Mobile Home Park News Briefing

Mountain View City Council wants to help mobile home residents by further limiting how much landlords can raise rents each year, but park owners are warning the new rules will make their operations unsustainable.

You’ve got to be kidding me. This is Palo Alto, California – one of the priciest residential markets in the U.S. Do these bureaucrats not realize that these park owners can sell the land for more than the parks are worth all day long? If this passes, there won’t be a single mobile home park still standing in Palo Alto.

Residents, including Dudleys Herrera, say feel ignored after they’ve repeatedly contacted the city and county about the growing issues, including trash and contamination. City officials said no citations have been issued at Li’l Abner, as they hope to work with developers to address the issues rather than impose penalties.

This park is being torn down. People are still living there who should have already vacated. Why would anyone think that the city would be interested in wasting more time on this? They simply need to leave.

Another park bites the dust.

However, Paul Beard, Weisfield’s attorney, said, "Petaluma is attempting to compel Youngstown to illegally discriminate against families with children. The city's complaint has no merit, because the city's ordinance is patently unlawful ... It purports to force the park to engage in federally prohibited discrimination. The park will continue to serve all members of the community seeking quality affordable housing, including families with children."

I know nothing about this case, but it won’t be the first time that a city tried any and everything to try not to have to pay school tuition on “trailer park” kids. We’ll see how this works out.

Another park bites the dust. The rents were too low to allow needed capital repairs and make a profit greater than alternative uses. It’s not rocket science.

It’s a great idea to repair old mobile homes at no cost to the owners. I hope more states can replicate this initiative.

“Our analysis strongly supports those who have argued since the 1930s (at least) that the only chance of building homes that are ‘affordable’ is in a factory,” write Schmitz and his co-authors.3 “Our analysis shows that there is not only a chance, but that it’s possible. It’s been done.”

A rare, positive, factual story about the mobile home park industry. How refreshing.

Another DOGE operative WIRED has identified is Michael Mirski, who works for TCC Management, a Michigan-based company that owns and operates mobile home parks across the US, and graduated from the Wharton School in 2014.

It’s interesting that WIRED is trying to publicly shame a DOGE worker because he is associated with mobile home parks. Using that argument, I guess Sam Zell was an even bigger loser because he was the largest owner of mobile home parks in U.S. history?

I would love to compare the credentials of this WIRED journalist with those of the “trailer park” guy.

Preliminary plans suggest that the new development could include up to 750 residential units, alongside roughly 25,000 square feet of retail and 44,000 square feet of office space. 

So let me get this straight. The choice is either to keep a 130-space mobile home park on that property or replace it with all the items named above. I don’t think the title “Future in Doubt” is accurate, right? There’s no “doubt” about it. Another park bites the dust.

“The rent will be based on the expenses of the park, not somebody making somebody’s wallet grow bigger and bigger.”

The tenants are buying the park for $1.9 million. There are 42 total lots and $300 lot rent currently. So each lot will be burdened with around $45,000 of debt. Interest rates are currently around 7%. So let’s calculate the real numbers for a minute:

• The 30-year mortgage payment for each lot will be around $300 per month all by itself. Add on water, sewer, taxes, insurance, management, trash, repair and maintenance, etc. and that’s about another $200 per month. And that leaves no money for cap-x repairs to roads, trees, water and sewer lines, etc.

The article refuses to say what the new lot rent will be under the tenants’ ownership, but it looks to me like around $500+ per month just to break even. And I have no clue how they will be able to pay for any major repairs at all.

Does anyone at the Maine non-profits educate the residents on what the lot rent will rise to after closing? You know the answer is “no”. Because if they did the tenants wouldn’t be buying these parks.

And another park bites the dust.

Thursday night’s Planning Board meeting in Warren generated strong opposition to a proposed 22-lot mobile home park off of Route 1. “How are the people that live around this and own property that pay taxes, how are we benefiting from this? Because I pay taxes on waterfront property. And I want to know, like, how am I benefiting from this? What am I benefiting from this?

It’s interesting that Maine – which holds itself out as some type of liberal oasis of original thought – goes berserk with the mere mention of a new 22-space mobile home park.

This exemplifies why virtually no mobile home parks have been built in the U.S. in over 50 years.

