NEWS BULLETIN:

The earlier article said that the residents bought their mobile home park for $6 million with 46 lots but this one says 26 lots. If that’s true, then they paid $260,000 per household so they could have the honor of living in a high-density trailer park. I hope this article is wrong on that lot count because – if not – this is a total scandal. There’s no way you can spin that as being in the best interests of anyone.

Why would you think that Pinellas country would tell people to raise their mobile homes up 9’ in the air or move out? Because they thought it would be too obvious if they said 90’ in the air. Clearly this story has the optics that the county is simply trying to raise the bar as high as possible to get rid of the tenants, the mobile homes demolished, and then have the land converted into a use that they like more.

If there was an apartment complex that had code violations, the city would no doubt go to them and say “here’s what we need to get done to bring this up to code and here are some grants and programs to help pay for it and take all the time you need” and they would work together. But when it’s a mobile home park, the city says “fix this up or we’re shutting you down and you have zero time to get it done” and approach it from a confrontational perspective.

Galveston clearly wanted this park gone. Period. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

When you spend $11.5 million to save 76 mobile homes crammed into a tiny parcel of land you just spent $151,315 per household to live in a tiny trailer. I’m sure the park owner is delighted to have scored this much for the land but how do rationalize these numbers from a non-profit perspective? If you said to these folks “here, I’m going to give you $151,315 cash OR you can stay in your trailer” NOBODY would have taken them up on the offer to stay. They’d take the cash, drive another 30 minutes out, and buy a brick house. I think there’s some type of disconnect going on between non-profits, reality, and the true wishes of the people who live in these properties.

Not to be a party-pooper but there are two glaring problems with this story:

1. The residents paid over $130,000 per lot to own the land. Including the value of the mobile homes on those lots they are in this deal at maybe $160,000 per lot. Based on my memory of real estate in Texas, you can buy a nice brick house for that amount in many markets. Wouldn’t they have been better off simply giving these folks $160,000 cash to go buy a brick house free and clear? I’m confused.
2. The article admits that this is the third resident-owned community in the entire state of Texas. Since Texas has the largest number of mobile home parks in the entire U.S. that’s a stunning admission. When woke media discusses how residents buying communities is the solution to all the world’s problems they never include the actual statistics of how many of these deals actually close. It’s a really, really, really, really, tiny number – and then half that again.

Yet another false narrative. Orlando is fining this park owner $1,000 per day because they don’t like the condition of the property. So anyone would simply shut down, right? The city must have known that when they started fining him. So the correct analysis of this story is that the City of Orlando is apparently wanting to force this park out of business and have succeeded in doing so. Shame on this reporter for making it look like the shutdown was the park owner’s fault. He simply gave in to the city’s apparent agenda.

Looks like Vermont makes really good maple syrup but really bad bureaucrats. Can you believe anyone could make such a monumental mess out of something as simple as buying a bunch of mobile homes and delivering them to the spots where the wiped-out homes used to stand? Read this article if you need a refresher on Reagan’s quote that the scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”.

This article has nothing to do with mobile home parks, but it’s so stupid that it warranted inclusion in this week’s news list.

Universal (yes, the theme park) is building “affordable” apartments in Orlando. They’re spending $350 million to build 1,000 units. That works out to $350,000 per unit.

Now you might ask how that is affordable? It’s not. Only a complete idiot would think that’s affordable. That’s higher than the median home price in probably 70% of all U.S. metro areas, including such places as Dallas, Tulsa and Omaha.

Has America really lost grasp of the concept of “affordable”? Is next up an article on the new “affordable” Rolls Royce? How did we all get this stupid?

This is a reminder that 99% of city governments just want the mobile home parks in their boundaries to follow the rules and don’t want to shut them down. It’s a shame that  Orlando – in the above story – had not shared this attitude and was then complicit in the residents becoming homeless. Cities and park owners can either work as a team and everyone wins or at odds and nobody wins.

First of all, the rent is going to $975 per month at this park in Castro Valley. If you simply look up Castro Valley on Bestplaces.net you’ll see that the median home price is $1,047,800 and the two-bedroom apartment rent is $2,320 per month and the three bedroom is $3,300 per month. So much for the reporter’s angle that “this new mobile home park lot rent is ridiculous” because it’s not. Not at all. In fact, it’s less than 50% of the apartment rents.

The more interesting part of this story revolves around the new owner’s argument that these are not mobile homes but RVs. Very strategically interesting and could present some really bad case law for the rent control advocates. Technically – looking at the video of the story – most of these are NOT mobile homes, but instead either park models (which are designated as RVs) or pre-HUD homes (which are not then defined as mobile homes which would have a HUD seal). So I think the park owner has a shot. And it will be a cliffhanger for California if this case proceeds to trial as a huge amount of California mobile home parks look just like this one and technically these aren’t necessarily mobile homes based on definition. If that should occur – and this park owner wins -- then it might be possible for all California park owners to use that new case law to upend rent control across the state. For that reason, Castro Valley may want to think twice about litigating this.

