Part Thirteen: A Sign

I had begun cleaning and packing when I heard people outside my apartment doing yard work.  I steeled myself and headed out to talk to them.  I just couldn’t let this go.  My whole life, I’ve let it go, allowed people to treat me and my family as if we were garbage.

I headed out to the front of the house and saw a woman raking up leaves.  I didn’t want to fight with her but I needed her to hear how much this whole situation had affected me and my family.

“Hi.  I’m Nicole from downstairs, the one who is moving out?  I just wanted to let you know how awful it was of you to post that sign on my door.  We have paid our rent reliably and we didn’t have anything to do with the fight you’re having with your family,” I said.

Not surprisingly, the woman wasn’t receptive to me when I stood in the driveway and told her how disgusting it was to post that sign on my front door, and how terrible and uncomfortable it made me and my family feel.

I asked her why she didn’t bother to knock on the door and talk to us as if we were human beings and she informed me that there were drugs and guns on the property.  Apparently, the cops wouldn’t come though.  I found that strikingly hard to believe.

She told me that the sign she’d had placed “wasn’t THAT bad” and all I could see was my little boy’s face cracking knowing he’d be leaving what had become his home behind.

Her brother, the person we’d be paying rent to, had been stiffing their mother on the money.  According to her, her mother actually owned the property.  And the flurry of activity regarding the house had resulted in a call to the town’s health department.  The inspectors had come out and determined the property needed quite a bit of work before it could be deemed fit to live in.

So, she told me, now her mother had no place to live and no cash because her brother couldn’t keep his hands out of the maternal cookie jar.  This woman was just the put-upon child and sister to a terrible situation.

I felt bad for her; but I couldn’t let it negate what she had done to us.  To me, it represented the dark cloak of poverty.  We’re too poor to buy our own house, therefore, a notice such as that one isn’t that bad, but it’s terrible when her mother is told she can’t live in her own home.  How was my family any different?

I ended the confrontation as cordially as possible and went back to my apartment with my chin up.  I’m so unbelievably damaged from all of this, but I didn’t swear and I didn’t yell.  I was calm the entire time.  So much of me wanted to scream, revolt, make her feel exactly as I did explaining this whole thing to my innocent children, who don’t yet understand how my inability to earn even five-figures will mark them forever.

The front door swished shut, and I began packing with renewed vigor, full of pride for how I had handled myself.  Even a few years ago, I’d have left that driveway in cuffs.

Part Twelve: Hostile Takeover

“You should tell him about my credit right up front,” I said, “it’ll be better for them to hear it
from us than to get it from the credit bureaus.”

“I will,” my husband replied, as he headed out the door for work.

I couldn’t tell if he knew how worried I was about this new required credit check. I wanted to
throw myself at the mercy of the management, as if I were in a dramatic movie scene. If they
just heard me speak and had a chance to hear about how I wound up where I was, they could
evaluate my tattletale credit score while remembering the flesh attached to it. The whole world
seemed Dickensian to me, except my version came without the traditional set of bars, instead
replaced with the very real possibility of homelessness.

I spoke to Jarrod later that day and he told me that the manager at the park said to just wait and
see what their decision was. I didn’t have much hope.

Our apartment was quiet. Jarrod and I laid in bed that night and spoke in hushed whispers. We
didn’t want to wake our daughter, who slept in her crib next to our bed. A feeling of desperation
choked us.

I was shocked when they called and said we were all set.

The last few months had left me feeling more than hopeless. I was expecting to be shot down
again. That’s the biggest problem with repeated disappointments; it becomes impossible to look
forward.

The following week was fraught with activity. Rental agreements needed signing, our apartment
needed packing, and we still needed to figure out how we were all going to fit into our new
home.

And then I had to tell my kids. My son took it especially hard. He didn’t want to leave yet
another elementary school, and he didn’t care if it meant that we would be better off. The truth
is, he had heard all of that before. And, let’s face it; a trailer isn’t all that attractive to a young
person. He couldn’t understand what it meant to his adults to have a home they owned.

I tried to tell him that he wouldn’t have to move again but it didn’t make any difference. Being
my child is one of the most difficult things in the world to be.

The preparations moved forward, but I had one last fight to have. The women who had decided
to take over the house we were renting by hostile takeover needed to hear from me about how
this had damaged my family.

