Mobile Home Park News Briefing

The grants will fund bold projects such as replacing old units with new, energy-efficient homes, expanding existing MHCs, and creating entirely new, resident-driven communities.

First of all, Biden is leaving the building in a few weeks and I doubt this program will ever get funded as I assume Trump will undo every single thing Biden does in these final days (and for good reason).

But even if it did actually see daylight, there ae four basic problems with this concept:

#1: $225 million is not a game changer for “million of Americans” unless the plan is to give $10 to each of the 22 million folks who live in mobile home parks. Has that title been puffed up enough? In reality, most private equity groups alone have already poured more than $225 million into their own mobile home park portfolios via cap-x projects and with much greater impact (and no credit from the media).

#2: Nobody on earth cares about “energy efficiency” projects that cost more than they save and are part of the whole “green agenda” that was summarily flushed down the toilet on November 5th.

#3: The Federal government has no power to influence community zoning and has proven to be completely impotent when it comes to park expansions since the day Biden took office.

#4: There is no such thing as “entirely new resident-driven communities”. That’s the same “word salad” nonsense Biden shouted about for four years. None of it happened. His time is now over. Give it up.

STUPIDITY INDEX: 8

Here is an update on FEMA's progress on placing families in mobile homes. A top FEMA official pledged he would try to get 26 Helene-affected families placed in mobile homes by Christmas. Progress is slow-going at the site in Black Mountain. FEMA officials confirm only three families are in trailers out of 26 trailers total.

Does anyone on earth still seriously believe that the Biden administration can get anything done properly?

STUPIDITY INDEX: 8

A two-bedroom, two-bathroom home will cost $870 a month to rent, while a three-bedroom will run $920 a month, commissioner Gwendolyn Hooker said. The housing commission owns the homes, but not the lots they sit on. Monthly rent includes a $440 lot rental fee. The home rent portion of the new homes would go directly to the housing commission, plans state.

I’m more than confused on how this is any different than what park owners who embrace rental homes have already been doing for the past 50 years? I guess it’s fine for the county to join in as it fills vacant lots without any cost to the park owner, but how is this even worthy of media time?

STUPIDITY INDEX: 5

There are two main factual problems with this article:

Millions of Americans own mobile homes but rent the ground beneath them. And despite the “mobile” moniker, these factory-built homes are difficult and costly to relocate. That makes owners of such homes particularly susceptible to rent hikes — especially as longtime communities get bought up by big investors.

#1 The fact that mobile homes are “not easily moved” has nothing to do with being “susceptible to rate hikes”. There is no form of housing that is actually “mobile” yet every other sector (single-family, condominium, apartment) is somehow different? Why is that? Well, it’s not. People live in mobile homes because they are inexpensive and NOT because they think they can attach them to their Buick and drive off at the drop of a hat. The reason mobile home park lot rents go up is simply economics: when your rent is $300 per month on average in a country where the average single-family home is $400,000 and the average apartment is $2,000 per month then you can literally double the lot rent and still be 70% less than every other option. And that’s why rents go up and people still flock to mobile home parks: because we’re the cheapest form of housing on earth. Sure, residents would like the rents to remain ridiculously low in perpetuity, but the failings of mom and pop to set proper rent levels is not going to survive the next generation. When mobile home park lot rents no longer offer a great value, then people will stop living in them and owners will have to lower prices to remain competitive. It’s called basic economics. But it has NOTHING to do with mobility.

Residents at Liberty Landing were “phenomenally lucky,” Peterman said. The park’s longtime owner was looking to get out of the business and suggested the resident-owned model. Working with a nonprofit organization, residents bought the park by securing a $9.5 million loan — debt that is being repaid by monthly lot rents.

#2 When the residents buy the mobile home park their lot rent ends up exactly the same – or higher – than when the ‘evil corporation” does. They have the same mortgage payment, utility cost, insurance cost, property tax – everything. But, unlike the corporate owner, they are lousy at collecting rents, fixing things, and budgeting, so residents end up actually paying more yet having a lower quality of life. Makes sense, right?

