I would NEVER pick out a home online with out seeing how well it's made in person! How are the floors? What are the cabinets like? Pretty pictures can be altered on a computer for online sales, but I would want to see in PERSON the actual underpinnings, the walls, the ceiling, the plumbing, everything! When we picked out the manufacturer of our modular, I looked at a model and spent over 3 hours going over everything!

How about if there's a problem? Who's gonna come out to do any warranty work? What dealer do you contact? What other homes by this manufacturer have you seen? And why are they better than a local dealer's homes? And how can you tell?

You're not buying a car brand that you know is good or not. You're doing this sight unseen. This is a recipie for disaster if there ever was one.

I know this thread is old, but in case anyone wants a practical opinion on a park model....they are very high, and while the loft might be tempting, it's only 30 inches high (okay for kids) but the staircase takes up precious floor space. it mostly becomes storage which can only be reached by crawling. Not so great for older folks.

They are very tall. The high ceilings are hard to heat. The height of them requires lots of vertical storage and step stools. We had to buy a 9 foot ladder to get to the tallest shelves (we installed), hang lights and change light bulbs, and work on gutters.

The bedroom is small and the heater is in it, under the closet and it's noisy, so be prepared for that.

There is no drip edging on the roof of the Champion model we have, and no gutters. So that means that rain drips down behind the gutters that we had to install on a very high wall. So 65 feet of new drip molding and gutters had to be installed.

We also got the side bay window, which was a real mistake. It's been leaking from the beginning. There is no roof over it. And even though they say it's a 1 foot bay window, there's only 6 inches left inside, and it's really not worth the hassle, IMHO. Going up 12 feet on a ladder to constantly caulk it, and the windows creeps everybody out, and it just doesn't seem to ever fix it.

And oddly enough, it wasn't wired for a land line phone. No one ever mentioned that, so that becomes a major project to hide that wire.

But the big windows are great. The front bay window doesn't leak. It's got the roof continuously over it. It's always full of light. The quality of it is good, although I would give the upgraded cabinets a B-. They're okay for our purposes, but someone who really loves cabinets probably ought to get their own.

Two of us enjoy it. It doesn't have a laundry room, and there isn't much of a mud room to come into. Muddy shoes and wet coats usually have to go into the bathroom, which is very small.

If I had to do it again I'd probably get a single wide, but they say if they are 15 feet wide (most of them are) it costs extra to have them hauled because they take up more than one lane on the road, and the Highway Patrol has to escort it, which is an extra expense.