Several residents of a Hazel Dell senior mobile home park gambled that rent stabilization legislation would pass — and lost. Their landlord at Meadow Verde had asked them to sign a lease agreement that included a discounted rent increase if they signed by Sunday. Some of the residents weren’t due to sign a new lease for almost a year. The discount tempted many of the residents who live on fixed incomes. But they believed the early rental agreement was an effort to lock them in at rent increases higher than the 7 percent cap in a rent stabilization bill before the Legislature. So they didn’t sign, putting their future in the hands of lawmakers.Then, on Monday, that legislation — House Bill 2114 — effectively died when the Senate Ways and Means Committee refused to vote on it. “We really had a lot of faith in our elected officials on both sides to do what’s right. They failed the people that needed them most,” Bart said. Common Sense Translation: Ronald Reagan summed it up when he said that the nine most dangerous words are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. Rent control is such a bad idea – with plenty of economic stats to prove it – that even crazy, woke Washington couldn’t bring itself to pass it and the residents bet on the wrong horse when they believed the hollow promises of today’s bureaucrats.

The less-than-4-acre property was for decades the Shade-A-Plenty mobile home park. After owner Barbara Leviner died in 2020 there was an attempt to rezone it, which the town rejected, and then it was sold in mid-2023 for $3.5 million. Unlike mobile home parks that rent land to people with homes they own, Arbor Point will own and rent all of the units. Branning said rates for the two-bedroom, two-bathroom homes have not been decided.

Apartment rents have also been soaring, up 39 percent in Mount Pleasant over the past four years, according to Apartment List. The estimated monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the town was about $2,100 at the start of 2024. Refurbishing Shade-A-Plenty with new units avoided the need for zoning approval from Mount Pleasant since the land was already being used for that purpose. Town planning director Michele Reed said the area is zoned for single-family homes, but the mobile home park could continue to operate as an existing "nonconforming" use. Unlike the neighboring city of Charleston or Charleston County, Mount Pleasant has not devoted millions of dollars to affordable housing. And the town has prohibited new multifamily housing, such as apartments, for the past seven years and is in the process of extending that moratorium for two more. Common Sense Translation: The new park owner outsmarted the city and is converting the park into “detached apartments” which is exactly the housing subset the city has been trying to block for years through aggressive zoning laws intended to ban them.

The Tellico is for sale now at a discounted price of $162,000, which includes the furniture and appliances shown in the video tour below. For this kind of money, you're promised nearly the same comfort of a proper home but with a smaller footprint, which should convince aspiring downsizers to take the leap and make the transition.
Common Sense Translation: Do you seriously believe that somebody is going to pay $162,000 for that thing? The folks that need to live in a tiny home have one common characteristic: a very small budget. At that price point I think closing on a sale would be more difficult than Biden walking up stairs.

Manufactured homes, including those located in parks, represent one of the largest components of unassisted affordable housing in the nation. In Virginia, mobile home parks provide some of the most deeply affordable housing in many of our communities. But these parks are increasingly at risk as many long-time, traditional park owners are aging and looking to sell as they retire. At the same time, large, national real estate investors are increasingly interested in purchasing these previously ignored assets. When parks are purchased, rents rise and frequently tenants also become responsible for water and sewer payments as well as other fees. Since 2020, Virginia’s Department of Housing and Community Development has received 146 notices of Intent to Sell or Purchase Offer from park owners, indicating how active this market has become. Park residents face challenges that typical apartment renters do not. If they own their mobile home, as many do, they have little choice but to pay higher lot rentals and absorb utility bill transfers since they are unable to move their homes. The term “mobile” is a misnomer; these homes are mobile only to the extent that they are transported to their initial location. After that, the cost and impracticality of moving them means that they stay put. Legislation is pending in the General Assembly that offers some relief. Del. Paul Krizek’s House Bill 1397 offers local governments, tenants and nonprofit organizations the opportunity to purchase parks when sales are pending to preserve affordability and improve living conditions. There is evidence that this approach can work. Common Sense Translation: To bring old mobile home parks back to life, the new owners must increase rents significantly. Residents don’t like to pay higher rents. They don’t need to move their homes if they have a better deal as they could just sell the homes where they sit, just like any other single-family home. The real reason they don’t move is because the cost of every other form of housing is significantly higher than living in a mobile home park. When bureaucrats opine on giving the tenants the first option to buy the park they know full well that the success rate for that concept is something like .0000000001% but it gives them an out to pretend like they really do care and to then shift the blame to non-profits who won’t co-sign the mortgage.

Bob's Trailer Court's owner plans to create a different type of housing park along Marion Road after the trailer park closed amid a variety of struggles. Common Sense Translation: How happy do you think Bob is to ditch the dilapidated trailer court and convert it into apartments? He’s the happiest guy in town.