I went on a wokester podcast a few years ago and pointed out both of these factual issues to the host who then refused to debate either of them because there’s no defense to the simple truth. So instead, he just edited that part of the discussion out and simply stuck with the generic “Free Rent Movement” slant that “corporate owners are evil”. But I invite anyone who wants to debate this to contact me. I would love to hear an intelligent argument on how 2+2=5.

STUPIDITY INDEX: 10

New data shows the average sales price of new mobile homes in Pennsylvania skyrocketed in recent years. According to LendingTree.com, the average sales price of a new mobile home in Pennsylvania last year was $127,500 a 65.16% increase from 2018’s average price of $77,200. The percentage increase is the 12th highest in the United States. The site says new mobile homes sold in the U.S. cost $124,300, on average. Despite the seemingly large amount, new mobile homes are considerably cheaper than site-built, single-family homes. As of 2023, the average sales price of new single-family homes was $409,872 — $285,572 more than that of new mobile homes, per LendingTree.com.

I’m shocked the media isn’t having a fit about mobile home prices and whining that costs are up 65% in only six years. Of course, they can’t float that argument very well since single-family homes are now at $409,000. All that ever matters to customers is the actual dollar amount, not the percent of increase. It would be nice if mobile home park lot rents got the same consideration by the media.

Barnstable Superior Court ultimately found that the petition did not contain the requisite number of signatures and “the association did not meet its burden of proof.” Judge Michael K. Callan stated that the petition needed at least 41 signatures from owners living in the park to represent the required 51 percent of residents. Forty-nine signatures were submitted; of those, the court found that four were duplicates (from the same unit), five were subtenants (not owners), five were owners but did not live in the park, and four more freely rescinded and withdrew their approval. That left the association with only 31 signatures of support from resident owners. “No effort was made by any of the signature gatherers to verify whether the park residents who were asked to sign the petition were owners or simply tenants, subtenants, or guest residents at the park,” Judge Callan wrote in his decision.

Do you honestly believe that a group of residents who can’t even figure out the simple directions for signing a petition are competent to put together a non-profit and funding for a “tenant owned” property?

In a historic move to preserve and revitalize manufactured housing, the Biden-Harris administration has announced $225 million in grant funding for 17 awardees across 26 states under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Preservation and Reinvestment Initiative for Community Enhancement (PRICE) program. The initiative targets repairs, infrastructure upgrades, new home creation, and transitioning manufactured housing communities (MHCs) into resident-managed models.

I guess it’s never too late to try and buy votes … or maybe it actually is.

Now the mobile home park is vacant. The land, off Lakeshore Boulevard in the city’s North Collinwood neighborhood, is being cleared to become part of a park. And the people who lived there – some for just a few years, some for generations – are settling into different homes scattered across the region and beyond. “This whole experience has been unprecedented,” said Isaac Robb, vice president of planning, research and urban projects at the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. The nonprofit bought the 28.5-acre site in late 2021 to protect it from development and bring it back into local hands. After a planning process, the land conservancy decided in early 2023 to close the park, which was half-empty and hemorrhaging money.

Wait a minute … I thought that the whole “tenants buying their own park” schtick was supposed to be a forever story of unicorns and gumdrops? Nobody mentioned the reality that the non-profit (who IS the owner and not the tenants since they put up the money and have their name on the mortgage) is free to re-sell the park or even tear it down if they want.

These residents would still have a home if they had let a corporate buyer be in charge. That was a costly mistake on their part.

Last month, Habitat purchased Oak Grove Mobile Home Park, which is located at McKinley Avenue and Byrkit Avenue on Mishawaka’s east side. Habitat of St. Joseph County CEO Jim Williams told WNDU 16 News Now only 34 of the 117 lots at Oak Grove are occupied. Habitat is closing the mobile home park but working to relocate the people still living there. Williams added the families will be invited to take part in the Habitat for Humanity program starting in January.

