Mobile Home Park News Briefing

These folks may be in WAY over their heads, thanks to pandering non-profits that tend to build deals that are not sustainable based on the laws of economics. While there’s not a whole lot of detail given on this “tenant-owned” transaction that was built from cobbled together non-profit loans, here’s what we do know (based on this article) and why it should be of concern to those with actual real estate experience:

• There are 129 lots but only 48 of those are occupied.
• They paid $8 million for basically 48 occupied lots which equates to nearly $200,000 per lot.
• Of the remaining 81 lots, only 28 of those have utilities.
• They are spending $1 million to get those 28 lots ready, which equated to around $40,000 per lot.
• When you put a home on those 28 lots, you’ll be in them turnkey at around $120,000 each.
• That $120,000 does not include the lot rent.
• The average home in Bangor, Maine sells for around $200,000, but if you go to Realtor.com you’ll see that there’s a whole lot of single-family inventory selling for far less, like this nice one for $120,000: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/156-Essex-St_Bangor_ME_04401_M32376-24560

So I guess my question would be “what was the goal here?”. If the goal was to provide affordable housing, then clearly that didn’t happen as the residents are now burdened with more debt and total housing payments than what they would have ended up with if they had bought a nice colonial home in town with a yard and a simple walk to a quaint restaurant.

I think the real goal of most of these “tenant owned” transactions are simply for the involved non-profits to believe they have “defeated” capitalism. Well, I don’t think it’s working. There’s no way this deal will survive 5 to 10 years financially. The residents will be crushed under the debt load and the non-profits will grow weary of their complaints and the risk of the debt guarantees. I’ll bet $5 this deal is back on the market within a decade and will sell, at a loss, to a professional investor. You should leave real estate up to real professionals and non-profits should focus on what they’re good at (which is not pretending to be business people).

The medical examiner’s determination of what contributed to the death in each case: environmental heat exposure. Arizona Luminaria requested and analyzed heat-related or heat-contributed death data provided by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner to gain an understanding of the lethal impacts of heat on mobile home residents. 

This sounds like the beginning of one of those studies that DOGE has been racing to defund.

The simple fact of the matter is that Tucson is incredibly hot in the summer, and nobody can survive there without air conditioning. Google shows the temperature that can kill you from heat stroke is 104 degrees. So this is not a mobile home issue but simply an issue of older people not being exposed to 104 degrees or higher, which means you have to be indoors with the air conditioning on all day long.

If, in fact, more people are dying of heat stroke in mobile home parks than surrounding subdivisions, I would imagine it’s for one of several reasons:

1. People in mobile home parks typically do their own yard work, whereas in subdivisions they hire it out. In many of the examples given, the park residents died outside in their yards, not inside.
2. People in mobile home parks probably run their air conditioning less to keep their utility bills lower.
3. People in mobile home parks like to be outdoors more, which was part of their attraction to living in what equates to a pseudo-RV lifestyle.

You CANNOT jump to the conclusion – as this writer did – that it’s solely because mobile homes are less energy efficient. That’s ridiculous. While mobile homes do have less energy efficiency than a comparable single-family home, that’s not going to take a home with the AC set at 75 degrees and leak enough cool air to drive the temperate to 104 degrees in the home. Give me a break.

Gulf Shore and Twin Shores Mobile Home Parks residents say they received damage and destruction unlike they’ve ever experienced. Residents say they’ve been approved for building permits to make necessary repairs, but they’ve been blocked by the town’s building commission.

I saw the same thing firsthand during Hurricane Harvey in Austin, Texas. The bureaucrats and city managers in the whole surrounding area saw the flooding as an opportunity to get mobile home parks torn down so they could be rebuilt into prettier uses that would pay more property tax. However, when pushed (and under the risk of litigation) the city bureaucrats would suddenly claim that they never knew there was an issue. It’s all just a big game to them that only ends when you call their bluff.

“In 20 years, I have never received a call about somebody asking to close their parks. In the last four weeks, I have received five. Five calls from landlords representing over 5,000 spaces in the state, that are asking: ‘How do I go about closing my park? Because if this bill passes in its current form, I just can’t operate,’” Miner said.

