We Bought A House

We've been having a tough time finding the property we want with a home that is acceptable so we started looking at bare land to place a manufactured home. Of course the next logical step was to look at manufactured homes.

Originally we had been thinking of a Palm Harbor home. Our friends here have a really nice one and there was a similar, but a bit smaller, model on the lot. We were calling it the "baby" version of our friends' home.

The problem now is that Palm Harbor is apparently having financial difficulties (they filed for Chapter 11). In the last couple of weeks they've gone through a "reorganization". Several lots have been closed and they were having big discounts on the homes that were on those lots. The original salesman we first talked to was no longer working there.

We were still thinking about getting the baby house and when we went to go talk to a salesman we discovered the lot was closed with a sign on the door. It said "Closed for spring break. Call xxx-xxx-xxxx for a personal appointment." Then our friends had a small repair done on their home and remarked that the repairman seemed concerned for his job.

We decided to go check out another place in Sutherlin we had passed numerous times. It was a Crown Homes lot and we found out they sell Karsten brand homes. The salesman was very nice and not pushy at all. The salesman from the other company was what I would call a "typical" salesman, kind of pushy, and not really answering our questions. But enough about him.

The Crown salesman took us through some of the homes on his lot and we finally went through the one we both decided was "the one".

It had a nice open floorplan with a big kitchen that opened to the living room. There were a lot of windows and the house was nice and bright and airy.

This is the back and side. We like the porch and thought it might be nice to expand it to the back side. That would be a good spot for a bbq and outdoor table set.

So here's the tour of the model.

This is the formal living room for which I see no particular purpose, but whatever. I suppose it could be used as a game room or office. This is to the immediate right after walking through the front door.

Through the entry and then to the left is the dining area.
Directly opposite the dining area is the kitchen. It's nice and big.
This is the other side of the kitchen from the back corner of the living room.
Turning 45º is the living room, or family room, with a fireplace in the corner.

Here's the view from that same corner but between the kitchen and living looking straight at the dining area.

I'll skip the guest bathroom and the two other bedrooms, since they are just regular rooms like what you'd expect.

Here's the master bedroom from the hall door.

Here's the master bathroom. It has a big tub for me in the corner, and two sinks and cabinetry on either side. I like having a his and hers sink.

Then there's the toilet of course. If you look in the mirror you can see a separate shower opposite the toilet.

Click here to see the floorplan.

This particular home was just sold at a discount on account that it was a "floor model" but even buying a brand new one was within our budget. We thought when the time came this was the house we'd get.

As it turned out there was another house, same floor plan, with some more upgrades, that was on another lot in White City, just outside of Medford. The store owner had bought it from another lot that closed and he was willing to sell it at a steep discount also, since it was already a couple of years old.

We took a drive to White City to take a look. It's not totally together, though the roof is closed up. They are also using it to store extra furniture from models that have sold. After walking through we could still get a good idea of what it would look like. The owner said we could have it for $98,000 and that was a deal we felt we could not pass up!

It has a lot of upgrades, even more so than the house in Sutherlin. The only thing this one does not have that the other one had was a solar tube in the master bedroom closet, and a skylight in the master bedroom. We only had to put $500 down to hold it, which we did today.

Once we find a property then we can start talking with the contractor to check on costs to perhaps add the skylight, which we liked, and the solar tube in the closet, which is a nice feature. There were a few other extras we would look into also, like extending the porch around to three sides, adding a garage, etc.

And speaking of property, we went to look at the property I mentioned yesterday. Very deceiving. The listing describes the topography as "level, sloped, steep, gen-slp [gentle slope]" and the lot description is "mrchtim [merchandisable timber], pasture, secluded, rprotim [reproduction timber]." I would call that a creative description. The only thing that was truly accurate in my opinion was "steep". It certainly would not serve our purposes.

And so, we decided to make an offer on the Yoncalla property. Our realtor is going to write it up tonight or tomorrow and we'll see what happens!