And here we have another non-profit that bought a park to “save the residents from the evil corporate landlord” and then summarily evicted everyone to build an apartment complex. Still thinking the “tenant-owned park” concept is a winner?

This week, the North Platte City Council approved the purchase of nearly two-and-a-half acres of land along 14th Street, just south of Madison Middle School, with plans to transform it into a park. “We’re building a rec center, we’re building water parks, we have a lot of construction going on here in North Platte, which is great. The Northwest is kind of one of those areas that doesn’t have a place where you can walk within ten minutes,” said Lyle Minshull, city of North Platte Parks and Rec Director.

When a city tears down a mobile home park it’s called “progress” and when a corporate owner does the same thing it’s called “evil”. Does anyone find that even the least bit hypocritical?

According to a study by LendingTree, the average price of new manufactured homes — also known as mobile homes — is rising faster than that of new single-family homes.

Wait a minute – a positive article on mobile home appreciation? Wasn’t it just a couple years ago that there were hundreds of articles condemning mobile homes for being a bad investment? I remember being on several woke podcasts where that was the number one attack on our industry.

Well, there go those arguments!

But buying the park came with new challenges. The co-op was now responsible for the park’s maintenance and infrastructure needs, like water, electricity, roads and snow plowing. Because working-class Westbury is technically a private community, getting those services was complicated and expensive.

Sounds like the reality of “tenant owned communities” is finally kicking in. It all sounds great when the glossy P.R. people from the non-profits dangle the utopia of “let us buy your park for you” but then comes the sad reality that mobile home park residents are the worst property managers on earth, unable to collect rents or make tough decisions on rent increases. And that does not even count just a general lack of professionalism on capital expenditures and basic business sense. As I’ve said for over a decade: “TENANT-OWNED” PARKS HAVE THE SAME – OR HIGHER – RENTS THAN CORPORATE OWNERSHIP, BUT WITH A LOWER QUALITY OF LIFE. Want a second opinion? Read this article: https://coloradosun.com/2024/04/22/sans-souci-boulder-county-mobile-home-park-challenges/

The Canadian company that was outbid by the Cedar Falls cooperative told the Bangor Daily News it had only planned to raise lot rents by $25 to $35 a year and were responsible park owners.

If the tenants buy the park they will face lot rent increases much greater than what the corporate buyer was proposing. But don’t worry, there’s no way the tenants will be able to raise the $8 million down payment by the due date since the clock has almost run out and all they have cobbled together is $1.5 million. The tenants’ lack of fundraising ability has luckily saved them from their lack of park management skills.

It has been three years since Mountain View approved a rent control ordinance for its mobile home parks. Now it is looking to update the ordinance to offer more protections for tenants who are struggling to keep up with annual rent increases. In a 2-1 vote, the Rental Housing Committee (RHC) recommended at their Dec. 12 meeting that the city cap rent increases for mobile homes below the rate of inflation.

If there still exist any mobile home parks in Mountain View a few years from now, I would be amazed. Who wouldn’t tear their park down if they can’t raise rents even in-line with inflation? What a bunch of idiots.

Here we have a non-profit that bought a mobile home park to shut it down and redevelop it into apartments:

Habitat for Humanity acquired the 9-acre mobile home park at Byrkit and McKinley Avenue in November, and neighbors will have until May to move out.

And here’s what the CEO of the non-profit had to say about the whole situation:

“We are looking for a new place to invest and create more affordable housing and the city of Mishawaka was anxious for us to do something along the McKinley corridor,” said Williams.

A resident weighs in:

“It's hard this time of year to get a letter like that, and especially people who lived on fixed income. That's the shocking part about it because I thought they were supposed to help people like me not you know put me on the streets,” said Michele Harfert.

For those who think that non-profits buying mobile home parks are superior to those “evil, out-of-state owners”, you need to take this article, frame it and hang it on your wall.

