Some of you might think we are crazy after I shared our new financial adventure. We were making great progress on paying off our home extra fast when my husband had the idea to invest in another property. It wasn’t a turn-key property either. We knew it was going to take some work to get it to generate an income.
The first step was getting rid of the double-wide mobile home on the property. It was listed as a mobile home in need of repairs and we initially hoped that it might be salvageable. We really wanted it to be. It would have been so nice to spend money on a remodel instead of a complete replacement. It didn’t take three minutes inside to realize that it most definitely was not worth keeping.
Even though we had to tear down the mobile home, the property has the benefits of a working water well, a septic tank, and connected electricity. Also, since it already had a permitted home, the most expensive county fees that come with new construction, the traffic impact fee and school support fees, have already been paid. That’s worth about $50,000 itself.
But we did have to tear down the old home, which made for a mostly fun, but very time-consuming family project. We had a few options with different cost and labor levels. I’m sharing the details here, along with our decisions, some notes on the process, and a few pictures.
Decision to DIY the mobile home demolition
Before we closed on the property we talked through our options for getting rid of the existing mobile home, so that we could be ready to stsart as soon as the sale was complete.
Here are the three options we thought about:
Drive it to the dump
It’s a “mobile” home right? Theoretically we could have had it rolled off and taken to the dump. The idea of driving it off was attractive because it wouldn’t take any work from us, it would be quick, and it wouldn’t create a demolition mess on the property (hello screws and nails hiding on the ground everywhere!), but it would have been very pricey! Plus it’s not as easy as it sounds since it hasn’t been on wheels for 40+ years and the extensive damage to the home made us fear it might fall apart during the process of dividing the two halves.
Get a professional demo team
While it would have been much faster to have an excavator crush the home and pack it into a dumpster than to DIY the job, it was sure to be much more expensive. That would include paying for equipment as well as the skilled operator. We would also have to pay for more dumpster space. While heavy machinery will smash everything up, it doesn’t use the dumpster space very efficiently.
The estimate for having a crew come in to smash and haul away the house came in at $13,000.
Doing the work ourselves
Taking apart things apart can be fun (except when it involves insulation… I hate insulation!). While building takes skills, demolition is easier. We still had to learn some things about the most efficient way to deconstruct the home since we had never done a project like this before. While it took lots of time, the labor was free and it was time we spent working together as a family. By the end of the project our kids were definitely ready to be done, but they had fun doing it.
I will be the first to admit that my reason for wanting to do the demo ourselves was to save money. How much did it still cost? Here are the details.
What we spent on a DIY demolition of a double-wide mobile home
Since my husband, our kids, and I did the labor ourselves, our only costs were tools and dumpster fees. We live in Northern California, so it’s likely that your dump fees are cheaper than ours!
Tools for Demolition- $1,078
We had some tools, but there were a few things we knew we wanted. We also needed everything to be cordless. While there is electricity on the property, we were going to have to cut the power to do the demolition and hooking up tools to a generator and dragging cords around was not a viable option.
Mike’s tool brand of choice has been Milwaukee, so our new purchases were also Milwaukee tools. Other brands would work too, but it’s convenient to stay within the same system of batteries and chargers. In order of importance to the job, here’s what we bought.
- M18 18V Lithium-Ion Cordless SAWZALL Reciprocating Saw
The Sawzall was the single most important tool, by far. There were many times it would have been nice to have two. We knew we would get through the starter blades quickly so we also purchased a set of 25 blades from Amazon with a variety of wood, multi-purpose, and metal-cutting blades. We used this tool constantly to cut pretty much everything: cabinetry, walls, flooring, joists, electrical cables, aluminum and steel, ABS, PVC and pex pipe. This is the tool of all tools for demolition. - M18 FUEL 1/4″ Hex Impact Driver
The impact driver was a specialist tool, but one there was no good replacement for. The windows and doorframes in the home were all fastened in with metal screws with hex heads, hundreds and hundreds of them. This lightweight driver let us get into the narrow channels and remove them all. If we just tried to cut out all the windows, we surely would have broken at least some of them, and then we’d have been picking up glass. Taking out the screws let us pull out all the glass safely and without a mess, as well as all the aluminum door frames, carport awning and so many other things fastened in with hex-head screws. - Demolition Sledgehammer
This was not a Milwaukee tool. It is just a big hammer. When you need a big hammer, though, nothing but a big hammer works. - M18 6½” Circular Saw
I thought we would use the circular saw more than we did but the Sawzall took almost all the cutting jobs. The circular saw was especially useful in two situations. First, we cut halfway through the wall studs to weaken them before pulling the house down, and it was nice to be able to set the blade depth and just walk along the wall cutting all the studs to the right depth at once. Second, to remove the subfloor we had to cut the between each floor joist and individually wrench out the joist with its narrow piece of attached subfloor. The circular saw was a better tool for that than the Sawzall. - Additional Battery
With a lot of tool purchases, your best deals are always when you buy a set. The sets available at the time did not include the Sawzall we wanted, so we purchased one set with the other tools (which also came with a battery and charger) and one separate Sawzall with an additional battery. With the charger and batteries we already had, this gave us two chargers and four batteries, which was enough power for the whole demolition. We used a large backup battery to recharge on site if we were there all day. - M18 18-Volt Lithium-Ion Cordless 100 Lumens LED Flashlight
Our halogen worklamps are all corded, and there were several days that we worked into the night. While this did not provide full work-site illumination, a small spotlight it was enough to keep one person working after the sun went down.
