Mobile Home Value: How Much is Mine Worth?

QUESTIONS ABOUT MOBILE HOME VALUES

Ok so the first question was is there going to be land involved with the sale of the home or not.  If the land and the home will be sold together as one then your best bet is to hire an appraiser or ask a local realtor to do what they call a "drive by" appraisal.  The realtor may charge a small fee of few hundred dollars but it'll give you an idea of what your home is worth on the current market that your home is in.  If you want an exact figure then you will have to hire an appraiser because unless you are selling it to a cash buyer, any lender will require that an appraisal be done prior to them loaning the money.  The only problem with getting an appraisal though is that they are only good for so long, so if it takes a long time to sell your home, the customer may still have to have another appraisal done to satisfy the lender.  That, however, is an expense of the buyer so you wouldn't have to pay for the second one.  If you are selling the "home only" then the best way to get an estimated value is from an NADA guide.  You may be able to call a local Manufactured Home dealer and have them get that value for you for free.  If none are available or not willing to do that for you then you can go to www.nada.com and get the mobile home value from the NADA guide.   They charge around $20 for that one time service.  It will give you the full top retail value of the home.  Most banks will accept those as a guideline for a value of the home when someone is trying to get a loan.

NADA GUIDE

The second question ties directly to the previous question.  The reason being is that in order to get an accurate NADA value, you have to know the year, make, model, size and condition of the home.  Believe it or not, the make and model make a huge difference in mobile home worth.  Some brands will have an extremely high book value where others will be the exact opposite.  Usually because the value is a direct reflection of what options were used in the home when it was built and how well the home was constructed.  Some brand names also are just more "well known" so when you go to sell them, it may influence the customer into buying the home simply because they know of the quality attributed to that particular manufacturer, making it have a little higher value.  

OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER

After you have determined the your mobile home value of a "home only" that has to be moved, the next step is to figure out how much it'll cost for the home to be relocated.  Potential buyers will consider this as part of the overall purchase price since they will inevitably have to bare that expense.  Therefore, when pricing a home for sale, you will more than likely have to deduct from the overall NADA value the cost of relocating the home to another piece of land and setting it back up.  Banks will generally never loan more than the overall NADA price and most potential buyers wont have the money to pay for relocating the home out of their pocket, therefore you'll have to figure that into your overall value/asking price so that they can wrap it up into their loan.

THE LAST QUESTION

The last question pertains to trade-ins.  You can pretty well throw the NADA value out of the window when trade-ins are concerned.  This is because any dealer that is taking a trade in will have to get the home at a significantly lower price in order to be able to bring the home to their lot, refurbish it, sell it and move it for under the NADA retail value.  If any dealer is offering you a ridiculously high price compare to other dealers then odds are you are paying way too much for the home that you are buying from them!  That is just an indicator that they have a huge amount packed into their price to allow for trade-ins.  Your best bet is to find a good independent dealer who offers you the lowest price available on the home that you are trying to buy and then have them give you the real trade in value.  You will always make less on a trade-in though than you will if you sell the home outright... no matter who you are trading it in to.  Sometime when you trade something in, you will come out on the wrong end of deal.  Think about it like this, if they have money packed into their price then you are actually financing a larger amount of money.  This means that you are paying them more for the home that you are trying to buy just to take your trade in...that's never a good idea!  That's sort of like buying your trade in again! Yikes!