The moral of this article is simple: DON’T RENT MOBILE HOMES: SELL THEM. It’ something we learned 30 years ago and it’s as true today as it was in the 1990s. You want to be in the parking lot business, not the car repair business.

Town officials are at the end of their rope. The solutions they see include zoning reform and manufactured homes that have faced decades of stigma and local laws banning them in certain parts of Maine. They are considering putting a mobile home park on town-owned land to provide embattled locals an attainable homeownership option.

So while Mountain View is trying to run their parks off, here we have a town in Maine wanting a mobile home park so bad that they’re willing to provide the land for free. Interesting, right?

The Rental Housing Committee (RHC) recommended at their Dec. 12 meeting that the city cap rent increases for mobile homes below the rate of inflation. Committee members Kevin Ma and Edie Keating voted in favor of limiting rent increases to 60% of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), with no floor and a 5% ceiling. This went a step further than what the city had proposed, which was to limit rent increases to 75% CPI, with a 2% floor and 5% ceiling.

Apparently, the Mountain View Housing Commission has uncovered a large stockpile of economic heroin and have some crazy idea that mobile home park owners should not be allowed to raise their rents, even in tandem with inflation. This is the wildest rent control proposition in the history of mankind. Let me lay it out for the commission once their heroin runs out: your idiotic actions are going to make each and every mobile home park in the town shut down and be redeveloped into other uses that don’t suffer from similar rent control issues. Don’t lie to your constituents and claim that you are somehow preserving their affordable housing as you know full well that all you’re doing is giving these affordable refuges a death sentence. But, then again, maybe that’s your real goal?

And here’s a city that approved a mobile home & RV park on this property years ago and now has inexplicably changed their mind. You don’t see that every day.

In 1933 Prohibition ended. The U.S. government had tried to stop Americans from drinking alcohol since 1920 but the will of the people ultimately prevailed. Then you had the emergence of Uber, which violated most city taxi laws but, once again, the will of the people won out. And it’s pretty clear to me that a large number of Americans prefer having the option of tiny homes, park models and container homes in addition to the traditional mobile home product and, at least in Venice, Florida, the will of the people has prevailed again.

I know that most mobile home manufacturers will fight this reality, but the advent of new technologies – such as 3-D printing – makes them no longer the only game in town. It’s only a matter of time until more municipalities adapt to what the public desires and allow more than just HUD-code mobile homes on the park’s lots. Park owners have no downside from this eventuality, as we just rent land and are more than happy to have the customers highly satisfied with whatever housing type they choose. However, this competition might actually be healthy for mobile home manufacturers, as these housing alternatives are fairly pricey and make the cost of the traditional mobile home product – which is nearly twice as large – look like an absolute bargain.

We’ll see how this turns out in the decades ahead.

“Our focus is entirely on rent increases, because that is the issue that is scaring the pants off of all manufactured home park tenants across the state,” VanLandingham said. 

Sure, Oregon already has rent control, which allows for 7% plus inflation with a cap of 10%. Now the Free Rent Movement folks say that’s not good enough and want to reduce the increases to just the CPI and drop the 7 point addition. And I’m sure they will next want it to be capped at .000001% of the CPI.

Apparently, they forgot to add basic classes in economics to the high school curriculum in Oregon as all this concept will do is make the parks shut down and be redeveloped into uses that have no rent control. What a bunch of idiots.

Bangor city councilors have agreed to kick in $500,000 towards a group of mobile home residents looking to buy their park and stave off investors from purchasing it instead. The move has drawn mixed reactions from those behind the $8 million effort. The nonprofit backing the residents of Cedar Falls — a 129-lot mobile home park on Bangor’s Finson Road — is excited by the council’s decision. But the president of the residents’ co-operative is disappointed the city didn’t allocate more and fears it could set them back from meeting their January fundraising deadline.