Dumpsters- $3,184
There’s nothing like throwing money in the trash! I really wanted to minimize the amount of money that we spent on dumpsters so I started organizing everything by size and carfully putting things in tetris-style.
We started with a 40-yard dumpster for $1,050 which we filled carefully and neatly organized. The initial price of the dumpster includes 5 tons of debris, with anything over 5 tons costing $125 per ton (up to a max of 10 tons). It’s less expensive to pay the per-ton overage than to pay the cost of another dumpster, so we wanted to fit as much as possible in. The full dumpster had over 7 tons in it, so we paid an overage charge of $384. I was proud of my packing job.
Since you aren’t allowed to put heavy roofing materials in the 40-yard dumpsters, we had to get a 20-yard dumpster next for $700.
For our third dumpster, we went with another 40-yard dumpster. We didn’t quite fill it all the way, but a 20-yard or 30-yard wouldn’t have been big enough. It was full, but not packed as efficiently as our first 40-yard dumpster.
Our dumpster spending was:
- 40 yard dumpster $1,050 x 2 = $2,100
- 20 yard dumpster $700
- Dumpster overage fee $384
Getting the seller to pay the bill
We made our initial offer before seeing the inside of the property. The listing actually said that you wouldn’t be allowed to go inside until an offer was accepted, but we had shown that we were serious buyers. We tried mupltiple times, but there was a current tenant living there for free who wasn’t good at keeping appointments. We knew there was a chance that we would be getting rid of the home anyway and we knew the permitting, well, septic, and electricity had value. We took that into consideration with our offer and made an offer anyway.
When we eventually saw the inside of the property and realized that it was not just “in need of repair” as they had said, we emailed the seller’s agent to negotiate. Using the $13,000 figure above, we offered to split the cost of the mobile home removal. They said yes to that, so dropped the purchase price by $6,500.
Admittedly getting a $6,500 credit is not the same as getting cash to use for all of these costs, but we made it work in our budget.
All in all, our total cost for the demolition was $4,262. We were happy to have kept it within the credit that we had negotiated, with the extra being earned by our sweat! We did the work over about three weeks, mostly evenings and weekends.
Want to see some pictures of the demo process?
We started by tearing out all the cabinetry, furniture and interior walls. I don’t have much experience with mobile homes, so I didn’t realize how much built-in furniture there would be.
After getting the interior walls out, it felt like we were nearly done. We weren’t!
Removing the carport, exterior siding, and the insulation. Oh the insulation! What a mess.
When we got down to the studs, we hooked a chain from our big van to the frame and pulled the house down.
The two halves of the house fell in, which gave us access to the roof so we could pull off shingles and roofing, and remove more insulation.
Clearing all the walls and roof finally left us with a beautiful raised dance floor.
After pulling off the subfloor, we removed, you guessed it, a whole lot more insulation.
With the house out of the way, we’re ready for the next phase of this project which putting in a new pad and hookups for a temporary rental space. Follow along with us here!
What would you have done? Paid for a complete haul off, hired a professional demo crew, or undertaken a complete DIY demolition?
I would have had to hire the demo crew. I physically can not do the work. My family is really busy with their own lives.
Those are definitely valid reasons to go with hiring help!
Saving on this project allows you to do other fun things as a family. Who knows maybe one of your kids decides to do this or something similar as a business someday? At the very least they have a new skill set and hopefully confidence in their ability to do hard things. Perhaps also an appreciation for manual labor that not all youth are able to receive.
Yes! I agree Mandy! It definitely gave all of us an appreciation for building and other manual labor. We enjoyed seeing how things are built and everyone like the challenge of putting their strength to the test. There were times when it was monotonous, but for the most part it was an adventure.
Good work! That a huge accomplishment. I have a couple of questions if you’re willing to share. I am curious if you feel any obligation to compensate your kids for their hard work. I’m all about family projects without compensation, but we’ve never had an investment property so I wondered if it feels different for that reason. Also wondering if you salvaged any of the materials for future projects?
That’s a good question Nicole. We didn’t pay our kids to help with the demo and we don’t feel bad about it. We also don’t pay our kids for the hard work they do at our house like weedwhacking, splitting wood, etc, so our kids didn’t expect to be paid. BUT we never made them miss out on any profitable work or fun with friends either. If they had an opportunity to earn money (which was pretty much every Saturday for the older three), I would take them to their paying jobs and they’d meet us at the property afterward. If there was a chance to go out with friends or a fun church or school activity, we prioritized that. So really, the only time they worked for us was when they didn’t have anything else to do anyway. We don’t do video games and don’t really watch TV, so our kids are always active. They would rather be working on the property with the family than sitting at home alone. They actually usually enjoyed the work for the most part, too (kids like to break stuff). As far as the difference with this being an investment property versus our home, it really didn’t make a difference to us as this is a long term investment, not something that will be generating cash anytime soon. So instead of doing all of the family chores we would normally do at our own house on a Saturday, we worked together at a different location.
The house was pretty gross, so it was easy for us to just toss everything without a second thought. We did salvage a bit of the lumber for our kids to use for a treehouse, but frankly it smells bad, like the whole house did. so we didn’t want to save much.
Great job! Thanks for documenting and sharing this. Your kids will always remember that experience! They may remember it better than a vacation, I’m thinking. My memories of working hard with my family have become very fond and dear memories to me. I hope the same for your family.
Thanks for your sweet words Laurie! I’m pretty sure they will have memories from this family adventure! We learned a lot about how to use tools and how things are built. The three younger ones spent lots of time exploring and playing outside there too, when there wasn’t a job for them.