Home in an instant: Owners of mobile homes prefer efficiency, affordability

Kimberley McGee

Thursday, Nov. 15, 2001 | 8:22 a.m.

Down a small, dark hallway, Connie Demo leads the way to the back bedroom of her 31-year-old east Las Vegas trailer home.

She squeezes past the door of her small bathroom, where her two older dogs are barking. She flips on the light of the wood-paneled bedroom with thick, shag-carpeting on the floor.

"This is, and has been, my room. It's still quite nice, but it's old," the 69-year-old hotel worker said. "The new place will be much brighter. New carpets, beige walls."

With the upgrades in decor and construction options made available in the last decade, manufactured homes have seemingly left their poor cousin with the unflattering image the trailer far behind. In 1969 Demo settled in Las Vegas and wanted a home an affordable home of her own.

"I asked the (Holy) Father, 'If you just give me a mobile home, I'll never move again,'" Demo said. And she hasn't.

Instead, Demo is lifting her 1970 trailer off of the one-acre parcel where she has lived for more than three decades and is trading it in for an updated manufactured home which will look nothing like a manufactured home.

Both bathrooms in her new home will have a shower and tub amenities that weren't offered in 1970.

The outside of the home will be finished in tan and white stucco, keeping in fashion with the hundreds of pink-stuccoed construction homes that fill the valley.

"It will be much brighter, with (warm) colors and new carpet and, oooh, yes, blinds," Demo said. "It's been so fun to pick out everything new. So many options. Much more than I ever had when I first bought my mobile home. And I'm paying (about $50,000) cash."

As Demo shows, the new manufactured home is, well, more a home than it has ever been.

Manufactured home communities, once called "trailer parks" and frequently labeled "mobile home parks" by most, offer a tight-knit family atmosphere, security, entertainment and inexpensive home ownership, residents say.

The design of the factory-built homes, also offers freedom and luxury most affordable construction homes do not.

And manufactured homes can be made to order according to the specifications of the buyer.

Finicky home owners can choose to put an extra room here, a breakfast nook there, windows along the front instead of on the side of the home, or create bathrooms that swell with oversized tubs, dual showerheads and marble sinks.

Back yards, swimming pools and barbecues are often included with the purchase of a manufactured home lot.

"It's really all you need. Everything comes with the home. You get to pick out whatever (floor plan) you want to live in and it's all yours," Demo said. "What more could you ask for?"

Those shopping for manufactured homes want upgrades, such as a tile roof or sprawling entryway, said Dennis Burke, home manager of Tom Terry Homes, which buys and sells manufactured homes. That's quite a change from the metal roof and flimsy stairs leading to the side door of trailers in the past, he said.

"These are glamorous homes," Burke said. "The trend is to get a non-mobile home look for a mobile-home price."

A home constructed on a parcel of land costs about $100 per square foot, while a manufactured (or prefabricated) home costs about $45 per square foot, he said.

"It's becoming more and more popular for people in Sandy Valley and Pahrump who have land and want a house in a hurry out there" to buy a manufactured home, Burke said. "It comes with everything ready."

One attraction is that the homes can be bought, built, furnished and delivered within 90 days. Once the deal is sealed the home is moved to the site and assembled. Appliances, draperies and carpets are installed, and the unit is hooked up to the water, electrical, cable and sewage connections. About 24 hours later the home is complete and ready for its new family.

There are about 100 manufactured home parks in the valley, with four more that have opened in the last few years, said Radeane Blackwell, sales manager for Easy Living Mobile Homes Inc. and Realty Inc.

In the 13 years Blackwell has sold mobile homes, the biggest trend in Las Vegas has been for dry-wall interiors and stuccoed exteriors.

"People want a home," Blackwell said. "It doesn't matter that it's manufactured. It's still a quality home."

Heart of the home

The affordability of the manufactured home is largely what draws many to buy one.

"It's a frugal way of living," Demo said.

Living at the mobile home park for the past 31 years has enabled her to invest in land deals, work part time as a hostess at Strip hotels and save to pay cash for her new manufactured home. The unit will be delivered next month to her east Las Vegas mobile home park.

But her reasons for staying on the same land at the mobile home park include something personal. Of the 13 towering trees she tends to in her spacious backyard, one mesquite and two locust trees were planted in memory of her dogs April, Paris and Precious, who died within the last 10 years.

"I couldn't leave them," Demo said. "They are my babies."

Demo is relieved that she and her three Boston bulldogs can move into a new home, without actually having to move.

"My neighbors are used to me and my dogs. If something is wrong over here, they check it out," Demo said. "It's just home."

That sense of home and caring neighbors is what attracted Roy and Molly Hartwig, who have lived at a mobile home park in east Las Vegas since 1994.

Each morning Molly Hartwig walks to the park's clubhouse and joins her neighbors for breakfast. Over warm cups of coffee they talk about their lives, different ways to decorate their homes for the holidays, their families or what's on sale at the neighborhood grocery store.

At night a lively card game can be found at one of the many tables in the clubhouse. Potluck dinners are hot and waiting at the clubhouse kitchen at least once a week, and on any night puzzle-lovers can gather to piece together a picture in progress.

"It's just friendliness," Hartwig said. "You are buying into the community way of life, not just a home."

The floor plan also appealed to the semiretired couple. They were able to choose a layout that allowed them to have guests -- and privacy.

The bedrooms are located on either end of the 36-foot-long home, leaving the living room open and airy and without the dreaded, dark hallways found in traditional trailer floor plans, the Hartwigs said.

"We don't like hallways," Molly Hartwig said. "It's so closed in. Awful."

For her husband, Roy, Molly said home ownership was a key factor.

"I don't like apartments. It's not yours," Roy Hartwig said. "I want to live in my own place and this way I can afford it."

They said they were tickled to be able to move in the day the home was delivered without having to buy a stitch of drapery or an electrical appliance. The 1,600-square-foot manufactured home came with a dishwasher, refrigerator, oven and built-in microwave.

"It's brand new and it has absolutely everything you could need," Roy Hartwig said. "We liked it so much we bought it right off the lot."

Gary and Dixie Theesfield bought their double-wide manufactured home with all the trimmings in September from Nationwide Homes on Boulder Highway.

"There's no way we could have done everything we wanted with a tract home," Dixie Theesfield said. "And (tract home) floor plans are such a waste of space!"

They opted for painted, textured walls with cathedral ceilings and large overhead fans. They were also able to have a wall built in the middle of the oversized living room to create a separate living room, two bedrooms and bathroom area for their grown son and visiting family.

"I said 'Can we put a wall here? And can we put windows in the wall? And a door?' " Dixie Theesfield said. "I showed them where and they said yes. You can't have that with a (construction) home."

The Theesfields had lived in a mobile home park in southeast Las Vegas since 1995. They wanted their own land and to get away from the sometimes suffocating, close-knit community of the park.

"It was the right thing to do for us," Gary Theesfield said. "It feels like a home. I'll be here for the next 50 years."

The Theesfields plan to landscape the 1/4-acre lot with mesquite trees and a flower bed, erect a two-car garage and add another master bedroom to the back of the manufactured home.

"We can do whatever we want and it's something we can afford to do with a (manufactured) home," she said. "This is our dream home."

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