Oregon is on very flimsy ice right now. Far-left politicians are pushing to revise their current rent control which allows 7% + CPI to simply CPI. There is no question that this revision will trigger a housing apocalypse in that state. For park owners, that means simply shutting down and redeveloping their land into a better use. But to the bureaucrats, this is another opportunity to exert “control” over the private sector, and to appease their whacky “Free Rent Movement” constituents. If Oregon is dumb enough to pass this rent control revision, then they deserve what they get.

“If we have to go invest $100 million to rebuild the park and we’re not able to recoup that in some fashion, then it’s not likely we will rebuild the park,” 

A bitter lesson in rent control is coming to California. The owners of the two mobile home parks that were completely destroyed in the recent LA fires may simply elect to rebuild into a different use rather than put back a property that is encumbered with ridiculous rent control requirements. It may be time for all the places that enacted rent control to rethink the concept and perhaps abandon it. There have been a huge number of studies done on the impact of rent control, and the overwhelming conclusion is that it is one of the worst ideas imaginable if you want to have well-maintained and abundant housing. Maybe residents in those states suffering under the suffocating confines of rent control will finally take action to get them repealed.

She’s one of a growing number of tenants at manufactured home parks calling foul on park owners for what they say are exorbitant rent increases and unfair fees that are threatening to push tenants out of their homes altogether.

Yes, that’s the trusty mantra of the Free Rent Movement folks. Never mind that all costs under the Biden regime rose 20%, or that housing is only the fifth largest cost of these people behind 1) healthcare 2) childcare 3) transportation and 4) taxes. The Free Rent Movement blames everything in life on “evil landlords”. The good news is that we don’t pander to those hippie idiots in the red states, and their power is relegated to simply the whack-o places like Oregon and Washington. Oregon already has rent control, but they want to amend it. Washington nearly passed rent control last year, but it failed to happen. At the end of the day, you can only trust the legal system to protect your property rights. In Oregon and Washington, they are apparently losing control of even the legal system. The solution? If you have a well-located park in Oregon or Washington, just tear it down and build apartments on the land. That seems to be what they apparently want you to do, right?

“Sometimes the stigma is so prevalent that people don't face [the] 'inside.' They put all their biases at the entrance of those communities without realizing that it could be somebody's aunt, somebody's mother, somebody who relocated to South Florida, as many other snowbirds, for a better retirement," Waisman said.

This is the kind of action that the industry needs to help reduce the stigma against “trailer parks”: by showing real people and their stories. I am also fascinated by the assortment of residents I have met over the years and their fascinating life narratives, which includes having the “Marlboro Girl” from the 1940s in a park in Texas to a famous Russian ballerina in a park in Iowa. And that does not even include the Hollywood celebrities that have lived in those Malibu parks that include Sean Penn, Hillary Duff, Pam Anderson and many others.

Allen Marler, a resident of Cottonwood Mobile Home Park, says rent on his lot doubled in a single month. When FOX 13 first spoke to Marler in November 2023, he had threatened to leave over the steep hike. However, a year later, Marler’s trailer remains parked at the same spot in Puyallup. 

The reason his trailer is still in the same place a year later is simply because he cannot find anyplace else as cheap or nice – or as good a value – than the existing park. It’s like all the people who claimed they would leave the U.S. if Trump won and now are backing down because there’s nowhere else as nice to live in the world at as low a price. The McChicken sandwich went up 300% from $1 to $3 and I still order them because they’re a better deal than the Quarter Pounder. It’s not rocket science.

“Township officials analyzed “potential impacts on the environment and township resources of having 500 units in an area that didn’t have access to public water and sewer, and the possibility of more traffic on Warren Road,” she said, also noting “that’s what prompted the negotiations.”

Yeah, right … I’m sure those were the reasons. Do you think the truth might really have been just that they didn’t want to have a “trailer park” in their town? Nah, no way that ever even came up in the conversation, right?

Now that Trump is in office, do you think we can all just be honest again and stop all the ridiculous fake wordsmithing? It comes off like a bad Hallmark card.