Manufactured home residents have testified for more than a year to city leaders and staff that rent and/or leases continue to go up and that many of them are on fixed incomes and increases are making it difficult to buy necessities. They’ve also feared that, as manufactured home parks are being sold, they could be redeveloped. Judy Hatch, a manufactured home resident, spoke at the city’s Feb. 6 planning commission meeting, saying her park has seen an increase of $125 more a month and that, for some people, that equals their monthly food costs. She’s also been concerned about her park’s owner potentially selling and losing her home to redevelopment without anywhere to go. Common Sense Translation: You can’t have it both ways. You either like living in the mobile home park at the new rent or you need to move out. You can’t say you hate the park but also that you hate having to leave. There’s no way that the rents are NOT going to go up and still have the property remain as a mobile home park. This is no different that the grifter that goes to McDonald’s, orders the burger, eats most of it, places a cigarette butt under the bun, and then demands a refund from the manager for selling a dangerous hamburger. The residents are not going to get something for nothing – only the federal government engages in that misguided behavior. You can use the same argument on any U.S. product or service that inflated costs are taking away from food or other expense line-items. It’s an absolute fact that America is completely out of control with inflation and all Americans face tough choices. But is the park owner going to let the residents live in the park and lose money doing it? Absolutely not, so give up on that argument.

Hewitt said the owner of the park must fix the water and sewer, so one option is to repair that and “leave the trailer park like it is, and that is the primary option right now.” Another possibility is to close the park, replace the water and sewer and build new apartments and townhouses, though Hewitt added “this option is becoming very expensive”. The final option would be to sell the trailer park to a new owner and the new owner would decide what to do.  Common Sense Translation: There is zero probability that the park owner is not going to tear the park down and build apartments and townhouses.

“They have not presented any plans to the county for approval, and they won’t do that for at least another six months,” Hewitt stressed. “Once they do that, the process to approve whatever plan will be 6 to 12 months. So if they intend to do this it will be at least 18 months to 24 months until anybody is impacted.” Common Sense Translation: You better start packing because this thing is coming down in 18 to 24 months – and the zoning department will fast-track the plans for the redevelopment faster than a hypersonic missile.

“St. Mary’s County does not want to have people homeless, so we have land that the county owns,” Hewitt said, referring to parcels on Pegg Road and on FDR Boulevard near Route 4. “These two pieces of property we intend to build townhouses and apartments.” Common Sense Translation: We are going to charge $2,000 per month for these apartments and townhouses so don’t bother to apply.

Hewitt said residents can show property owners that “you are committed to your community and committed to keeping the neighborhood nice.” Common Sense Translation: If you were dumb enough to believe the earlier statements then we thought you might even buy this one.

Represented by attorney Jeffrey T. Scrimo, the owners of Lake Onota Village have laid out a plan to hike monthly lot rents by $210 over the next three years. This adjustment would catapult rents from their current range of $330-$380 to $540-$590, marking a significant financial strain on the community's residents. The justification behind this steep increase is attributed to a significant rise in operational expenses since the last rate adjustment in 2012, with the owners aiming to achieve a 'fair rate of return'. The proposed hikes are not just numbers on a page; they represent a looming affordability crisis for the residents of these communities. Manufactured homes, often praised for their affordability and accessibility, are becoming less so as rental costs for the land they occupy skyrockets. Common Sense Translation: The rents have not been increased in twelve years. Going from $330 per month to $590 per month over twelve years equates to around a $22 increase annually. That’s ridiculously low. Stop whining about this more-than-reasonable increase and be thankful that you have found the lowest cost housing in the city.

“The fact that the owner decided to purchase a park that was in such poor condition is not the problem of the residents of the park,” Kerswell said. “The cost of fixing the utilities is not on the residents, it’s on the owner. Because the park was in failure—the septic and the water and all these systems are in failure—he cannot pass that cost along to the tenants.” Common Sense Translation: Well, if that’s the attitude of the tenants then they better not be shocked when the new owner shuts the park down and turns it into a different use (probably apartments). There are two ways to go through life namely 1) win/win and 2) win/lose. If the residents think there’s a win/lose option (in which they hold all the cards and the property owner holds none) then the tenants are going to probably soon learn an important life lesson when the eviction notices go out. They should instead be sending “thank you” cards to the new owner and happily paying a higher rent that fends off redevelopment.

PLEASE GIVE IT UP, BARBARA! Nobody is buying any of this nonsense. Look, obviously there are cash-flow reasons for moving into the Malibu mobile home park vs. the stick-built homes that cost ten times more (Pam Anderson and Hillary Duff have done the same thing when their careers headed south) but it’s not because it was a financially genius investment opportunity. 

A couple observations:

1. So much for the argument that mobile homes don’t appreciate (when they are sitting in a nice mobile home park) as the tax assessor found that the average mobile home sale went up 87% in price over the past few years.
2. If residents find this tax situation so bad, maybe they should have more empathy for park owners who are seeing the same escalation in property tax on the land only on a massive scale, and that’s why lot rents must continue to go up significantly.

