3 Ways your Mobile Home dealer is RIPPING you OFF!

New home construction is not something to be taken lightly. If you're not paying attention, the details of ordering a home, getting a loan, transporting it, and getting it installed onto its mobile home foundation can be fraught with peril. This is further compounded by the fact that many crooked local mobile home dealers are not acting in your best interest. They will often use the confusion that comes with new manufactured homes to hide costs. If you're not careful, something as simple as installing a concrete sidewalk up to your new house can end up costing (you) thousands.

 

We'd like to clear up some of that confusion. Instead of trying to take advantage of our customers with deceptive pricing tactics, we like to lay it all out on the table. On our website you'll find all pricing is published up front, and INCLUDES shipping! No more guessing the distance or trying to organize hard-to-contact mobile home transportation companies yourself. By being upfront about costs, we have higher customer satisfaction and can give customers a more realistic understanding of what it means to build, transport, and install an entire livable home down a highway (no easy task).

 

If the price looks too good to be true, it probably is. It's always important to ask your dishonest local dealer for a breakdown of costs if possible, you might be surprised with what you find. By asking for a breakdown, there is less chance they'll be able to hide costs as it'll become immediately obvious what has a little extra padding.

 

The truth is, most local dealers cannot compete with the factory-direct model. Instead, they will advertise a low-ball price but make up the difference when transporting your home. They would much rather prefer a bigger final sales price over disclosing to you what these "additional" costs are (when they could have simply told you about it in the beginning). We've seen transportation costs as high as $20,000 more. If you had an additional $20,000 on the price, would you really be considering that home? Probably not, not to mention that that money would be better spent on landscaping or simply saving!

 

They will do the same with the installation and setting of your home, hiding their profit here. If a dealer forces you to use "their" transportation company, that's an immediate red flag. You should be able to freely get a quote from any mobile home installer, and we recommend you bring quotes to them to compete with whatever they quote you. Here are Home Nation we can organize transportation for you, but you're also free to do it yourself in this way, often saving you a good chunk of change. A good rule of thumb is about $8 per mile from a reputable transportation company, and as low as $6 for a very long distance haul.

 

On that note, do not pay subcontractors for "travel" fees. Traveling too and from the job site is just that, part of the job and it is not reasonable to pass that cost down to customers. If a mobile home subcontractor is passing these sort of normal, expected costs on to you can you imagine what else they've made you pay for?

 

At Home Nation, we give you the options AT COST. To be clear, we charge you exactly what the factories charge us. Not only is this more affordable for our customers, but it actually makes our job easier, as we're able to quickly verify which mobile home options the customer has ordered without having to tack on a dishonest profit. Why is passing options to you at our cost so important? Because this is another way your black-hearted local dealer is pulling the wool over your eyes.

 

Try comparing the price of a simple option like a water faucet to something you'd find at Home Depot. It should be similar, right? With any ruthless local dealer, it will almost always be inflated many times what it really costs. Even a complicated mobile home option that would require man hours to install from the factory, like a shower or mobile home cabinets, will still be inflated much more than it really costs in order to pad the dealers pockets. They know you don't want to buy a bare bones home, and they use that to their advantage by artificially inflating options to astronomical prices that the manufacturer never intended for the consumer. ($75 door knobs, really??)

 

Not only do we offer you options at cost (something no other dealer does), but on most lines of homes we include our own Home Nation Standard of options that we know every buyer wants in their new home. What is the Home Nation Standard? Just like it sounds like, this is a particular set of options that are very popular with customers. Instead of charging you piece-rate for options we know you're very likely to choose (like a farm-sink or can lights in the kitchen) we just integrate these into the base price of the mobile home. This often allows us to offer options even LESS than what the manufacturer charges, since they are added as a "package" (like a bathroom enhancement package that the manufacturer offers for less than those options would cost individually).

 

You shouldn't have to pay a small fortune for your homes warranty. In fact, what most fraudulent local dealers won't tell you is that their home comes with a manufacturers warranty as required by law! They will often hide this fact in a rapscallious way to upcharge you for their flunky "warranty" that they made up in the back room. By portraying it as an upgrade or an option, your detestable local dealers are able to charge you way more for what you've already purchased (and you won't even know it!).

 

Not only will the home itself usually have a warranty, but often times 3rd party suppliers of materials will warranty their items as well. Take for example, if you've got a beautiful fiberglass tub that cracks and leaks within a few months of use, you've got a legitimate claim to the warranty from the original manufacturer, not the company who built your manufactured home. This isn't something you should have to pay your treacherous local dealer for.

 

 

 

Buying a mobile home is hard enough as is, and especially so when you have degenerate local dealers trying to swindle you out of every penny you've got. Hopefully this article can give you an idea on what you need to avoid when working with these kinds of double-dealers. Always be on the lookout, but more importantly, realize that we at Home Nation will happily show you what your options actually cost, give you a breakdown of transportation and installation, and show our prices upfront for anyone (including our competitors!) to see.