So here are the tenant demands, verbatim from the article:

• End the towing of cars
• Allow four cars to be parked in designated parking areas, including work vans.
• Establish a physical office for residents to file complaints, ask questions, or pay rent
• Develop a visitor parking section
• Create recreational space for the neighborhood children and a safe area to wait for the school bus.
• Invest in fixing the streets within the complex, including streetlights, speed bumps, and cameras accessible to residents. They are also requesting private security.
• Take responsibility for land maintenance, including tree maintenance to prevent tragedies during storms, proper trash management, and a winter maintenance plan for icy roads
• End rent increases and provide transparency and clarity of water bills

So they basically want the property owner to inject around $500,000 into the park and, as a reward, they are to agree to zero rent increases in perpetuity. That’s fair, right?

Perhaps the tenants should just join together, buy the park from the current owner, and do these things themselves. I’m sure that lenders will just be jumping at the chance to finance a group with this great a mastery of numbers and common sense. Sure, give it a try.

Washington has no limit to how much rent can be increased, according to WashingtonLawHelp.org, which means that a manufactured home park owner can charge pretty much whatever it wants to, as long as it gives notice to the tenants. That may be difficult enough for, say, apartment dwellers, but owners of manufactured homes don’t have the option of just packing their furniture and moving elsewhere. According to moving.com, it can cost as much as $14,000 to move a manufactured home from one property to another, assuming the home is even in movable condition.

Of all the lies that the Free Rent Movement spews forth on a regular basis, none is dumber than the claim that somehow mobile home park residents are at a disadvantage to apartment dwellers because they can’t easily move their home. Why would they ever move their home? If they want to move, simply sell it where it stands like every single-family home and condo owner does. Who came up with this argument in the first place? I was on a woke podcast a couple years ago and the host asked me “so you have the tenants trapped because they can’t move their homes” and I said “how does that make them trapped? Why can’t they just sell the homes right where they are and then buy another home somewhere else if that’s what they want to do?” He couldn’t come up with a comeback so he edited that out of the podcast. I can’t blame him – it was an idiotic argument to have made and he knew it.

Like many mobile home residents, Curtiss owns her home, but she doesn't own the land underneath it. She lives in Bona Vista, a community in Otis Orchards. She's rented the 14-by-70-foot lot where her home sits since 2007. When Curtiss first moved in, her lot rent was $300 a month. For more than a decade, it barely increased. But in the past five years, rent in manufactured home communities have been catching up with the rest of the housing market. Curtiss' rent is set to hit $875 per month this spring.

If the rent was $300 per month in 2007 and the rent is now $875 nearly 20 years later, that works out to an increase of around 6% per year. That’s hardly excessive. Maybe they need to look at healthcare rates and car prices during that same period. In 2007 you could get health insurance for a family of four at a price of around $300 per month. That same policy today is over $2,000 per month. But, of course, it’s forbidden for woke journalists to even mention the cost of health insurance as that was the byproduct of the Obama regime and, as a result, is strictly forbidden to be discussed.

While residents were concerned about housing affordability, Habitat says there is a plan in place. "We promised we'd keep rent stable, and we don't plan to redevelop for a while so we can work together to plan the future," Rosensweig said.

What a mess for the residents who originally celebrated Habitat for Humanity outbidding the corporate buyer who wanted to keep this as a mobile home park. Instead, they now are realizing that Habitat is going to tear the park down and build apartments on the land in the near future. Pretty sneaky non-profit antics, right? Not really. All these non-profit deals are built on short-term debt, and that means short-term commitment. The corporate owner would have left it a mobile home park, probably forever. Shame on the media for relentlessly supporting the “non-profit owned” community concept

The bills have been motivated by fears around out-of-state corporate buyers purchasing Maine mobile home parks and increasing lot rents, placing vulnerable tenants at risk of eviction. Rep. Golek said her bill would exempt resident-owned communities from the rent hikes.