Part Eleven: Life-Starting

My version of “life-starting” was so different from Matt’s.  He was trying to get out of the trailer park while I was trying to get in.  I couldn’t help but marvel at how different we were, but somehow still held the same “life-starting” imperative.

We started home, eagerly talking over each other about the various features of the trailer, and how much work it would be to fix the place up.  Before I knew it, we were figuring out where the couch would go and the best places for the beds.

My husband pulled into a Dunkin’ Donuts and ran in to grab us coffee.

“Do you want to buy this place?” I said, reaching for the hot cup.

“Yeah,” he said “I think I do”.

“What do you think we should offer?  I don’t want to come in too low and offend him but I also know this place needs new flooring, plus we’ll have to add a floor to the sunroom if we want to have a bedroom.”

“That’s true.  How about eighteen five?”

“Eighteen five could work.  Do you want to call him now?”

Jarrod answered by pulling out his cell phone.  I watched his face crinkle as he pressed the device to his ear, listening for the ringing.

“Hi Matt, this is Jarrod, the guy who was just looking at your place.  I’d like to offer you eighteen five for it.”

The rest happened so fast.  Matt agreed to the offer without a moment’s hesitation.  It made me wonder if we could have offered less.

The crushing disappointments of the last several months left us reluctant to celebrate, or to even really share with anyone that we were again in the process of trying to buy a house.  But we couldn’t stop talking about the place.  Jarrod and I would lay in bed at night, talking about paint colors and what the new neighborhood would be like.

I felt an overwhelming guilt about having to pull my child out of yet another elementary school.  The transient life is no life to a young boy.

Over that whole week, my husband was in contact with Matt, addressing the paperwork that needed to be completed.  The park we were looking to move into was a rental park, not a co-cop, and the management required that we submit to a credit check as well as a criminal record check.

The thought of yet another credit check made me sick.  Were my terrible choices going to ruin everything for the rest of my family?

Part Ten: “Come on in!”

We headed west in terrible weather.  Everything was covered with slush and gloom.  The hard winter had dampened our spirits, but we tried to remain positive.  Matt, the owner of the trailer we had found on Craigslist, seemed like a nice guy over the phone, and we were excited to see what he had to offer.

The car hit a deep pot hole, and then another.  We realized we were traveling down a dirt road.  I didn’t even know dirt roads still existed in Massachusetts.  The car banged and rattled as Jarrod and I exchanged skeptical looks and fought the urge to turn back.

Finally, we turned down a narrow and thankfully paved road lined with mobile homes.  The place looked a little like where diners go to die at first.  Dirty snow banks blocked our view as we traveled down the road. A man with a scary-looking beard and coat of grime covering his clothes and skin like a film trudged alongside our car.  I bit my tongue as Jarrod pulled up in front of our destination.  With a few deep breaths, we fortified ourselves for what might come next.

The outside was nothing to get excited about, although it did have new vinyl siding.  Matt met us at the door.

“Hey!  Come on in!” He exclaimed.

We stepped through the giant glass sliding door into the “sun porch”, which was really a cement floor covered in Astroturf, four walls, and a tin roof.

A small set of stairs led from the Astroturf to the main part of the trailer.  The door was original.  It even closed like a camper door does, with a muted shush and click.  A young lady wrapped in a sweatshirt held an enormous beast of a dog back by the collar.

“Hey, how’s it going?” She asked.

“Pretty good,” I replied with trepidation.  The big beast looked friendly, but one can never be too sure.

Matt showed us around.  The trailer was narrow, maybe ten feet across.  A long two-foot-wide hallway led off the living room.  First on the right was a tiny bedroom, next, an alcove featuring a washing machine circa 1972, and then a bathroom, and at the end of the hallway, the master bedroom, the biggest room in the house, a whopping 110 square feet.  It was small.

The carpet in the living room, hallway, and bedrooms used to be beige, but age and spills had turned it into a shade I like to call sticky.

I stood in the living room after poking through the rooms and peeking outside.  The wood paneling was giving me a headache.  But the living room had an interesting vaulted ceiling, I love the kitchen island, and not a single yellow wall was in sight.

“So, why are you looking to sell?” I asked Matt.

“Oh, I’m looking to start my life.  Marry my girlfriend, you know.” He replied.

I understood.        

Part Nine: Back to Square One

The phone rang.  I sat on the couch, my legs folded under me, eyes stuck on Jarrod’s facial expression, as if the caller’s words would somehow seep out with the smallest twitch of a muscle.

