Story Time Thursday

As we’ve been planning to move to some property, we’ve also talked about our living situation. We want to buy some land where we can build our own house that fits our needs, but we don’t really have the finances or capability to build and move into that house right away. We feel getting set up with basic necessities and getting familiar with the area are more important, so we’ve started looking at trailers we could live in on the property until we can get a house built.

As someone who rarely went camping and who has been fortunate enough to have friends and family to share a house with my whole life, I don’t have much experience or knowledge when it comes to “towable homes”. However, we’ve found local dealers can be surprisingly accommodating when it comes to educating potential customers and showing what types of options you have.

To start with, I just want to mention tiny homes since they are a popular choice. They do tend to be pricier than any option (besides full-sized mobile homes), but I think it would be worth it if we were planning to live in it permanently after moving to our property. As cute as tiny houses are, we hope to one day have kids, which would create a rather difficult living situation in that small of a house.

We also never considered RV motor coaches (the typical RV bus) as it doesn’t seem like it would suit our needs. Ideally, we would only be moving our home a handful of times, so it seems to be a bit unnecessary to be able to drive it separately. We’ll need to trade in our car for a vehicle more suitable for homesteading and country living anyway, so getting one that can tow our home isn’t much of an added expense. Neither my husband nor I have ever driven anything close to a bus-size vehicle, which was another factor.

Having a particular travel trailer brand recommended to us, we checked out those. There were surprisingly spacious layouts, nice upgrades, and customization available. Having a consistent ceiling height was also a nice feature. The main downsides of this option we found were that they tend to be more difficult to maneuver while towing due to the weight distribution. While there was a surprising amount of room, it also still felt just a bit too small to be living in full-time.

Our preference so far is 5th wheels. While we’ve seen some spacious trailers, the 5th wheels we’ve looked at seemed to have the most space conducive to living in full-time. The largest ones feel more like an apartment than a trailer. They also tend to be more maneuverable in spite of their size due to part of it (usually the entire bedroom) being over the bed of the pickup truck pulling it. The main downside is that these do generally require a heavier duty (more expensive) truck to tow it.

On our dealership tour, we did also notice some key differences between an older trailer versus a brand new one. For one thing, most new models already had a solar panel, inverter, and battery hooked up for power, making them almost off-grid ready. Directly comparing an older used model, it was also noticeably warmer inside from the sun, which indicated worse insulation. The sales rep indicated this was because of different manufacturing processes and materials used over the years.

Things to Keep in Mind When Looking for Towable Homes:

• While I don’t recommend completely relying on sales reps for information, you can get surprisingly good facts and insights from dealerships if you’re new to RVing

• The type of home best for you depends completely on your unique situation

• Older, used trailers can be a great money-saving option, but it can mean giving up certain features

• Decide what you can and can’t live without; keep that in mind when evaluating your options