LOL...hard to count how many times we've heard that phrase (great place to read a book) on TOH. Funny thing, with this last "modern" house, the guy had a combined dining room / library...had some real nice, HUGE bookshelves...filled with pottery of course, no books. Those were some cool chairs in there though, but I'm not sure how comfy they would be for a period of extended reading...I need to have arms on my "reading" chairs. Those things must've have cost a fortune though...they visited the place that makes them a while back...lot of labor in those.
My sense, PBS, which I support by the way, has gotten away from more "show me" programming to showcase events. Even the cooking shows are better on Food Network then on PBS. I remember watching Julia cook up a storm and she showed you step-by-step how to do make whatever. Not so anymore. For the "show me" kind of shows, the cable channels (DIY/HGTV/Food Network) have filled that in.
I don't blame Morsh and company for TOH direction (don't forget they are now owned by Time/Warner) any more then I blame HGTV for showing a couple building a house on a slope in Boulder and not taking care of the muddy driveway. It's TV, not a how-to show. I think it's enteraining to see all of the various gadgets, whatever available for homes. I mean, I built our house just 2 years ago and had put in a whole house video/audio system. Wouldn't have even thought about that until I saw the first one they did on TOH. Take shows like TOH with a grain of salt people. The TOH of years ago disappeared
12-15 years ago. I think the turning point was the Concord barn. That was the first time, my memory serves, that they rebuilt (in this case actually build) a whole house vs just updating the kitchen.
My wife and I watch TOH as always, but they have moved away from everyday affordable remodels to whole house rebuilds years ago. The topper for me was when they did that Shingle Style home in Manchester. Now that was a major rebuild that cost over $2m.
If you want more "hands on' things, Hometime is still there for the DIY's and of course, HGTV and DIY can fill in as well.
Oh, a million dollars in my neck of the woods for a home doesn't put you in the "rich" category at all. Now $2m, does!
I hate to say this, but in the Detroit area, I can watch the Detroit PBS or the Flint PBS, and NYW is on different schedules, showing different episodes the same week.
Keep in mind that any time they visit the place where something was manufactured, there's almost no chance they are paying for whatever ends up in the house.
Thomas Moser, as I recall. They certainly were well built, but I had the same impression both about labor costs and comfort. I didn't think about the arms, but I have to throw in with you on that, too.
A few years back, a company installed a hot tub in one of the projects. Rumor has it, not only did TOH not pay for the installation, the spa company paid TOH to do the job. The "selection" of the particular spa had little to do with quality, as the spa company would like you to believe in their ad copy.
Most of those shows are just a grout line from an infomercial.
Remember, television is a business, even PBS... NOTHING gets mentioned by name unless it's been paid for. The most obvious examples are often seen in racing, where different broadcasters have been known to refer to the same event by different names, depending on how the naming rights were sold.
Heck, around here you can't own a postage stamp-sized lot that costs under $250k. Average-sized homes go for over $500k and in some local areas, for over $750k.
When we bought our house, it was worth less than $250k. Now, our neighbor, with a smaller house and less land, recently sold his for close to a million.
But you have to remember that most of the people who are donating to PBS aren't the Joe Sixpac DIY crowd, it's the upper crust more-money-than-God people who want all the latest overpriced gadgets. They don't want to do it themselves, they want to pay someone else to do it while they sit around and watch PBS.
On 2/13/2006 1:57 PM Brian Henderson mumbled something about the following:
That's why I live 50 miles out from such an area. My house payments and taxes are so much less, that the extra fuel I spend driving to work is less than 1/10 the savings. By having a $100k mortgage (doublewide trailer and 5 acres of land) instead of a $250k or better mortgage, I can afford to own a fairly new pickemup, a new car, a new Harley. It allows me to take off almost any weekend and go to a NASCAR race. It allows me to luxury of spending 3 weeks riding the Harley all over the country, putting 7500 miles on it in 24 days
Well, if you've seen the crap they throw up in the metro area that he is avoiding (I live there), you would realize that his land is the major investment. The cracker box "investment" house won't last much more than 20 years, or just till it's about paid off. And the remaining 1/6 acre lot is worthless. (To me, anyway...) It's a banker/broker's wet dream. I'm with Odinn on this one...
You just have to pick your areas. Sometimes you get hit on both ends ... the "lot/land value" on my tax appraisal is increasing by about 10%/year, while the "improvements" remain fairly constant.
We are paying $63sf + for "teardowns" on 50' x 100' lots in the area I am currently building in ... and that's probably gone up in the last 30 minutes. :(
"Construction quality today" has been a hot topic for what, 100 years?
If the house meets code, even though it will require repairs, the value will most likely at least keep up with inflation. A mobile home is guaranteed to depreciate AND require repairs.
If I had only owned 30 acres of farmland in Roswell... Growing up, no one wanted it - now it's Yuppie Land.
Well, you clipped off the "To me, anyway" part. In an era when land is priced at millions per square foot in, oh, say Manhattan, it's obviously not worthless to someone. But I place no value on it, and sure as heck don't want to live there.