“Okay, let me talk to my wife about it, and I’ll let you know,” he said, exasperated, as he hit the little red button on the cell phone.

“We didn’t get the loan.”

“The bank didn’t want to take the chance on a trailer as old as the one we want.  It wasn’t built to the same HUD standards as the new trailers, so it’s considered a risky investment, even if the buyer has perfect credit,” he continued.

“Okay.  So what can we do?” I asked.

“We’re out of financing options, and we can’t afford to buy the place outright, so I guess that’s it.  We need to start looking for a different place,” he answered.

I tried not to cry.  The floor plans I had been making didn’t matter now.  I fired up my computer and started looking for apartments when it hit me: we couldn’t afford an apartment.

The place we had been renting included electricity and heat, at least when the landlord paid the bills.  Half our income went to rent, but that was tolerable if we didn’t have to deal with utilities as well.  A 2-bedroom apartment at $1,200 per month, with nothing included, wasn’t feasible.  Homelessness seemed like a real possibility.

I wasn’t ready to give up and I remembered early in our search seeing a few places on Craigslist that said “owner financing available”.

A search revealed several different places, some with real estate representation, and others for sale by owner, in different communities all over Massachusetts.  Jarrod and I hadn’t talked much about how far we’d be willing to commute, but at this point, it didn’t look like we had a choice.

One of the listings stuck with me.  A two-bedroom home with a half-finished sun porch, located west of Boston.  A photograph, taken from the kitchen, looking into the living room, revealed a cute island, and a narrow seating area.  It wasn’t much, but I kept imaging myself looking out at my family while I cooked or washed dishes.  I liked the idea of being able to see them, laugh with them, while I worked.

I cursed my imagination and told my husband about the place.

“The owner is looking for $20,000.  We can afford that.  I know it’s further away than we might want to be, but I see no other choices.  If we rent an apartment around here, we’ll be evicted for non-payment of rent, or the kids will go hungry; it’s that simple,” I said.

He acquiesced and told me he’d call the owner in the morning.

Part Eight: A Place with Potential

We arrived at the next house on our list after navigating the narrow roads so common in trailer parks. It didn’t look like much from the outside—it still had the original metal siding—but it was neat and appeared to be well-maintained. The owner had small window boxes on the front-facing windows, which I could imagine blooming with flowers in the spring. The driveway was recently paved and the side yard was small but well-situated, unlike the misshapen postage stamp of the last place.

Chris led us through the sun porch and into the kitchen.

“It needs some updating” he remarked.

I nodded my head in agreement as I took in the ‘70s style wall paneling, brown laminate countertops, and hideously brown fleur-de-lis linoleum. However the place was clean, and appeared free of major defects. And, none of the walls were yellow. The floor around the toilet seemed solid, and the bathroom had his and her sinks. The bedrooms were tiny. The owner had converted the back room, what should have been the master bedroom, into some combination of storage room and animal play house, as evidenced by the litter box in the middle of the carpet.

Still, my husband and I were enchanted. This place had potential.

We were already laying out plans for the organization of the rooms and replacement of the dangerously old stove.

We didn’t want to show Chris our cards before we had a chance to talk privately about it, but we were both sold on making an offer before we left the walkthrough. Jarrod called him later that afternoon to begin the process.

Buying a mobile home isn’t too different from buying a site built one. The first step in the process is making an offer, and usually the buyer bargains the price down. We asked for $5,000 off the asking price of $41,000. With the offer, the buyer has to include a check as a sort of goodwill gesture and proof of serious interest in the property. No money is actually exchanged until the sale is complete; typically, the real estate agent holds the money.

After the offer is made, the seller has to decide whether or not to accept it. The seller can reject the offer at any time, and if you lowball them on your initial offer, they may decide to reject any future offer you make, so it is important to think critically about how your offer will be received.  Sometimes, sellers make a counter offer, where they concede some of the points of your initial offer, but ask for more money or agreements on things like appliances to even the balance.

In our case, the seller accepted the offer as is.

We were thrilled, but nervous because we hadn’t gotten a loan yet and weren’t sure how long the process would take. Chris told us he had put the paperwork into the loan servicer, and now we had to wait for a decision.

Part Seven: The First Showing

We met up with Chris on a slushy winter day to go look at some mobile homes.  Our first stop was at the tiny park in Saugus we had driven through the week before.  The house for sale was across from the trailer with the exposed plywood and blown out windows.  We were skeptical about the place but decided we owed it a shot.

