Look, when somebody buys a mobile home in those two old parks in Malibu it’s typically a sign that their career is ending. Hillary Duff lived in one of those mobile homes, as did Pam Anderson – but only when their ability to fund a stick-built home deteriorated along with their incomes and desirability as stars. I know nothing about Barbara Corcoran, but this article is the same nonsense that we would be told if we caught a celebrity driving an old Ford Taurus in a parking lot who would then proceed to tell us how they fell in love with the car’s styling and now prefer it to their old Ferrari. Give me a break.

Yet another article aimed at brainwashing you that residents can only live in a land of unicorns and rainbows if they band together, pool their resources, and buy their properties from evil park owners. And, of course, it’s another article based out of California. Clearly the folks that do resident-owned community deals are working around the clock to get these articles published but it’s still not going to fix the inherent problem that the success rate is about as big as a 3’ tall person making the NBA, and then winning Powerball after hitting a half-court jump shot.

What San Jose, CA is doing should be concerning for any property owner. They are basically taking away inherent property rights and not even being coy about it:

“I think this is a clear statement of intent from the council that these should remain mobile home parks,”said Mayor Matt Mahan. “And should a developer propose redevelopment, the bar would have to be extremely high.”

I hope that the San Jose mobile home park owners pool their resources and sue to block this action from a city council and Mayor that clearly have elevated their opinion of their powers to a ridiculous level.

Washington state is apparently pushing a new woke initiative: live rent free and still get service just like a real, paying customer.

While landlords have a duty to keep units habitable, if they don’t, tenants must be current on rent and utilities to enforce a demand for repairs, according to RCW 59.18.080.

If you recall, last week there were a number of articles trying to brainwash you into believing that Washington state should do more to force park owners to sell to the residents. Gee, I wonder if that’s what this new push is all about?

The park manager summed it up well:

“At Paradise Cove Resort & RV Park, we have a majority of our residents who live here peacefully. We also have some instigators who want to make it more difficult to do business and maintain the peaceful environment which we have known here for so many years. It is a shame that the contemplated reporting will be highlighting the efforts of the instigators”.

A couple people are mad because the rent went up. So, they are using the media to ignorantly harass the owners.

I will bet you $100 that this property gets redeveloped in the near future. Who would put up with this abuse?

A quick search on Bestplaces.net shows that the average home price in Petaluma, CA is $839,600 and the average 3-bedroom apartment is $3,850 per month. That’s what makes this article so asinine:

As at most parks, the residents of Little Woods own their mobile homes but must pay a base rent for the land underneath the home, with rents ranging between $457.13 and $1,195.00 per month – though most pay roughly $500 a month, according to documents submitted by the owners to the city. This means that under the proposed rent hikes, residents face increases between 128% and 352%.

The reporter is distorting the facts here, as the percentages are meaningless and all they prove is what an outrageous deal the tenants had before the change in ownership. Those rents could double yet again and still be way under market levels. Why should mobile home park lot rents be at $500 per month when apartment rents are 700% higher?

You have to be crazy to own property in California.

“From the outside, it looks like a home you might find in any trailer park. But step inside and the reasons behind the $1.4 million price tag reveal themselves, including luxury finishes and a huge private deck that offers sweeping canyon and ocean views”.

So let me get this straight. You slap a $50,000 kitchen on an old singlewide, toss in a $10,000 deck, and the $15,000 value of the home leaps to $1.4 million? Pretty bad logic. I admit the view is good, but there’s a million real houses that can beat that overlook and sell for a fraction of that price. One good reason that Millennials are lousy home shoppers and pay way too much is simply that they read too much nonsense like this.

Demand for mobile homes has surged in recent years as people struggle to find affordable housing. That’s also made mobile home parks attractive to investors, who are snapping them up and raising rents. In Washington state, some mobile home residents are fighting back, offering to buy the land themselves. But experts say few resident communities will win the bidding war without more help from the state.

Yes, you knew it was coming after the earlier article. The media mob runs in packs like wolves and this story is an extension of the earlier one that is trying to brainwash you that Washington state needs to require park owners to sell to the tenants. In other words, back to the same tired narrative based upon a fantasy that resident-owned parks are the solution – not bothering to mention that these deals rarely matriculate and only about .007% have ever successfully been put together on a national level.

I can brainwash, too. This idea is stupid. This idea is stupid. This idea is stupid. Are you convinced yet?

Look at these photos and tell me who in the world is idiotic enough to pay $2 million for a mobile home in a setting like that? By any unit of measure these are the worst values in American real estate. No offense to Montauk fans but is that really the best you can do with $2 million on the East Coast?

