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we now live in mi. and we are thinking about moving to the phoenix area for our retirement years. we are kind of getting tired of the cold and having to live 4 months inside it is kind of like hibernating for 6 months.
anyway what i need to do is get a handle on reasonable lot rents in parks as we will be getting a mobile home and find out what we can expect to pay for water and electricity garbage and maybe home taxes cable bills and if your allowed to have tv antennas for local tv channels if they have cars show as i have 2 antiques, and how old cars can be registered for daily driving on the roads? and how old a car can be on the roads like if they get 20 years old does az make you take them off the roads? because of emission testing? as one of my old cars is a 95 and i may just put that on the road as a daily driver if it is past emission testing. the other one is a 65 corvair. both verts and show cars.
so maybe i can get some local folks to help out with these and more questions.
Maybe try these guys...I don't know of any parks that just rent lots but there may be some. My next door neighbor owns a couple "RV Resorts" and mobile home parks (although I think they just sold that). He said they tended to lease the mobile home vs. lots as moving a mobile home would be disruptive to the community and it would happen every time they had turnover.
As far as the cars, sounds like both would qualify for Historic plates (25+ years old), the 95 will still need to be emissioned, the 65 (1967 or older are exempt) will not. Emission testing on a 95 is the old tail pipe/gas cap test. If it were a 96 or newer, they just plug into the OBDII port and run the test on there. Outside of Maricopa County and Tucson, there are no emissions requirements. You may look for a place to store at least the 65 as most mobile home parks are not going to have garages and the AZ sun does some serious damage to vehicles...especially paint.
Car shows...for either of them there is a weekly show at the Pavilions in Scottsdale, Good Guys is here a few times a year, little local meets...hook up with a Corvair Club and they will have more information.
Used to work in an industry where I had occasional dealings with RV & manufactured housing parks. What's been happening the past decade is that the children or the grandchildren of the original owners are cashing out in droves. Some parks are being razed for new condos, while others are being taken over by huge real estate conglomerates. That's what happened to my parent's park, got bought out by a huge corporation. Within a year lot rents almost doubled, but the upshot is that all of the aging infrastructure from the 1970's was upgraded like water & gas lines along with paving all the roads again.
Ask a lot of questions about the financial stability of the park and what the current owners plan to do with it.
thanks for the help. i'm not looking to just rent a vacant lot. what i was asking is what the average lot rent is whit homes on them. some may stop back and say my site is xxx$ or another site is xxx$ if you understand that. but by the sounds of it as the area is growing now the big boys are taking over and forcing some out and that might be the reason prices are what they are.
i also think covid has opened up tons of homes and like what was said the kids are just cashing out as they do not want the home and don't want to keep paying the rent.
one thing i need to get is what the electricity is on average. i know everyone used power differently but there is an average. back in 2001 when i was scoping out the area the power was like you got a rate and it sort of stayed the same but i figure that has changed over the last 22 years. and what the normal garbage and water are. when i was there in 2002 i rented a room with a lady and when i went to help with the dishes she got upset that i put half the sink with water. she said water costs tons of money so maybe some can say what water costs. in mich you can just about fill a pool to do dishes, but in the phoenix area being a desert i know water is scarce so it may just be costly to use.
also what is cable and do parks allow tv antennas? in all the homes for sale i did not see very many tv antennas, so either they are not allowed or local channels are not very well received.
To clarify my statement, it's the children and grandchildren of the original manufactured home & RV park owners, not individual lot owners that are beginning to cash out. You could end up with a nice lot, only to be forced to move in 5-10 years. The moving cost of a manufactured home is often more than what the homes are worth. Just do your homework.
I've been to a few RV parks in Mesa and Apache Jct and you can just tell that the grandchildren that inherited the park are just waiting for a developer to show up with their checkbook. Know some parks are co-ops and owned in common by all of the individual lot owners, those parks will be much more stable long term.
thanks for the help. i'm not looking to just rent a vacant lot. what i was asking is what the average lot rent is whit homes on them. some may stop back and say my site is xxx$ or another site is xxx$ if you understand that. but by the sounds of it as the area is growing now the big boys are taking over and forcing some out and that might be the reason prices are what they are.
i also think covid has opened up tons of homes and like what was said the kids are just cashing out as they do not want the home and don't want to keep paying the rent.
one thing i need to get is what the electricity is on average. i know everyone used power differently but there is an average. back in 2001 when i was scoping out the area the power was like you got a rate and it sort of stayed the same but i figure that has changed over the last 22 years. and what the normal garbage and water are. when i was there in 2002 i rented a room with a lady and when i went to help with the dishes she got upset that i put half the sink with water. she said water costs tons of money so maybe some can say what water costs. in mich you can just about fill a pool to do dishes, but in the phoenix area being a desert i know water is scarce so it may just be costly to use.
also what is cable and do parks allow tv antennas? in all the homes for sale i did not see very many tv antennas, so either they are not allowed or local channels are not very well received.
thanks
Well...electricity is going to be variable. There are many different use plans from Basic, Time of Day, Balanced Plans or Pay as you go...it is going to depend on your electric company as well whether it is APS or SRP. Not sure what the "average" is for a manufactured home but if we went with a balanced plan our 2600sf SFH with pool would run about $250/mo. Also the more you use the higher tier you fall into. It is also going to depend on how well insulated the home is...obviously summer months are going to be more expensive than winter months.