The home looked great from the outside.  The siding was a dark grey color—similar to the old clapboard siding found in ocean-side historical homes.  It had a poured asphalt roof and a retractable awning over the front porch.  The plot of land was tiny and poorly divided but it had a small back porch, large enough for a table and a few chairs.

We got inside and were welcomed to the color yellow.  Everything was yellow. And the smell of mold invaded every inch of the place.  We stood in the kitchen, and tried to figure out where furniture might go.

“The kitchen is too small to fit a table, but it has a lot of counter space.” I remarked.  I tried to envision myself cooking in there and couldn’t stop thinking of Gilman’s protagonist in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” crawling around the floor.  I shuddered.

I walked over and touched the countertop and discovered to my curiosity that the home owner had covered the laminate with some type of contact paper.  I exploded with laughter.

“Why would someone do this?” I asked Chris.

He chuckled and said “I have no idea.”

“Look at this ceiling panel over here.  It’s bowing in and it’s got a light fixture in it.  That seems dangerous,” my husband said.

We poked through the rest of the rooms and found some scary stuff.  I had learned during my research that prospective mobile home buyers should check the floors where water is frequently used, such as around the toilet, tub, and sinks.

“Wow, look at this, the linoleum has come up around the toilet and the plywood is flaking off.”  I said.  A similar situation was taking place around the water heater, which was conveniently located in what would-have-been my daughter, Mackenzie’s room.

I knew this wasn’t going to be the place for us, but if I had any doubt the neighbor from down the street cemented my conviction.  She had knocked on the door and was talking to Chris while we were doing the walk-through.

“It doesn’t need anything.  This belongs to my sister and they did everything in here, it’s all new!” She exclaimed, the smoke from her Marlboro light 100 curling around her aging frame.

I bit my tongue hard.  I couldn’t look at Jarrod or Chris without feeling my sides bursting with laughter.

We managed to get out of the conversation gracefully, but my husband and I tore on the place in the car.  I tried to get the image of me wallowing in that yellow kitchen out of my head as we headed towards the next home, the one that would turn into the home of our dreams.

Part Six: Piecing Things Together

After dinner we headed home and I grabbed my laptop.  Part of buying a house, any house, is doing extensive research.  You want to make sure you have as much information as possible.

Mobile homes are interesting pieces of property.  Sometimes called manufactured homes, the buildings are usually assembled at a factory, and then moved to their final locations.  Actually, as I’ve learned, the term mobile home is a bit of a misnomer because they are rarely moved from their original sites.  Unlike an RV, which is designed to be driven around, mobile homes are designed to function like site-built homes.  They are hooked into permanent water and sewer lines, but are not set on traditional foundations.

Mobile homes can be found just about anywhere.  People sometimes put them on land they own, but they are also found in trailer parks.  Many trailer parks are owned by a single individual or group.  When you buy a trailer in one of these parks, you are buying the structure only, not the land it is on.  You pay rent on the land, much like the fee condo associations charge.  That fee typically covers water, sewer, taxes, plowing, and garbage removal.

Another type of park is called a cooperative.  When you buy a trailer in one of these parks, you also buy a stake in the park.  The cost of these homes is higher, sometimes significantly, but they come with the additional security that no one person is a majority owner of the land.  Decisions regarding park operation are made by the community rather than one land owner.  Both types of park can institute community rules and standards, the most common being a 55+ rule, where only those 55 or older can live in the park.

In the eyes of the I.R.S. and banks, many mobile homes are not homes at all, but personal property.  They do not come with deeds like site-built homes do, but they do come with a bill of sale, much like an automobile does.  This is an  important distinction because this means you cannot claim the home on your taxes and you cannot get a home loan for them, only a personal loan with the trailer as collateral, meaning the bank can and usually does set a higher interest rate on the loan, sometimes as much as 10% of the principal.  If you rent the land the home is on, however, you can claim the amount you pay in rent on your taxes.

Safety is another issue.  When I first started looking to buy a mobile home, I had images in my head of tornados slamming trailers into each other, killing hundreds and causing millions in property damages.  Of course, tornados are rare in Massachusetts, but still I worried.

Because H.U.D. began overseeing mobile home construction in 1974, mobile homes are safer than ever before.  The homes are inspected and red labels are affixed to them to note that the home meets building standards.  However, many pre-H.U.D. homes are still on the market.  These homes are much more difficult to sell, and unlike site-built homes, they lose value over time.