So let me get this straight. 129 mobile home park tenants are planning on raising $8 million in cash by January. Are they nuts? Why would anyone think this is possible? Clearly the City of Bangor made this gesture because it gave them free publicity with absolutely no risk of having to fork over a penny. This is exactly how 99.999% of tenant “first options” work out and why everyone knows they are a complete waste of time.

"Our top priority was keeping housing affordable for the people here," said Ben Ward, president of Olga Dor Homeowners Cooperative. "Without this opportunity, many residents couldn't afford another rent increase. Cooperative ownership lets us manage our community - setting our own rules, overseeing the budget and securing a stable future. Achieving this goal brings financial stability and peace of mind. We're deeply grateful to everyone who helped make this possible." 

Here's the problem with this narrative, which is a darling of the Free Rent Movement folks:

1. The loan payment is the same for non-profits and for-profits, namely the amount borrowed at the prevailing interest rate, plus principal reduction. So the residents have no advantage there.
2. The operating cost of a mobile home park (water, sewer, electric, insurance, property tax, etc.) are the same with a non-profit or a for-profit. So the residents have no advantage there.
3. As a result, the lot rent to the residents is going to be the same whether it’s bought by a non-profit or a for-profit. This is just a mathematical fact.
4. The for-profit has a huge advantage, however, over the non-profit in operations. The residents will never vote for the necessary lot rent increases, invest in required cap-x, or even collect money from their friends. So the quality of the park goes down the drain rapidly.
5. In the end, the residents are actually better off NOT owning the park. Just ask the residents of the park called Sans Souci as described in this article.

The whole “tenant owned” initiative is – for the most part – nothing more than smoke and mirrors.

I always find these articles confusing. The park looks very nice in the photos yet somehow the residents claim they are living in “deplorable” conditions. The rent hike from $225 to $500 sounds like a lot until you take the five seconds to go to Bestplaces.net and see that the Princeton, West Virginia single-family home price averages $141,000 and the average apartment is $1,010 per month – so the lot rent has gone from ridiculously low to only just spectacularly low based on all competing housing options. And then there’s the fact that the residents complain that at $525 they’ve had to move back in with family members and can’t afford to live which means – based on the Federal Government’s claim that 33% of income is a reasonable housing cost – they must earn less than $1,500 per month, despite the fact that the minimum wage in West Viginia is $9 an hour. $9 per hour works out to exactly $1,500 per month, so these folks must be earning less than minimum wage and should immediately report that to the employment commission.

What’s also confusing is why there is such a fury in the article about “the purchase of the Mercer County mobile home community by out-of-state companies”. Is there something wrong with being an “out-of-state” company vs. an in-state? If that’s indeed a bad thing then there must be real problems in Princeton because a quick review of just about every business there – from McDonald’s to the Hampton Inn – is owned by an “out-of-state” group.

So, let’s just be honest. The former mom-and-pop owners of this park were out of their minds charging $225 per month in lot rent. That was the typical rent back in the 1970s. The rent should always have been $500 per month or higher for the last decade. The residents surely know this but, gosh darn it, it was a great scam while it lasted. So don’t pretend that it’s evil or that “out-of-state” ownership is the problem here. This is just another article promoted by the Free Rent Movement which simply wants all rent to be free. To them, even the $225 rent was too much.

Yes, this is the same park that, last week, the residents were demanding $40 million in compensation from, even though it appears that the law says they are entitled to nothing. To quell the rebellion the property owner has “offered $14,000 for those who leave by January 31, $7,000 by April 30, and $3,000 after that. Despite these offers, many residents, some of whom have lived there for decades, are protesting what they see as unfair treatment and an abrupt upheaval of their lives.”

So now the residents have apparently started to physically threaten the park’s management.

I’m sure the Free Rent Movement folks would say that all of this is warranted. But the fact remains that the park is shutting down. And why is it closing? To build apartments on the land, as usual, because the lot rents were too low to make it compelling to leave it as a mobile home park instead of an apartment complex.