By Brandon Koll | Last Updated 8/15/2025
Have you ever considered buying a mobile home or trailer instead of a house. There is some potential to save on monthly payments by doing this. If you ever watched shows about tiny places, they are cool looking when they are completed. There are some benefits to going this route, but like anything it is not all roses.
My experience
I personally had the opportunity to live in a mobile home for 16 years of my childhood. Clearly it wasn’t the nicest place, but there was a roof over my head, and my mom was able to support her kids with minimal wages. On the negative side of this, my mom has been in that place for 47 years. At this point it is falling apart around her and is worthless. The person that ends up with her property will have to tear it all down.
Buying a Mobile Home
There are many companies that you can buy a new mobile home from. You would be looking at prices from $40,000 to over $100,000 depending on how big you go and the company you purchase from. This is a lot cheaper than buying a house or having one built. Keep in mind that the price may not include delivery and setup.
Where do you put it
Another possible expense for a mobile home is where do you put it. There are a lot of options available for this, and the most common is a mobile home park. They can charge anywhere between $300-$900 per month. You may have a family member or friend with some land that you can park it on. This could be much cheaper, but then you might have some relationship issues down the road. The best option in my opinion is to buy some land to park it on. This will cost the most, but the land will be yours.
Buying a Trailer
Instead of buying a mobile home you could go smaller and cheaper by getting a camper trailer. You can get these new for as low as $20,000 and they can get up to over $100,000 as well. On the downside they are small, and you will feel a lot more cramped. It will help you keep from accumulating a lot of crap though. If you’re like me, you have way too many things and some downsizing would be positive.
Mobile and easy to move
The biggest benefit of buying a camper trailer is the mobility. These are much easier to hook up to a truck and take to new locations. If you must travel between locations a lot, you could get a camper trailer and take your home on the trips with you. If you want to experience what different parts of the U.S. are like, you could do 6 months to a year in different places and find work at each. This will allow you to move around the country cheaply and give you the freedom to pick up and move whenever you feel like it.
What is the major drawback
The major downside to owning a mobile home or camper trailer is they go down in value. If you do decide to buy one, you could save a lot of money by buying used. Let someone else take that initial depreciation hit from new to used. If you at least buy your own property to put it on, you will have something that goes up in value. There may be a situation where a mobile home or camper trailer makes sense, but realize it is just going to plummet in value. Take that depreciation into account as you make the decision.
Finance Hack – Avoid buying a mobile home or camper trailer unless you have plenty of money to throw away or you can do it super cheap.
For the short term and to get some margin in your budget, a mobile home or camper trailer may be the right decision for you. Make sure you take everything into account. Look for something lightly used to save on some of the depreciation and put it on land that you own if possible. If a house is an option, I would do that instead, so you can build equity and hopefully wealth someday.
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