Hi Emily! Welcome to the manufactured homes forum! First, let me congratulate you on the credit score! It's really nice to see young couples who understand the importance of maintaining a high credit score. It's also great to see someone who has saved up money! Not to preach to the choir, but it dismays me to see so many people, of all ages, in this country who have terrible credit and massive credit card debt, and no savings. You're doing it right, and that will save you hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more) over the course of your lives.

Two questions: What is FTO? Second, there are a couple of missing words in your third sentence. Can you fill those in for me?

Yes, there is some wiggle room, and you do have some leverage with your credit score. But, to be perfectly honest, it's probably not very much on a lower end manufactured home (the preferred term over mobile home). They likely have cut out everything they possibly can to get it down to $29,000. My philosophy is you can always ask, and the worst thing they can do is say no.

I know you didn't ask, but if I may be so forward as to tell you a couple of things you should be aware of when buying a manufactured home. First is about financing. Many traditional lenders don't finance manufactured homes. You, however, have a huge advantage in that you are putting it on land you own. It will need to be set on a permanent foundation, on your own property, to be considered "real estate" in many, if not most, states. Have you secured financing already? If not, be sure to emphasize it's going to be on a permanent foundation on land you own. I wouldn't mention it's temporary until you build your site built home.

Also, home owners insurance will be harder to find and will be more expensive than for a comparable site built home. Foremost, Geico, the Grange are three companies off the top of my head that insure manufactured homes. You may have to bundle your auto insurance with them.

The second thing is that the cheapest deal you can get is not always the BEST deal. This is because the DEALER is the #1 most important thing, even more important than the actual home. They will all comply with HUD standards, but your dealer will make the experience wonderful or hellish. You must really trust your dealer and be able to work well with her or him. The dealer is often, but not always, the GC on the job. Getting the home correctly on the foundation, getting water/sewer or well/septic hooked up correctly is crucial, as is connecting electricity and getting the power panel installed. With a single wide, you don't have to worry about getting the two halves together correctly. Your general contractor should do all these things, or hire subs to do them. Ask if they have their own set up crew. If not, where do they get their subs?

Go learn things! Read through this forum; it is like taking a master class in Mnufactured Homes 101. In my opinion, that is the best way, bar none, to get an immersion into the ins and outs of buying, owning, and living in a manufactured home! And ask questions here when you can't find them in this forum! We like helping people make smart, knowledgeable decisions about buying and loving manufactured homes!

As to your other question, I don't have a definitive answer for you, but I'm not at all surprised that some manufacturers won't do upgrades on $29,000 manufactured homes. They are doing everything possible to get the price down that low. Being able to buy things like carpet and appliances and light fixtures, etc. in bulk saves money. It also simplifies and speeds up the manufacturing assembly line by having "cookie cutter" houses where they don't have to do something different with each house.

Think of it this way: you are getting a comfortable, well-built, durable, brand new house for $29,000!!!! That's amazing!!

That's one reason my daughter and I bought and moved into an ancient fixer-upper. I saw a brand new MH just a couple of weeks ago for $25,000. It would be a perfectly livable house for us. But by refurbishing this old house, we get to choose literally everything!

Good luck! I hope you can haggle, at least a little, and I hope you can choose your carpet. But even if you can't, the carpet you'll get will be very basic. Just rip it out and put what you want instead. I don't know what you're planning to do with the home when you decide to build, but if you're not keeping it (as a rental, MIL, office, or some other use), I'd be careful about too many upgrades because ROI can be pretty low, if anything, on a low end MH.

Have a great day! :-)

Emily, I'm getting into the deep end of purchasing my 1st mfg home. I was this close to putting in an order for Clayton Home when I found the Seattle Times article and the 2 books by Grissim (all of it is very informative). So I've backed off some and am doing more research and study.

However, one of things I've noticed in my research is -- you get the biggest bang for your buck in a used/repo unit. They seem to be like cars in that as soon as you drive a brand new car off the lot it drops $5k in price before you've driven a mile. If you can find a 2010-2014 used unit, you could be buying a $50k unit for $30k. Yes, you won't get all of the options you want, but this is just a stepping stone to your site- built home. So while you are sitting in your awful beige color living room you can work on your plans for your fantastic site-built home.