have everything redone (not liveable). Grandpas place "needs" to have everything redone.

The point here? The value is in the land, not the building. The value in the land is in the location. Location, location, location.

Huh, I feel like I've heard that before.

The part that gets me is taxes. Every now and then, my hour-plus commute gets to me and I start looking at houses closer to work in NJ. While the actual prices don't bother me too much for the properties I'm looking at, it's the idea of paying twice as much or more in property taxes that quickly make my commute more tolerable.

Ian F wrote: The part that gets me is taxes. Every now and then, my hour-plus commute gets to me and I start looking at houses closer to work in NJ. While the actual prices don't bother me too much for the properties I'm looking at, it's the idea of paying twice as much or more in property taxes that quickly make my commute more tolerable.

What is your time worth though? Can you work more, or get more free time if you didn't have to commute so long? Do the high taxes equate to something that will hold the value, like a school district? For me, a commute costs a lot--I don't get free time to do things, I am more likely to get fast food/go out to eat, I am more likely to take my car in for work rather than doing it myself, the cost of the commute itself, etc.

Not saying you're wrong--I can paint a lot of different situations that the longer commute is way better, but 2 hours a day? I have that now and I hate it with a passion.

Look at the new listing at 242 Elm St. Steelton on realtor. com - maybe an option. I know Harrisburg area generally and lived outside of Middletown for a summer. I think your issue is that most of the Ag area is not poor Ag. area, but dying to be the next high end subdivision if development is allowed there. I have to think either Harrisburg city or in one of the small towns, like Steelton, would give you the most house for your buck. I also wondered about a warehouse type property.

I'd sooner live in the city with an older home that needs some work and a gigantic garage behind it, locked up tight with a living space above the garage, have a 10 minute commute, and spend my weekends out in the sticks.

My current place is 8 minutes from work, super low taxes, but unfortunately not enough land or garage space. Next house, I suppose.

In reply to mtn:

The mortgage combined with the higher taxes to me would mean the difference between not really being stressed about my job vs. needing my job to live. Right now, my house is paid for, so my required expenses are utilities and taxes which I could essentially pay for with a minimum wage job. I'm not married and have no kids, so the better school district the higher taxes pay for are lost on me. And turning 47 this year, I don't see the offspring situation being likely to change.

While I make a pretty decent salary and nearly max out my 401k contribution, even if I reduced that percentage I would be paying nearly half my net take home pay just in the mortgage and taxes on even one of the cheaper properties around here. I really don't understand how anyone can afford to live in the more "normal" houses that sell in the $300-$500K range with $10K or more in taxes. And that's not even taking insurance into account... not to mention the rest of what it costs to "live": a car, food, utilities, and so on...

So in essence: my long commute equals security, which like time is hard to put an absolute value on.