We used to have three different population classifications and now we have five. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore how and why America added two new types of population classifications and how you can use that to your advantage in finding good mobile home parks to buy.
Episode 427: Profiting From Two New Population Classifications Transcript
When I got into the mobile home park business back in the 1990s, there were only three population classifications in America. You had urban, which is the good old heart of the city, formulated in the 1800s back when America industrialized. And then you've got suburban, which is the ring of residential communities surrounding that urban core. And then you have rural. But now we've added two more classifications to the American lingo, and these have some of the best opportunities for mobile home park buyers. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. We're going to talk about these population classifications that just about every metro and even cities not large enough to be a metro, all have in common. And then why we have these new two entrants and why there is so much potential opportunity in them.
So America is originally just one kind of population, right? We were all farmers. We were agricultural. People lived on the farm. They spent their whole life on the farm. They died on the farm. Sometimes they got married and moved to another farm. But back in the early days, that's all there was. It was just all a farming nation. And then people started to build factories, to build things, and that was mostly in the 1800s. And suddenly America started building widgets and items that they would export to other countries or sell within our own country. But when you go to build things in a manufacturing plant, you've got to get people all bunched in together right inside the factory on that conveyor belt. So suddenly people started living near these factories, and that became what is known as the urban centers. And if you go to any city in America, particularly an older city like St. Louis, you'll see those factories, you have these giant buildings, and then you'll have these very small kind of row houses around those big factories, and sometimes two and three story old-timey multifamily around those factories. And that was the urban center. And so then we had a period of time in America where we had just agricultural, raw land farmers and these urban centers, but there was really nothing in between. You either lived in the city in the heart of all of that population density, or you lived back out on the farm with your relatives.
But then in the 1930s and '40s, and then it ramped up in the '50s and the '60s, people decided, "Hey, I don't want to really live in the city. I don't mind working in the factory, but I don't want to live next door in that really ugly little A-frame house thing." And they started building subdivisions. Single family tracked subdivisions. And back then everyone had a car, and they would drive from their job. They'd jump in that old Model A Ford or that 1960s Mustang, and they would drive from their job to their house. And normally the length of that drive time was measured in, you know, 5, 10, 15 minutes of drive time. And we had a whole new classification then, known as the suburbs. And that is now defined as called suburban. So now we have three classifications: we have the good old rural, all the farmland; we have the urban, the big city core; and then we have the suburban, which is that ring of residential communities surrounding the urban. And that was true for just the longest time, all the way back into the '90s when I got in the business. That's still the way it was. You had those three classifications. But now in modern times, we've added two. The first one we added is the exurban. Now, what the heck is an exurban?
An exurban refers to the string of towns that surround the suburban. Because in most areas, if you look at the map, there is a defined group of small towns on the outlying part of those suburban neighborhoods. But they were always considered too far out for anyone to work in the urban and live in the exurban, because an exurban drive time is about a half an hour. And most people don't like driving, and they don't want to drive a half an hour each way to work and back home. So people always assumed those were not really a part of the metro, that they were not really a part of that big ecosystem that is supported by those urban jobs. But then the population started shifting, and it accelerated dramatically during COVID, because during COVID we were all told, "You've got to get away from humans. You want to be in the outdoors, you want to be in lower density populations." And on top of that, people who were stuck at home said, "I don't like where I live. Never really did. Now I really hate it. Since I'm stuck at home all day, I've got to find a place I like better."
And people started to get in their cars that was allowable during COVID; driving around was felt safe from any disease and they started poking around farther out. They started going to those towns they hadn't been to before. And they said, "Oh, I kind of like this place. It's got this kind of charming downtown area. It's got lower home prices, it's got lower everything prices, it's got quaint little restaurants, it's got zero crime. Our kid could walk to school. I think I want to move here." And that gave birth to the whole exurban phenomenon. And today, if you look at a map and where people are going, you'll see huge population increases in those exurban markets. But then there's one more classification that has come to light very recently. In fact, it's pretty much a byproduct of COVID, and we call this the super commuter. Now, the super commuter is the person who is willing to drive from their job in the urban core out about an hour each way. So it's those little towns on the fringes beyond the exurban. So to visualize this again: you have the urban, then you have the suburban, then you have the exurban, then you have the super commuter, and then we have back to rural again.
So we jumped from three classifications to five. Now, we all knew for the longest time, even in the '90s. We all knew urban, suburban, and rural. And everyone avoids rural because rural is really defined as an area where there's just no jobs. And that equates to very low single family home and multifamily pricing. So it's hard to make a mobile home park work there, there's just no people to appeal to. And if you found anyone, there wouldn't be any money in the business because you couldn't get any kind of money on your lot rent.
So we've always shunned rural; all park owners have. But now we've gone, we've doubled, we've got a 100% increase in the types of communities where you've got the correct amount of population and home prices to support mobile home parks. But the key item is no one's really been working these exurban and super commuter markets.
Everyone just looks at the urban and the suburban and they stop. In fact, if you look at the metro maps that have been drawn up by the US government, they typically exclude these exurban and super commuter markets because they're so new. They weren't there when the government made their algorithm to define metro. So they've just been left off. And because these markets were never really worked, you can go in to them and find park owners who really have had very little contact from other buyers in the past, and most importantly, are willing to sell those parks very reasonably because they don't realize that they're important now. They think they're still the very, very poor, distant stepchildren of the urban and suburban classifications. We've bought parks in exurban markets at incredibly attractive pricing. You can often get seller financing on it, and all you have to then do is sit there in the path of growth and start raising your lot rents along with the market, because all the market housing prices in these exurban markets are going up. So it's a very low risk way to get a really good mobile home park deal. Now, the same is true on the super commuter, but you have to be a little more careful because an hour commute out is quite a bit of commute.
You cannot guess wrong on this. There is no path of growth, as far as it will take a long time to get out to you. In both cases, you're definitely going to want to run test ads to make sure the demand is there to support your mobile home park endeavor. But the key thing to watch out for in picking a successful exurban and super commuter market are the prevailing home prices. What do single family homes go for and what do apartments go for? That's key. Remember that we're in the affordable housing business, so to be affordable you have to be in comparison to homes that are not affordable. And mobile home parks always flourish when single family and multifamily home prices are very high.
But if you can find an exurban market or a super commuter market that reflects demand in the form of high home prices, which you can easily pull off of bestplaces.net or any number of sites, you could then have a market that's not only a real winner, but one in which the pricing will be very low, because mom and pop are not aware of this new phenomenon. Potentially get seller carry, and some of those deals that people are buying today in those exurban and super commuter markets may be the most profitable deals of 2026. This is Frank Rolfe with the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.