Saturday I hopped out of bed like I was attached to a Pogo
stick, took a shower, walked the dog and took off to the south end of town. Forty-two
minutes later I was sitting in the office of the manager of a manufactured homes
park with 400 units. You may know of the Sun Communities. According to Wikipedia
they are a publicly traded real estate trust with 350 Sun Parks across the
United States and Canada with a grand total of 121,892 homes and all of them are built by Clayton
or Champion.
I started out by saying, “I’ve always lived in single family
homes so I have a list of questions about living in a place like this.” I
already knew the dog rule was breed specific, not weight specific but I asked again
just to be sure a 30 pound dog would not be a problem. It’s not. Park Rules? “Good neighbor
rules” is all she’d say but I knew from reading reviews online that they do
weekly inspections. She couldn’t/wouldn’t show me an actual list of rules, but
according to a reviewer “they are too picky” but, who knows, maybe he wanted
to put a car up on blocks in the front yard. She did say you have to pass a
background check before they’ll accept an offer on any of the units in the park
which explains why when I checked the crime watch website for the area no sex
offenders or break-ins popped up at Sun. HOA fees don’t cover a damn thing but
road maintenance (and may property taxes. I forgot to ask about that) and they cost in between $580 to $299. Of course the units
with garages would put me in the upper range. And I’d have to have a garage for
Levi. Every time I come home from anywhere he insists on sniffing my car’s
undercarriage. If I didn’t have a garage I’d have to tell the neighbors he was
once a military dog and he’s checking for bombs and tracking devices. I’d be embarrassed
to admit I indulge his habit of checking for Road Kill eau de Cologne.
When I tried to pin her down on how much these homes
depreciate, she was ready with her manager-perfect answer of, “It depends on how
well the home owners keep their places up.” And I still can’t believe you have
to contract for your own lawn care on those postage stamp sized yards! I think
I told her that three times. You’d be hearing lawn mowers constantly. On the
good side they have the cable company I like but on the bad side their community
room/health facility and office building doesn’t have a single bulletin board
where you could post to organize a book or movie club or whatever. No
newsletter either and only two organized events each year---a yard sale day
and an ice cream social. Also on the bad side is there aren’t any trees in the entire
place that are taller than me. Where would Levi pee? That would be so hard to
get used to. I’d have hang large paintings of white pines on the walls to feel
at home. She drove me around the place and took me inside a model and I could
make it work except I hated the spa-like bathroom with its toilet tucked in a chubby hole, a huge clear glass shower and a deep, claw-footed bathtub. I’d have
to use the tub to display my sea shell collection because there is no way I
could get in and out of that magazine perfect tub sitting in front of floor-to-ceiling
windows. And that shower was so open I’d be fighting the urge to hang girly curtains
inside or turn it into a greenhouse.
After leaving the park office I went a block up the road to
a condo community that has a basket load of new condos going up…zero steps and
in a price range I can afford. And for the bonus round, on the other side of a
screen of trees is a community of 400 families who’ve all passed background
checks. Across the street is a golf course, not that I golf but they don’t
generate a lot of traffic. The community is dog friendly with no weight restrictions so Levi could turn into an obese schnauzer I'd have to pull around in a wagon and it wouldn't get us kicked out. Judging by the outsides and online photos, these condos are fabulous and they are just down the street from the stand-alone condo that
a few years ago wanted to interview Levi before accepting my offer on a place I
loved. Nyah, nyah, nyah!
Oh, and my target area of around this golf course? Perfect.
It’s four miles to a library, an urgent care facility and my banks, six miles
to a movie theater, gas station and my favorite grocery store chain with a
Starbucks inside, seven miles to my great-niece’s house where my niece is
locked in to doing child care for the next five years and it’s less than a mile
from a major street that my brother and nephew frequently use---my nephew would
only live five miles away and my brother fifteen. My younger niece who lives the furthest
would only be eighteen miles away and my oldest niece just fourteen---both
drives on country roads. And all my doctor’s offices are ganged up on one road,
which is a fairly easy driving commute of ten miles back into the city. So now what’s the game plan? Get serious about downsizing
and in the spring maybe start working with a realtor. ©
NOTE: Photo above is an artist rendering of the condos I looked at and the photo below is from the Sun Community. The condo is $208,000 (for two bedrooms)---yes, brand new---and the three bedroom manufactured home below is listed at $92,900. The HOA on the condo was only $200 a month and covers trash pickup, yard care, water, sewer, snow removal and insurance.