Residents in a mobile home park are still concerned that the water they use in their daily lives is not safe despite promising results from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Just 13 days ago, the Ohio EPA inspected the water at the Arrowhead Lake Mobile Home Park in Swanton. Results of the inspection show that there was no bacteria in the water but a residents tells 13 Action News the water is still questionable.

Another case of residents knowing more than the experts. Sure, I’d take the word of a trailer park resident over the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency – wouldn’t you? What kind of idiot news station would run this stuff?

Interesting to see how the old “trailer trash” term is making a resurgence in American culture. Wait, I thought that such hurtful slogans were off-limits in the new woke America. I guess not. Once again, mobile home park residents get no respect because they have no political clout.

Yes, that’s what happens when lot rents don’t make the property more valuable as a mobile home park than as a different use. As I have said in every week’s news review: low rents = redevelopment.

I know that a lot of people will be worried about taking “home rule” away from towns, but that’s one of the issues that brought us into a housing crisis in the first place. If everyone focuses on a very narrow view of what is in their immediate best interest, municipalities tend to end up with, well, with the current housing crisis.

What a frightening woke narrative. Communities definitely need zoning in which the $1 million mansion is protected from having a mobile home move in to the vacant lot next door. Sure, the woke writer of this article could care less because they have nothing to lose – they’d be the one in the mobile home. But you have to protect property values with strict zoning and Houston proved once-and-for-all that a lack of zoning was a bad idea.

Here’s the quick answer: modular has zero promise unless it sells at a bigger discount than just 10% (stick-built $300,000 vs. modular at $270,000 according to the author). Until you get to at least 40% off, forget it. Nobody is going to buy a fake Ferrari for roughly the same price as a real Ferrari.

This article is mostly stupid but hidden inside of it was a 3-D printing company name and I went to their website and I was blown away by the product https://www.azureprintedhomes.com/backyard-studio/. THIS is the future of pre-fab housing. Take a look for yourself. Consumers would buy this product even if it cost MORE than stick-built.

How do they find people to own businesses in California? I would go nuts if I had to deal with B.S. like this. They can’t charge enough in lot rents to make this compelling.

There are two sides to every story, but the modern media only provides one. Personally, this story sounds pretty fishy (“the owner told them to go to the bathroom and pour it in the yard”) but it would not be the first time a television crew failed to fact-check in their rush to fill dead time on the news.

Could this be more cringe-worthy and insane? This park looks to be located (based on the photo), literally, in the middle of nowhere. Tiny homes are hot with Millennials but not retired folks. Where would a Millennial get a job in this location – on a farm? I hope there’s a Plan B since working remote is getting repealed by employers. If you could put this in the heart of a city, then it would work fine – but zoning would never allow for that. That’s the basic problem with all greenfield development.

This is one of the dumbest news stories floating around out there. This rent increase was formally approved by the Boad of Rent Control. Now the residents are claiming they know better than the Rent Control Board on what rents should be. That’s not how the law works. There is a legal methodology to life and you can’t later try to relitigate them. It’s like a 49ers fan trying to reopen the Super Bowl days later because the refs made a bad call. The Rent Control Board approved the increase and now you move on. Period.

I’m not sure why the residents thought this park was a future development site – just look at the map for evidence – but if they want to conspire with non-profits to buy something then why not? I hope they have a plan on that 2-year debt, however, as it will be coming due right at the peak of the “commercial real estate apocalypse” when $2 trillion of worthless office building and shopping mall loans comes due (they probably should have used an advisor from the real world when structuring the deal and not an academic). If they ultimately default on the loan two years from now, then they would have been much better off with a professional investor that would never have agreed to those loan terms.

Information from the NMHA indicates that changing public policy to incentivize park owners to sell their property to mobile homeowners, HUD properties and other nonprofits would create more housing security.

Wow, looks like MHAction has a new non-profit competitor called the “NMHA” (which stands for the “National Manufactured Homeowners Association). They support the same woke “free rent” movement and have pledged to annoy park owners and respectable bureaucrats throughout the country. Can’t wait to see this turf war escalate. I’m picturing the rumble from Will Farrell’s “Anchorman”.

“The puzzle is why there’s so little (manufactured housing) being shipped when it’s a much better product than it used to be,” said Laurie Goodman, an Urban Institute fellow.

Here’s the reason they’re not selling more new mobile homes:

1. The prices are too high.
2. Nobody has put together financing programs that consumers can qualify for without park owners having to participate in the default process.
3. The outside of the homes are not appealing to the eye.
4. The HUD installation guidelines add $10,000 to $20,000 to the already too high pricing.

Solve those issues and you might sell more homes. Until then, forget it.

I would think the first order of business to stop the negative stigma is to quit calling them “manufactured homes”. NOBODY wants to live in a “manufactured” home. Everyone wants to live in a “custom” home that does not come out of a factory like a widget. Ferrari became famous by building each car by hand, one at a time. Why brand your product as something that is mass produced by using the name “manufactured”? That has always seemed idiotic to me.