Most of the homes we were looking at were pre-H.U.D homes.  The fear was seeping in again as I realized buying this home might be more difficult than we imagined.

Part Five: Exploring The Territory

My husband and I drove to my in-laws to pick up our children. The car ride was like a roller coaster of emotions for both of us. We kept talking over each other about every detail: credit scores, loans, budgets, renovations. I pushed my guilt to the back of my mind and tried to enjoy the reality that we were finally escaping the rental hell we’d been living in, even if I had nothing to do with it.

We got to my in-laws and told them all about the meeting. They had their reservations but were genuinely happy for us. Jarrod suggested we take a drive around some of the mobile home parks, maybe take a peek at them from the outside and get a sense of the neighborhoods.

“That’s a great idea! Maybe we can get dinner after.” I said.

We loaded into the station wagon and headed up Route 1, where many mobile home parks are located.

The first stop was a small park in Saugus. It was only 5 o’clock, but already it was getting dark; my husband almost missed the turn into the park. A large white building stood on the corner of the narrow street.

“Wow, this is tight,” my husband remarked about the tiny strip of pavement we were driving down.

The park had maybe 15 homes, all tightly packed together. We followed the road down to its end. On the left, we saw a dilapidated home. The siding had been ripped off, exposing plywood. Some of the windows were smashed out.

“Oh man,” I said, “this is definitely not for us; we can’t have that for a neighbor.”

The rest of the homes appeared to be in good shape. We couldn’t tell if any of them were for sale, but we realized exactly how small the street was when my husband tried to turn around, and had to make a 10 point turn.

“This will really suck, having to do this all the time,” my husband said.

“Yeah, but we knew we were gonna have to compromise a little,” I said.

“But the houses are so close together,” my son, Hunter, commented from the back seat.

“But they have small yards and maybe some kids your age live in these houses.” I said.

I heard a little sigh rising from the back seat; my son wasn’t happy about having to move again. Transitions are tough for kids, and he’d had more than his fair share of them. We’ve moved so many times; my heart ached listening to him.

“Why don’t we go have dinner?” I said, trying to lighten everyone’s mood. A full stomach has a way of making things seem better than they are.

Part Four: Feelings of Dependence

I couldn’t control my heart rate, or my excitement.  I had spent hours examining the Red Coach website and I already knew which mobile homes I wanted to look at.  I still had a lingering sense of sadness about my poor credit score.  Some moments in life dig into you a bit, and leave little psychological pockmarks on your psyche.  I sighed and snapped back into the realty office in Saugus.

My husband Jarrod was asking Chris about a few of the properties available and trying to set up a tentative schedule for us to look at them.  I stood back a few moments, making occasional comments, but I was beginning to feel detached from the scene playing out in front of me.  The adrenaline that hit watching my credit score pop up was beginning to fade, leaving behind a quivering mass of my flesh as I realized I had nothing to contribute to this situation.

My husband had the credit and the cash.  Aside from a few pennies I had, I was nothing but a beneficiary of the hard work of others.  Sure, I clean, I cook, I take care of the children; but none of that makes me worthy of a say in these proceedings.

I always thought I was sensitive to this issue.  Women who stay in the home and provide care for their families are valuable contributors to society, but I didn’t feel that way now.  I felt like a leech.

Chris was telling my husband about a place we wanted to see in Saugus.  It was a two-bedroom model with a big sun porch on the side.  The home was older, constructed in the early 1970s, but it was in good shape, and we thought we could convert the porch into a third bedroom.  It had a decent yard and driveway—valuable features in the world of mobile homes.

“Sometimes she is hard to get a hold of but I’ll try for sometime this week.  She doesn’t always come to the door.” Chris said.

“Ah, okay,” my husband replied, with a puzzled look on his face.

We closed our coats against the cold and headed towards our car.  My husband was all smiles.  I could see the happiness welling in him.

“Wow,” he said, “I didn’t expect that.  I’m so relieved my credit isn’t as bad as I thought it was.”

I mustered a smile and agreed.  I wanted to be happy for him, for us, but the tears leaked out.  I cried.  I was mourning the loss of my independence.

My husband tried to console me, but I don’t think he understood what it meant for me, a kid from Boston so used to doing it alone, to be so reliant on someone else.

“I’ll be fine; it’s just a big moment. Everything will be great,” I said, the words rushing out, eager to end the scene.