Same is going to go for water. I can fill up my pool (17k gallons) for about $40 on City of Chandler water rates. Sewer/Trash included, we are paying about $78/mo to City of Chandler...that will not be the same in Mesa or AJ.
I would assume, again depending on where you live, that OTA channel reception is going to be variable. Cox Cable is stupid expensive for what you get, we went to streaming a few years back and got rid of out TV portion of cable. Check what ever address you are looking at on Cox's website and they will tell you how much a package is going to cost.
I would also say that your assumption about C19 opening up a lot of homes is backwards. There is a shortage for housing pretty much EVERYWHERE and with the land that a Mobile Home park is sitting on probably being worth more than what is sitting on it...the desire to sell it would be strong.
I included a link above to a multi-site management company...you can probably get more answers from them around how much a site goes for.
we now live in mi. and we are thinking about moving to the phoenix area for our retirement years. we are kind of getting tired of the cold and having to live 4 months inside it is kind of like hibernating for 6 months.
You're probably not going to like this, but you're thinking about moving to Phoenix for a very foolish reason. You'll be trading 4 months of bitter cold for 4 months of intense heat ... and there are plenty of people here who pretty much hibernate during the hottest parts of the summers. I'm not really one of them, but there's no denying that June through September can be miserably hot. Other parts of AZ have fairly decent winters without the Phoenix styled summer heat. Also, given our current drought situation, it's not exactly wise to come here primarily for the weather anymore.
Quote:
Originally Posted by corvairbob65
anyway what i need to do is get a handle on reasonable lot rents in parks as we will be getting a mobile home and find out what we can expect to pay for water and electricity garbage and maybe home taxes cable bills and if your allowed to have tv antennas for local tv channels if they have cars show as i have 2 antiques, and how old cars can be registered for daily driving on the roads? and how old a car can be on the roads like if they get 20 years old does az make you take them off the roads? because of emission testing? as one of my old cars is a 95 and i may just put that on the road as a daily driver if it is past emission testing. the other one is a 65 corvair. both verts and show cars.
You mentioned that you were last here in 2001/2002. A lot has changed since then. It has become quite costly to live here, and I honestly haven't seen a working TV antenna since "Seinfeld" was on NBC. Seeking out a mobile home within the metro area is also pretty foolish (exception possibly being east Mesa or Apache Jct.). Most of the existing ones are old & shoddy, and many will likely be demolished for new subdivisions, apartments, and condos. I really don't understand why you want to move to a big metro like this for retirement. Seems like you should be looking at some smaller towns with slower growth rates where existing mobile homes aren't threatened by development as much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by thinkalot
Buying a mobile home now isn't going to end well.
No kidding. Retiring to Phoenix in a mobile home with a TV antenna and old cars??? Seems like a trip back to the 1970s (or earlier).
ok thanks for all the ideas. for what it is worth my girl moved out there to run an ice cream store in gilbert that she just bought a few months ago and we figured it might be nice to go out and help her with it. she may get a home with a spare room and then we might spend winters with her.
the heat in the summer in az for me is way better than the cold here in mi. i'm a hot weather guy i can take 90 deg and 70% humidity but i hate the cold 50 deg and 40% humidity and i stay inside also the wife has arthritis and she thinks the dry hot weather would be better for her as well.
also, we have car club have friends that go to az for the winter and some have just stayed there as the summers here in mi. are worse than the heat in the summer being we get 80 to 90% humidity and they say the heat is dryer in az. the wife's sister lived in gilbert back in the 1990s and they loved it and they came back and hate it but can't afford to move back.
as some said it is getting very costly to live in the metro area. i was looking at apache junction area and some surrounding areas as well . queens creek
i do not want to get a house as being 70 i will never get it paid for and the price of new or late model homes in the area would take the sale of my house in mi. and all my savings just for warm weather. that is not going to happen.
yes looking at a mobile home and having old cars may seem like i'm going back to the 70's but i have seen some real nice mobile homes/double-wide modular homes. for under 100k with garages.
but like some are saying the cost of living is getting high so i will just keep an eye on it and see what my girl says about it as they are now paying that cost of living.
thanks all for the help and ideas.
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