When dealing with smaller lots, one trick is to place two homes perpendicular to the street that stretch over the lots behind and then a third home horizontally in the remaining gap between those two homes and the opposing street. This is frequently called the “3 for 4” formation. But does that work in real life? In this video, we tour our park in Omaha, Nebraska in which we recently took delivery of several new homes and placed them parallel to the street and discuss the issues with this arrangement.
Can You Successfully Place A Mobile Home Horizontally To The Street? - Transcript
Is there anything wrong with having mobile homes parallel to the street such as this? It's something we've utilized in many parks as a solution to short lots. You can have basically four lots and make them into three you can have, if you take take think of four lots and you pull two of the homes, you set them over the lot limit on those two lots, you end up with this strange, outsized rectangular portion of the remainder of those four lots. And you can typically sneak a single wide into that uniquely shaped, yet narrow rectangle. But the question is, does this work? Look how tight this home is to the lot? That's your backyard, technically. And that's your front yard.
So can you sell that? This is a $50,000 home? Will anyone buy a mobile home that has a lot that smaller? The answer is yes. Some people actually like having very little grass. If you think about it, there are Americans out there right now that buy attached townhomes for the simple reason they don't have to mow or attend to the yard. So the answer is yes, you can find people that will go ahead and actually like this kind of lock configuration. But nevertheless, it's not something that a large family would like. This is probably more of what a senior would like in housing to not have to worry about mowing or weed eating. But surely there's not much room out here for kids to play.
Now, in all the years we've been doing this putting homes on these Outparcels parallel to the street, because clearly these lots would be way too small to go in the traditional right angular way unless they were tiny travel trailers. We've never really had a problem getting the sold. So I guess the moral is there's enough people out there who liked the idea of a minimal yard or no yard to make these things fly out the door. So when you have a lot that is short or too short, two or several short lots, you can combine them together and go with one of these horizontally styled homes parallel to the street. As long as you got a parking pad they still will sell!