You have to hand it to the folks that promote the “tenant-owned community” model. They have somehow brainwashed otherwise intelligent adults like Representative Golek into believing that corporate owners are “evil” and charge higher rents than the tenants would have to, which is clearly false based on simple common sense. Unless someone can show me how the tenants with the same mortgage and costs can charge a lower rent than a professional owner, then I’m going to continue to point out this falsehood in perpetuity. Just last week, a resident-owned community admitted they had to raise the rent over $100 per month MORE than the corporate owner had proposed. Stop lying to people!

Another overall positive commentary on the industry, but from the perspective of weather events and calling for greater federal/state/city support of mobile home parks.

Those who support the bill claim that rent increases in spaces like RV parks are unethical and driving people into homelessness.

Warning: idiot zombies have apparently taken over the Oregon state government. Remember that Oregon already HAS rent control – but now they want to reduce the amount that park owners can charge even farther because CPI is just evil, don’t you know. How stupid do you have to be to say something like “raising RV rent is unethical”? If this bill passes I guarantee you that a ton of mobile home parks in Oregon close and get redeveloped into more profitable uses and nobody could possibly blame them.

Another positive article with no woke trappings at all.

In a split 4-3 vote, the City Council approved limiting rent increases to 60% of the Consumer Price Index, with a 0% floor and 3% ceiling, at their meeting on Jan. 28.

Looks like the City Council of Mountainview is moving one step closer to shutting down every mobile home park in town for new redevelopment into apartments. Is that their secret goal? Must be. No way they could be this stupid otherwise, right?

Take a look at the photos, take a look at the price, and then feel good that you don’t live in California.

The final argument by the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, which filed the suit, was struck from the record after warnings about misstatements.

I’ve never even heard of that before. Sounds like the tide is turning, as I discussed last week.

The new owner also replaced sewer lines and hauled out unfixable trailers.

Another case of the “evil corporate landlord” ruining the quality of life for residents, right? Clearly, corporate owners are the ones that are putting millions of dollars annually into bringing old parks back to life. Nobody else is doing so. But all corporate owners typically get are insults. At least this writer was honest about the good work the new landlord was performing.

She credits manager Danielle Sargent for revamping the culture of a community that, for years, had struggled with drugs, prostitution and other issues. Now there are potlucks and sing-alongs, as well as neighbors who deliver food after surgery, watch your pet when you’re out of town, or stop by to chat for no particular reason. Sargent took on the managerial role 10 years ago because of her background in construction and property management, and because she believes in the communal power of a mobile home community.

OK, that’s a change. A positive article about mobile home parks. Wow.

Another positive industry article – and from Vermont, no less. What would Bernie Sanders say (particularly if you didn’t pay him to say it)?

Lil’ Abner Mobile Home Park is being torn down to make way for a giant apartment complex. Once again, the lot rents were not high enough to make the land more compelling to remain as a mobile home park. It’s the same old story we cover week after week. Mobile home parks make perfect spots for a large number of uses and apartments are hard to beat since they can be stacked two or three high and mobile homes can’t.

But there’s another part of the Lil’ Abner story that is also worthy of discussion:

“We were planning on moving it, but it would have taken too long and it was costing us around $32,000”

Federal, state and city bureaucracy is a big reason that mobile homes are anything but “mobile”. The media always wants to blame it on park owners, but they have nothing to do with the simple cost and process of moving mobile homes. In HUD states the cost of moving is doubled or tripled because they require concrete pads, piers or runners to be built under the home, with no appreciable value for the customer to do so. In Texas, for example, they require no such concrete structures and everything works fine.

Mellissa Finch, who inherited the park after her mother’s passing in 2024, said the reason for the rent increase is property taxes have been raised from $4,400 to $37,000 and insurance prices have risen.

Oh, I see how it is. The property taxes go up by 1,000% and the park owner is just supposed to shrug that off. Instead of complaining to the park owner, why not complain to the tax assessor.

As for the potential for homelessness here, it’s not the lot rent increasing that’s the risk, it’s probably going to be Ms. Finch realizing how much more this parcel is worth in a different use. That’s going to come to her soon enough as the tenants deliberately create so much mental anxiety that there will soon come an offer from a developer and she’ll quickly agree.