New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law that offers additional protection to mobile home park residents, who often face eviction or sharp increases in land lease costs when mobile home parks change hands. As Lacey Leonardi explains for Spectrum Local News, “Landowners cannot be prevented from selling. The new law means homeowners in the parks – most of them own their trailers and rent their spaces – now have the first right of refusal to purchase the land.” Manufactured housing provides a significant pool of affordable housing in the United States, but residents often lack protections when park owners decide to sell or hike prices. According to a press release from the governor’s office, the legislation also authorizes mortgages and mortgage pool insurance for manufactured homes. “This legislation will help homeowners in manufactured home parks safeguard their affordable communities, without unduly hindering unopposed investments in manufactured home parks,” the press release states.

When virtue signaling bureaucrats get together at the National B.S. Convention one of the top ten concepts is giving a “right of first refusal” to people who cannot even remotely afford to buy the property. Resident-owned communities account for something like .009% of all mobile home parks in the U.S. And probably only .001% of those were accomplished within the first refusal time frame, but instead were enabled to get the deals closed via multiple extensions from an accommodating seller.

Kathy Hochul forgot to mention that the reason that so many mobile parks are being torn down and redeveloped right now in New York is because it passed rent control so there’s no reason not to knock them down and build new real estate uses that are not encumbered by those rent controls. If you really want to help mobile home park residents (not just pretend to be doing that) you should repeal the very rent control that is causing the wrecking ball to swing wildly, leaving those residents homeless.

This was not a hard one to call – just read my predictions in past issues. When you pay $25 million for 12 acres (which works out to $2 million per acre or $46 per square foot) the buyer is going to tear the park down, not introduce a new mobile home park prototype with a lot rent of $5,000 per month. There should never have been any question as to the future of the property.

In some cases, development can be delayed or eliminated with higher lot rents, but in this case that was not an option because of the park’s location. Some parks were born to be a temporary use, and this tract is one of those situations.

If the roles were reversed – and an all-age park wanted to convert to senior – the city would agree in a heartbeat.

What’s at stake here is nothing more than protecting city dollars. The city does not want to pay the cost of tuition of the tens of students that would move into the park at $10,000 per year per kid in school costs. Seniors don’t have any such expense and that one item could saddle the city budget with literally a $1 million a year loss in tuition alone (assuming just 100 kids) from this one park.

So, could we please cut out all the virtue signaling and just tell the truth?

The headline says it all:

When 80-year-old Gordon Hastings moved into Glenbrier Park 15 years ago, he paid $320 monthly rent. Now he pays more than $700.

But here’s the problem. That’s only around a 5% per year increase – and that’s not much more than inflation.

The cost of virtually everything is America has gone up more than 5% per year since 2008.

Does nobody have basic math skills anymore? Do these journalists at least have access to calculators???

Here’s the basic article boiled into two sentences:

The sales prices of new mobile homes rose much higher than those of traditional, stick-built houses, according to a recent report from LendingTree. The online financial services marketplace found that the average sales price of mobile homes shot up 77.1% between 2017 and 2022, compared with 46.7% for single-family homes (excluding the land).

The problem is that the reason that mobile home prices in this study are up is probably not re-sale but new home prices that nearly doubled from manufacturers between 2017 and 2022. Virtually nobody bought a mobile home in 2017 and then sold it in 2022 for a 77.1% gain, right? The numbers for mobile home sales in this report are probably based on new home sales only, which is probably the only data that the government could attain.

Replacing an equestrian center with a mobile home park is kind of like tearing down a Rolls Royce dealership to make way for Kia. That being said, all real estate has a higher and better use. And horse stalls do not rent for as much as mobile home park lots (which rent for less than apartments so that’s where this property probably ends up in 20 years).

In a 28-page suit in federal district court, park owners challenge the ability of the city to regulate, saying steps taken amount unconstitutionally depriving them of their right to an adequate rate of return. The suit cites hefty inflation and the city's effort to shield residents from it by reducing the cap on rent increases to below inflation. They argue they're being required to run their business at a loss. The suit also challenges the constitutionality of requirements that should park owners wish to close a park that they find comparable space in another park for the home or purchase then from tenants at 'in place value.'

Observation #1: you have to be nuts to own property in California.

Observation #2: thank heavens these park owners have the guts to fight this unjust treatment.

I know nothing about this case and have never seen the property, but I had a similar experience in Texas in the 1990’s. Turned out that the city had never bothered to subtract the individual tenants’ meter readings (for which they paid the city directly) from the master meter reading. They’d been doing that for decades. The amount they had overcharged the park was probably a million dollars. Cities make mistakes and – with scale – those mistakes can be gigantic. Before they shut this park owner’s water off, the water dept. better investigate what he’s saying because if he’s correct his damages against them will be crushing.