Sharon Pevey, 77, moved to Cascade Park Estates seven years ago. She was divorced and needed a place to live quickly. She paid $140,000 cash to buy her pale yellow, 1,400-square-foot mobile home. As with most manufactured home parks, she had to pay rent for the lot her home sat on, priced at $525 per month, plus property taxes. It was expensive but she could manage since she runs a hair salon across the river in Portland.Soon after she moved, the rent increases started. They climbed each year, and today she pays $1,350 each month “for a piece of dirt that this house sits on,” Pevey said.

The Free Rent Movement folks are gearing up for another run at rent control in Washington state. Expect more articles like this shortly. Of course, the one item that nobody wants to address is how long do you think this mobile home park will last if they institute rent control? Not long. It will be torn down quickly and made into a better use with no rent control restrictions. Let’s see how stupid the bureaucrats in Washington really are this time around.

Nick Ubaldi, regional manager for Harmony Communities, which oversees the 221-space mobile home park, said they don’t agree with the denial because they need to recoup the money invested in recent renovations made to the park. “Over $1 million was recently invested in the park. The ordinance forces rents well below market rate, making it difficult to operate a park of this size,” Ubaldi told San José Spotlight. “By denying this increase, the city has set the business back, discouraged further investment and ultimately put residents at risk as the park deteriorates over time.”

Of all the stupid things that bureaucrats have approved over the decades, the top of the list has to be rent control. All it does is create a lower-quality housing market, eliminate new construction, and makes all property owners perpetually weighing the option of closure. Nobody can intelligently argue that rent control is smart – just look at how many famous economists have blasted it over the years – and, when pressed with explaining how it’s beneficial, they simply try to distract with name calling and old, worn-out Democratic messaging.

At some point the people who live in California and other rent control states are going to have to vote to eliminate this idiocy – or live with inferior housing options for an eternity.

As for this mobile home park, I imagine they will be tearing it down for redevelopment. Who would blame them?

“My client only served the 60 day notices because the (California Department of Housing and Community Development) advised the park owner that its permit to operate would be suspended if any resident/homeowner did not immediately correct the violations,” Carroll said.

Most Americans think that mobile home park residents rent their units, just like an apartment. But the truth is that probably 90%+ own their units outright and only pay the park owner lot rent. That’s why it’s so annoying when people blame park owners for the condition of the homes in the park, because they have no ownership nor control over them except by filing rules violations. And many states refuse to allow an owner to evict over rules violations so there is literally no way to get things done. In this case, the owner was told to fix the home or lose their license and, with no other options, they filed evictions to get the tenants to either make repairs or leave for the sake of the other residents.

Then to top it all off, the media spins it that the owner is “evil” to file the evictions.

What a screwed-up world we live in.

It was all sounding good until the woke scam surfaced:

… and a switch to electric appliances.

While I have written articles on the many ways to improve mobile home energy efficiency for the past two decades (better weatherstripping on doors, more caulk around windows, thermal switch covers, plastic over windows, etc.) there is absolutely nothing to be gained by changing appliances from gas to electric. Zero. That’s the now-defeated mantra of the Biden administration, in which they wanted to mandate that you could not use gas appliances because it did not fit in with their “green agenda”.

The bottom line is that anyone can make a mobile home have lower utility bills with simply a few parts, a caulk gun, and a bit of knowledge. But don’t for a minute think that buying all new electric appliances is part of that program. The cost of the appliances alone would offset the energy saving of all the other common-sense items for the next decade or more.

Once they matched the 18 million dollar offer, the board had to find the money. Meadowood knew they would have to carry a big mortgage. The question was, could they get enough grants and low interest loans from local, county and state government overseeing federal dollars to finance what they needed? The final piece turned out to be a $3.475 million low-interest loan from Colorado's Department of Local Affairs."DOLA was our last piece. When we got our DOLA award, had it not been for our DOLA award we would not have made it," Cook explained.

Let me first say that I am not in any way opposed to residents buying their mobile home park. What makes me mad is that the media tries to make it a "David vs. Goliath" story under which the residents slay the corporate landlord. Clearly, the seller in this story was more than happy to take the $18 million regardless of who gave it to them. But there's no biblical moral here. The lot rent that residents will be paying, however, is THE EXACT SAME AMOUNT as they would under a corporate buyer – perhaps even more. Here's the simple math behind that statement:

1. All of the operating costs of the mobile home park are the same regardless of ownership (water, sewer, electricity, gas, insurance, repair, etc.). You don't get a "resident-owned discount" on any of these.
2. The monthly mortgage payment on the roughly $15 million mortgage will be identical no matter who the borrower is.
3. You add these two together and you come to the same monthly number no matter if the residents own it or a professional investor owns it.

