Modular Living Factory-built houses becoming choice of professionals, retirees, young couples

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Lynn Hadyniak remembers the June day in 1998 when her new home was delivered. Friends and family followed the truck, ready with chain saws to trim any overhanging branches along the mile of dirt road.

But though Hadyniak’s new home was delivered by trailer and was livable in a matter of days, it was no mobile home.

The Hadyniaks chose to buy a modular home, a housing option that more and more Mainers are selecting. Real estate agents, appraisers, even contractors say modulars hold their value as well as a “stick-built” house. And they also say the homes sacrifice nothing in quality to the houses that are framed, sheathed and finished off by a crew of carpenters.

In the midcoast area, modulars are popping up in what were once woodlots and farm fields. And they do almost literally pop up; once the lot is cleared, the foundation poured and the house arrives on a couple of trailer trucks.

Though the same dealers who sell trailers and double-wides often also sell modular Cape Cods, ranches and colonial-style homes, they are quick to point out there is a world of difference between the two kinds of manufactured homes. Modulars, dealers say, use top-quality lumber and other materials and are designed to last a lifetime.

Hadyniak and her husband and twin sons moved to Maine in the mid-1990s from New Jersey after buying land in Freedom in western Waldo County. While mulling whether to build a house, one of the options the family considered was a modular home.

Hadyniak was reluctant at first.

“I was very skeptical,” she says. “We had wanted a log house.”

Anything resembling a trailer was out altogether, which is how she classified a modular.

“My first thought was, ‘mobile homes.’ To me, that’s what all portable, constructed homes were,” she remembered.

Having worked for a time as a reporter, Hadyniak said she had been to one too many mobile-home fires. The older models are notorious for emitting noxious fumes from synthetics when they catch fire, and people have died trying to get out of a burning trailer because there often is just a single outside door and small windows.

But after researching modulars on the Internet, her opinion changed.

“I learned that modular homes were not mobile homes,” she said.

She remembers walking into a colonial model at North American Homes in Warren, and being surprised at how nice it was.

“I was stunned,” she says.

Like single- and double-wides, modular homes are built in large, warehouse-type buildings. Crews frame-out, sheath and finish off the houses under ideal conditions. Tools and materials are handy, most measurements are standard, and no work days are lost to rain.

Manufacturers say the houses can be built “tighter,” or better insulated, than a traditional contractor-built home.

And because the manufacturers buy materials in large volume, they can beat some of the cost a contractor faces at a local lumberyard, dealers say. They say a house can be finished in two weeks, though getting one delivered may take a few months if ordered in the spring or summer due to backlogs.

Though modular homes companies offer a half-dozen, basic models, customers are free to customize the houses in dozens of different ways.

“That’s one of the benefits,” Hadyniak says. She and her husband wanted a large ranch-style home with large rooms that opened into each other, and had lots of ideas about how those rooms would look.

The salesman told her, “Grab a piece of paper,” she remembers, as the house came together in concept form.

The Hadyniaks ended up buying a 66-foot by 33-foot ranch.

The house has three bedrooms and a smaller bedroom that serves as a study that she and her husband share. Hadyniak works for the state Department of Human Services and teaches part time at nearby Unity College.

There is no charge for making custom changes, Hadyniak says. Dealers say floor plans can be flip-flopped, houses can be ordered with different sidings, different kitchen and bathroom fixtures, and items such as carpeting or linoleum can be deleted and the cost deducted if the customer wants to buy them separately.

“It was our choice of the countertop, it was our choice of carpet,” she said.

In 1997, the Hadyniaks ordered their Maple Leaf Home from North American Homes for $89,000. Maple Leaf Homes are built in Fredericton, New Brunswick. North American, which is affiliated with Ray’s Homes of Northport and Warren, touts the savings that can be had because of the favorable exchange rate with Canada, now at over 40 cents to the dollar.

Though modular homes usually provide everything that’s needed above the foundation, there are still some hefty costs to bear beyond the house itself. Customers must purchase land and have it cleared, if needed; have a driveway put in; have a well and septic system installed if municipal sewer and water are not available; have electric lines run to the site; and have a foundation or slab poured.

“I was just tickled to get our own house, of our own design,” Hadyniak says. She likes the fact that she can have a wood stove in the living room, that she and her husband were able to pick out not only the color of the vinyl siding, but of the roof shingles too. Her home has vinyl-clad windows that tip in for cleaning, another pleasing feature.

The home came with a five-year warranty. When a section of the linoleum in the kitchen began to come apart, she called North American Homes, and it was fixed at no cost.

Dale Leighton of North American Homes said the business has been selling Maple Leaf Homes for seven years. Like some of the other companies that carry Canadian lines, he uses the exchange rate as part of his sales pitch.

“You get more home for less money,” he said.

Shipping is added to the cost of buying a home, he said, but the quoted price includes shipping and putting house the house on a foundation.

Most customers buy the Capes with the second floor unfinished, Leighton said. The houses are put together so that the stairwell leading to the second floor is closed-in and insulated, so heat doesn’t leak up and out the roof before the homeowner insulates and finishes it.

For Brian Filley and his wife, buying a modular had more to do with the bottom line than the ease and speed with which they could get into a new home.

The couple are in their early 40s, and have two sons, 9 and 6. The family had rented half a duplex in Rockland when they decided to take the plunge and bought a lot in a subdivision in Rockport.

The Filleys purchased a 28-foot-by-42-foot Cape, with the second floor unfinished. It has two bedrooms on the first floor. Eventually, the upstairs will have two bedrooms.

The base package cost $57,000. A comparable house built on site by a contractor would cost about $75,000, he estimates.

“We’re not rich,” Filley said. “There’s really no other way we could afford to buy a house.”

After two and a half years, the house has stood up well to the rigors of two young boys. “And they pound on it pretty hard,” he said.

Realtor Martin Cates of Jaret & Cohn in Rockland has had experience reselling modulars.

“I’ve sold quite a few, both packages and existing modulars, built in the last 5 to 10 years,” he said. “I’ve really had no issues with them holding their value,” he said. Modulars will accrue value at the same rate as contractor-built homes in the same neighborhood, he said.

Subdivisions approved in the 1970s and 1980s often included restrictive covenants banning manufactured housing. Those rules were prompted by fears of trailers bringing down the value of adjacent homes, he said, and did not anticipate the present-day modulars.

The “trailer” stigma continues to plague modulars.

Maynard Ingraham, a Rockport appraiser, said he does not discount the value of a modular.

“I treat it the same as a stick-built house, because they’re built under ideal conditions,” he said. He has never heard of a bank challenging the financing of a modular. But the condition is key, he said.

“If it’s a cheap-built modular, then you’re not going to have it be in good condition,” or if it is poorly maintained, it will devalue just like any other house, he said.

Jeff Peters, a contractor in Belfast, purchased and finished a modular Cape two years ago in Belfast as a speculation house. Though the initial package price seemed good, he said by the time he finished the second floor and installed heating and plumbing systems, it did not provide the profit he expected.

And the fact that the house was modular killed at least one sale. One couple visited the house several times and seemed ready to buy, Peters said. In the real estate agent’s office, as the parties prepared to sign a purchase and sales contract, Peters recalled, he told the agent that the couple should be told that the house was a modular if they didn’t already know.

The couple got up and walked out. But even though the modular home didn’t work out as a “spec” house, Peters believes modulars are a good buy.

“They’re definitely well-made,” he said. “The stuff never gets wet,” the way a house built on site would. And because they are built in a factory-like setting, the building methods are top notch.”