Same false narrative as the above article. A simple Bestplaces.net review of Puyallup, WA shows the median home price of $499,500 and a three-bedroom apartment rent of $2,470 per month. The new mobile home park lot rent is $805 per month. That’s right, it’s 66% less than the apartment rent. Yet somehow the article claims the rent is exorbitant. It’s not. Not even close, In fact, it’s ridiculously cheap based on actual math with no optics attached.

Instead, like the above article, the truth is that the residents who are living on $1,000 per month of social security should not be living in an area this expensive. If you are retired you have the ability to live anywhere free from any need for employment, right? So why would you live in an area with prices this crazy high? You could move to Missouri and live on $1,000 per month all day long – but NOT in Washington or California.

The other part of this story should maybe be that social security is not nearly enough to live on at $1,000 per month, right? But the social security program is essentially insolvent so it can’t give any increases.

The bottom line to this is that nobody likes the rents going up, but people have to be realistic in their expectations of housing in retirement. That’s the true narrative in this story.

Yet another state wants to drink the Kool-Aid that “resident first option to buy mobile home parks” is the solution to world hunger, global warming, drought and pestilence. If I got a dollar for every mobile home park that is successfully purchased by the residents in Maine. I’d have … zero dollars.

At least one person in the room is still sane:

But the new requirement may adversely impact investment, said Jeff Cook, CEO of Rochester-based Cook Properties, the state’s largest owner of manufactured housing communities. “This onerous extra step represents another hurdle for owners and potential owners of these communities, who will now think twice about making investments in New York,” Cook said. 

It would be interesting to know how this “tenant right of first refusal” concept began in the first place. It certainly is not based on fact. Currently over 99% of mobile home park transactions do NOT include the tenants buying the park. Anyone who has ever sold a park to the tenants knows that it takes forever and a huge percentage of those then fail to materialize (as no non-profits want to guarantee the debt, which is required).

These kind of laws make as much sense as giving each and every person in the State of New York the first option to buy the Brooklyn Bridge – and about as useful.

If this article says what I think it says, the city is discontinuing curbside trash just to mobile home parks due to city budget constraints. Obviously, that makes zero sense. Why are mobile home park residents singled out as not being worthy of curbside trash? Personally, I think the park owner should go to HUD and get their opinion on this.

Only in California …

The approval was ultimately granted in 2020, in part based on promises from the developer to ensure no resident would become homeless through the closure process. As the closure process comes to an end, the developer has failed to ensure the residents are relocated to safe and affordable, local housing as promised.

How can you task a mobile home park owner with what the U.S. Government itself can’t even accomplish (the waiting list for Section 8 is years long, right?). Where in the world would you find cheap housing in California and what keeps any resident from simply saying “I don’t feel this proposed housing is safe and affordable, in my opinion”?

What a stupid, stupid provision.

It’s interesting how people can be manipulated by a “spin”. In this case you have a group that bought a mobile home park, found the land was worth more in a different use, and was able to demolish the park without any pushback because they claimed it was all about focusing on this corny “missing middle” spin. The guy with the boatyard project in the earlier article should have told the city he was working on the “missing middle” and they would have said “yes, that’s extremely important to our city so go ahead and tear those last two trailers down” – without even knowing what he was talking about.

Reminds me of when they re-labeled “garbagemen” into “environmental engineers”. My hat is off to the “missing middle” label – pure genius.

MY HAT IS OFF TO THIS GUY!

Steube said the mobile home parks and communities he dealt with had the same recovery needs as individual homeowners and should receive the same support.

America needs more politicians like this guy – people who don’t waste time on nonsense (tenant first options that never materialize) and focus on real issues like putting homes back together after a major storm and flooding.

Bravo!

Sure, you saw this article came out of California and you thought “oh boy, I bet this is going to be stupid”. Well, this article met your expectations. Now Sonoma, California wants to reduce the amount of rent mobile home park owners can raise each year to only 70% of CPI. Yes, that’s right – not even CPI. How does that make sense? It doesn’t. Just another reason to avoid California as a real estate market.

Now you have the State of Washington trying to emulate the new laws of New York on tenant first right of refusal. That means that Washington park owners may also now have to wait an additional 70 days while their tenants do absolutely nothing to buy the park but simply waste time and energy. Again, this concept has a 99% FAILURE RATE! That’s the actual stat. Why would anyone bother to spend time crafting and enacting laws that fail 99% of the time? Because it panders to their base, who have no idea how pointless it all is apparently.

It’s rare that the court sides with the mobile home park developer, but this is one of those occasions. Of course, it will probably be appealed over and over and we may not know the ultimate verdict for years. By then the city will probably come up with a plan to take the property through eminent domain to build a green space (it’s happened before).

Same pathetic story as last week. A guy wants to redevelop a dilapidated trailer park into a nice boat storage business. But the bureaucrats will go to any lengths to block him because there are two trailers left in the park and the powers that be have some rationale that the single most important thing on earth is that this guy be denied his right to finish clearing the property until 2026. I know none of the facts but simply reading this article leads you to the conclusion that 1) either somebody at the city or state has it in for this guy or 2) the city and county leaders are basically worthless. But then you realize the property is in New York and you think “oh, ok now it makes sense”.