The only difference between the two options is the bizarre concern that somehow the corporate owner is buying it for land development. While that's true in some cases (like last week's $1 million per lot park sale) that's very much a rarity. So what's the benefit to the residents with these transactions?

I would suggest that the lot rent will be HIGHER under resident ownership, as the tenants are lousy managers of these properties and will allow the delinquency to go up and the needed cap-x repairs to go down. It would be like letting the guy in row E fly the American Airlines jet and expect the same outcome as the highly-trained pilot. But when the media pretends that the residents are just as good pilots as the professionals, it demeans those who actually know what they're doing: the corporate investors. And that's simply not true. Go drive a "tenant owned" community and tell me how it compares to one owned by a corporate owner. You won't be impressed.

On the subject of longevity of the park not becoming redeveloped, the worst part of these stories is that they fail to tell the truth about an essential fact: these "tenant-owned" deals are not built for long-term financial survivability. When a corporate owner buys a mobile home park they typically do so with 10-year notes structured at 70% LTV. When the tenants buy the park, the financing is typically cobbled together from short-term notes (typically 3 to 5 years in duration) and other flimsy hand-outs. As a result, the deals will probably go back on the market again since they can't get them refinanced under a traditional structure and the non-profits lose interest and refuse to keep going with personal guarantees and grants.

I wish that, just once, somebody would have the guts to tell the truth about resident ownership! Again, I have no problem with it as a seller, but the lies have had a negative effect on the industry with many state governments and that part of the story has to end. Many blue-state bureaucrats have bought into the false "landlords are evil" manipulation over time, which is just plain wrong.

A 146-unit manufactured housing community in North Charleston has changed hands for the first time in more than two decades, fetching $15 million. Marcus & Millichap's Charleston office represented the seller, Daniel Island-based Sherwood Community LLC, which purchased the property in 2004 for $1.3 million.

How do you turn $1.3 million into $15 million in twenty years? Buy a mobile home park in Charleston, SC.

Another mobile home park bites the dust. Seeing a trend here?

In a Jan. 27 letter to the Pines Trailer Park Homeown­ers Association (HOA), Pines Park Investors LLC offered to sell the mobile home park to the residents for $75 million. Commissioners said they support the continued exis­tence of the Pines, but don’t have the authority to interfere with private ownership of the park.

This park has 86 lots. That’s nearly $1 million per lot. There’s no way on earth this park is not being torn down, and no way on earth the city government is going to support denying legal zoning for this giant improvement in their tax base. There’s not a thing the residents can do or say to stop this freight train.

Out with Lamplight Mobile Home Park and in with expensive townhomes. Was there a higher lot rent level that would have kept Lamplight intact? That’s the big question that nobody wants to talk about.

Another mobile home park bites the dust – a victim of lot rents that were too low to justify staying in that capacity. Will people ever learn this simple lesson? Doubtful. It’s been a common theme since I started doing this weekly News Review.

"The minimum amount of notice they need to be given is 30 days, and outside of a nonpayment of rent situation, there really is no way they should have given a ten-day notice," Protheroe said.

Taylor's Rental Mobile Home Park is being torn down for redevelopment. And all that the media can come up with is the suggestion that tenants were given ten-days advance notice to leave and some personal injury lawyer claims they should get thirty. Big Deal. Nobody's going to benefit from an additional 20 days of notice. But they might still have their homes in Taylor's – potentially for a lifetime – if the lot rent would have been higher. That's the big issue here: simply how high mobile home park lot rents need to be to prevent parks from being redeveloped, right?

But there is a growing movement to develop more mobile and modular housing in Maine Despite the negative perception some people may have of them, advocates say they can help alleviate the housing crisis while providing better living standards and cheaper rates than similar developments. 

Is the demand for affordable housing finally so high that even city officials are starting to overcome their "stigma" against "trailer parks"? Possibly so. The U.S. housing crisis is so severe that all bets are off.

This is exactly what states need to be doing. Giving grants to mobile home parks to replace aging infrastructure is the correct way to bring old parks back to life and to sustain affordable housing. This is exactly what bureaucrats should be working on if they really want to make a difference.

Well, here’s something new. Howard County, Maryland wants a blanket first-right-of-refusal on every mobile home park or motel going up for sale in the entire county. I guess it’s not a bad thing, as the more buyers the merrier, but the only saving grace is that the county – thank heavens – has to exercise that option in just one week. My bet is that they will never, ever, exercise that option. But it sure created great P.R. for them, right?