It’s a good thing that non-profits don’t rule the world as it would be a pretty sorry place to live. Take note of just two key factors in this article:

1. The mobile homes that this non-profit is providing cost $100,000 to $130,000. Any idiot with a dealer’s license can buy essentially these same mobile homes for $80,000 or so turn-key. Not exactly a good value.
2. Look at the photo of the park and then zoom in on each home and lot. It looks totally junky like the “before” photo of many turn-around parks. Not exactly a sign of good management.

Every week these type of articles beg the question “is this the best way to spend money?” and every week the answer is clearly “no”. Most all private-sector park owners can provide a better product than this at a lower price point. But, of course, that never gets mentioned because all park owners are “evil”, right?

I hate to throw cold water on this stuff, but tiny homes are never going to be a permanent solution to housing issues. They are too small and depressing to live in on a full-time basis. At 400 sq. ft. or smaller they are about the size of a hotel room. I know few people who could live their lives in a hotel room happily. On top of that, they are way too expensive for their size. If you hate mobile homes due to the stigma, at least consider a 5th wheel with pop-outs which are still far cheaper than a tiny home to buy but have the same sq. ft. You can get a used 5th wheel for as little as $3,500 (look at RV Trader’s website) and then when you can’t stand “living small” anymore you can sell it for $1,000 and walk away from it. With a tiny home you are stuck with tens of thousands of debt and a tiny market of interested buyers.

Another story about a mobile home park being torn down to make way for a more profitable use for the land, probably because the rents were ridiculously low. Predictably, the park owner is blamed for the demolition and the resulting “homelessness” – but also would have been equally blamed if they had raised the lot rents high enough to keep the park intact. There’s no winning with the American media today so why worry about it?

Here’s the Cliff Notes version of this article:

“As the housing crisis in New York continues unabated, one demographic is being unexpectedly targeted by developers. Pre-existing infrastructure for water and sewer and cleared acreage at trailer and mobile home parks makes them an attractive acquisition for any developer. Many New York manufactured homeowners have already lost their homes to developers, including a lot in Saratoga County and on Long Island. New York state elected officials say they’re seeing an increase in the development strategy, so they’re working to help give the homeowners some power through new legislation. Landowners cannot be prevented from selling. The new law means homeowners in the parks – most of them own their trailers and rent their spaces – now have the first right of refusal to purchase the land. So if the owner of the land wants to sell, residents can collaborate and match the purchase price."

Great fiction writing. Here’s the reality:

• Only about .0001% of the time are the tenants successful in matching the price and closing on the deal.
• The bureaucrats only added this meaningless law to appear like they have power, because they have none. Even though New York has rent control it has no power to block the sale of land.
• In fact, it’s exactly the new rent control laws of New York that are causing park owners – in bulk – to redevelop into uses that are not rent controlled.

So how could the bureaucrats really help park residents if they wanted to? Simple:

• Abolish rent control.
• Stop harassing park owners who raise rents to meet market levels.
• Offer tax incentives for those who sell and keep the park in operation as opposed to having it torn down.

Think this will ever happen? Are you kidding me – this is New York!

You guessed it – another article about “evil” park owners destroying lives with $50 rent increases. Except this one is different: the “evil” park owner is the country itself.

And when they were questioned about the increase at a county meeting, they didn’t mince words:

Commissioner Kent Becker said “commissioners look only at what the dollars are”.

That pretty much sums it up without a lot of B.S. 

If a park owner had said that they would have been tarred and feathered by the media.

The bottom line is that mobile home parks are income properties, and they only survive when they are the most profitable use for the land. Even the bureaucrats have figured that out in Hillsboro, Kansas.

Watch the news story video – look at the condition of this property -- and tell me if anyone with an IQ higher than a lima bean would even remotely believe that this land is worth $25 million as a mobile home park use. Clearly, it’s going to be redeveloped into a better use, right? I am forever blown away that people have zero understanding of basic economics.

Yes, the same tired narrative as the above article. And, yes, the goal here is for the media to brainwash you that all rent increases are “evil” and all park owners are “evil” if they regurgitate the same article 100 times in a row.

No, wait, not another misguided non-profit in action? This story pins the “stupid meter” in two key ways:

1. The city thought that spending $3.5 million to save 11 mobile homes from being torn down was a great investment. I mean, that’s only around $300,000 per household to save a $3,000 dilapidated mobile home from demolition, right? In non-profit world that must be a great use of taxpayer money (assuming you’re a complete idiot) but do you really think that those 11 families would not prefer receiving $300,000 in cash each so they can go buy a brick home in a subdivision and get out of that old, high-density park?
2. The genius at the city that offered the $3.5 million to mom and pop just found out that the park was only worth $1.5 million and they have been “had” to the tune of $2 million. Boy, I never saw that coming.

So now what do the virtue signalers at the city do? I’m sure the only solution is to go ahead and pay the $3.5 million and spend another $2 million to build a solar array to make it more environmentally sustainable.