Ahh.. but. the mobile home only cost a few thousand dollars. It is pretty much a given that it is disposable. As for maintenance, well, it's pretty basic stuff. In 20 years, that plot of land will be worth far more than the deteriorating McMansion - even though they cost the same amount originally.
Perhaps I'm jaded due to the poor quality of new construction here. I've lived in other states where the quality of work was far superior. I think it's just a case of Atlanta having been a boom housing market, and it attracted a lot of carpetbagging, s**nk developers like Ryland.
We barely have building codes here, compared to the north, and the inspectors are willing to overlook just about anything - for a price. Maintenance on the unsupervised beaner built $400k crap put here is already huge. A large development nearby, less than three years old, is already having roofs replaced and structural problems. Not to mention the erosion and flooding problems due to the clear cutting and terracing of the natural roll of the landscape. They are truly abominations.
Heck, we live in a 15 year old house that is in need of constant repair due to the low quality work and the total lack of code enforcement during it's construction.
Yea, it's a McMansion. I didn't buy it, the other half did, before her husband died. I'm the idiot who ended up with the maintenance nightmares. I begged her to sell it right after we met, 'cause I could see the light at the end of the tunnel - it was the oncoming 120 ton locomotive of major repairs.
No flashing, no drip edges, improper roof framing on the stupid bows and other such pointless "curb appeal" flash, leaving chipboard as the sole structural member, framing buried under grade and infested with termites, etc, etc. Only the electrical and plumbing are even close to code. Even the HVAC is fubar'd. We've replaced doors, windows, siding, roof, structural components in much of the roofing and wall framing. The builder must not have been able to read a blueprint, because I can't imagine ANY architect designing something the way this was built. They didn't even manage to get the studs on center properly. The walls wave in and out so badly that the lap siding had to be face nailed to keep the gaps from showing between overlaps. The floors are sinking, uneven and squeak horrifically in the winter. There were 3" of shingles hanging over all the edges, presumably to supplant the nonexistant flashing and drip edges. It goes on and on. A collection of the cheapest "builder special" crap available, thrown up by the cheapest unskilled and untrained labor they could find.
I want to build my own new home, on a large plot of conservation land, but ended up rebuilding this turd instead. Just to keep ahead of the rot, decay and deterioration so we can sell it. Neither my father's home, nor my first house, have needed any of this bullshit, and they are far, far older.
I could itemize much more here, but the point is that given a choice between a plot of land, and a 1/6 acre corporate built McMansion - the McMansion buyer is just a fuel screw for Greedy Corporate America.
I think we're comparing apples to oranges. I don't remember ever comparing building and mobile home values to unimproved land values.
Compare the actual resale values of ten year old mobile homes to ten year old fixed homes, ANY ten year old home, on a lot of land of identical value. If you like, feel free to find the most cherry mobile home you can and the worst constructed 10 year old home you can, as long as it can legally be occupied.
How's the resale value, vs. the new cost, expressed as a percentage, look now?
The mobile home will almost always be less than 100% of it's value ten years ago. The _house_, even if it's manufactured somewhere else, but finished on site, will nearly always be more than 100% of it's value ten years ago. If by chance, the mobile home is actually worth the same or more than the purchase price 10 years ago (meaning a really strong local real estate market), I'll bet the house has appreciated exponentially.
There's at least 50 years of data backing my point up in any real estate, tax collector, or property appraiser's office. Just the way the two items are treated differently by money lenders should give you at least SOME clue.
Okay, I paid $30,000 for my 95 doublewide in 99 and $35,000 for the 5 acres of land in 2000. I spent $7500 putting in a septic system and having a spot leveled for the home and having it put on the property and having the electrical hooked up and having the first 60 ft of my current
200 ft driveway concreted (the rest is gravel/mud). When setup in 2000, it was appraised at $85,000. I've added a 16x16 back deck and built a
16x24 shed on the property (total cost of $5000 for the both) and it was appraised a couple of months ago at $114,000. The property with no improvements on it would sell for about $60,000 today. Looks to me like the value of my (now 10 year old) doublewide hasn't depreciated.
Now let's look at the guy 1/2 mile from me who built his house around the same time. He paid $30,000 for 4 acres, and spent $150,000 building his 2400 sq ft house. He now has it on the market for $220,000 (about $5000 below appraised value).
Let's compare the two now. I have total of 30,000 + 35,000 + 7500 + 5000 = $77,500 invested in my property that's appraised at $114,000 for $36,500 increase in value in 6 years and was able to move in within a month after closing on the property.
He has a total of 150,000 + 30,000 = $180,000 invested in his property that's appraised at $225,000 for a $45,000 increase in value and he wasn't able to move in for over 6 months after closing on his property.
The percentage of increase in value of my property is 32%, his 20%. I've also spent considerably less per month for my mortgage than he has, allowing me to spend money on other things.
Will his house last longer than my doublewide? Probably so, since I plan on tearing my manufactured home down in 10 years and build a geodesic home on the back of the property.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.