Pam has lived at the Dakota Valley Mobile Home Park for three years. She said, "I don't want to go to the homeless shelter. I've been there before." When she moved in, the lot rent cost $395. On March 1st, it will increase to $675 a month. "The first time he raised it, I had to change my life. I was doing senior companions, and I had to quit that job because it didn't pay enough to accommodate his raise," Kifer said. Common Sense Translation: $675 per month is not excessive lot rent at all, in most markets. But if you were in a homeless shelter three years ago it makes sense that you should probably not be in the mainstream housing market and need to get on Section 8 or a similar government program because you really can’t afford to live in the modern world without assistance. It’s also a pretty safe bet that you don’t actually reflect the opinions or financial status of the rest of the mobile home park residents.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

So the non-profit is buying a 19 space park for $1.5 million? That’s around $80,000 per space. The seller had no known intention of shutting the park down, but the non-profit was adamant that they had to buy the park to save it from the wrecking ball. Here’s a quick fact-check for these non-profits: nobody is going to pay $80,000 a space for a park in Belgrade, Montana to shut it down. Basically the seller is a lucky guy because the non-profit probably overpaid and did zero due diligence, as they were simply obsessed with a public relations opportunity for more fundraising. They bought this park with a two-year interim note. I can’t wait to see how this thing appraises two years from now and how much more money they have to dump in just to get it into permanent financing.

Becoming a resident-owned community gives owners more control over their future, advocates said. “This allows them to have some decision making power to secure their housing in the future,” said county grants administrator Heidi West. “It's exciting they'll have control over where they live.”

This non-profit paid $90,000 per lot to “give the residents greater control over where they live”. Well, they certainly have more control now I guess, and they will pay for it with giant rent increases as loading that much debt on the property – coupled with the reduced collections and lack of cost containment that resident-owned communities provide – will make those rents skyrocket. I can’t wait to see what the articles say about this deal a couple years from now. Given that these non-profits never do correct due diligence I am willing to bet that this owner is laughing all the way to the bank.

What goofball judge would not agree with this common sense?

Harmony and their attorneys have said they are closing down the park and going out of business. They say they are not trying to repurpose the property, which would require government approval. They say that distinction is crucial and would mean the city and court have no authority to prevent a park closure, the company argued in a written filing submitted on Friday. “The government cannot stop someone from going out of business,” the argument reads. “The government may impose conditions and require a permit when the owner wishes to redevelop the park into something else.” 

But the same state that brought you the O.J. verdict may hold the judge just goofy enough to rule that the government can force a business to stay open indefinitely when it wants to close.  I doubt it will withstand an appeal to a higher court. However, if they rule that no business can close without government approval then I hope the government will force all Steak & Shakes to remain open as they are a great late-night stop when you’re out driving parks.

Price said this bill doesn’t require landowners to sell their property to mobile home park associations or stop any sales, it only gives residents a chance to make their own offer to preserve low-cost housing options in Idaho. She said this is helpful because often mobile home park owners sell these properties privately, so there is no notification to residents when it is posted on the MLS. “The whole idea behind this is to prompt the land owner to take into consideration the association and their wishes,” Price said. “It’s just adding language to try to get the land owner to participate in the association’s wish to purchase the land.”

We have sold several parks to the residents over the years. However, let’s get serious on how that works. The residents have to organize into an association with formal officers, then vote to buy the park, then conduct due diligence, then find a non-profit group to work on the project, then find another non-profit that will personally guaranty the loan, then have a final vote by all residents to more forward and, if successful, then put the whole thing together with attorneys and get it closed. The total elapsed time for all of the above is six to twelve months. Those type of deals only get done with the endless tolerance and patience of the seller. There’s no way that any resident group will ever be able to match the speed of a normal buyer, who typically closes in around 90 days.

It's been an ongoing legal battle, as they fought to stay. But the plan according to property owner and non-profit Western Reserve Land Conservancy is to ultimately expand it into the Cleveland Metroparks in the near future.

I’ve been following this story for a while now, and it’s interesting how private owners can’t close a park to develop it into something else without the media getting out flaming torches and pitchforks while a non-profit can seemingly do anything they want as long as they attach some B.S. reasoning to it. In this case the Cleveland park system suddenly needs this lousy chunk of grass to promote the healthy outdoor experiences of nearby residents (as opposed to wanting to get the eyesore out of the city). You know, private owners could make up similar nonsense but they don’t because they think it’s so stupid that nobody would believe it. I guess that to shut a park down today the key is to say that you are “working to reduce America’s carbon footprint and restore the natural habitat for birds and small animals”.

I’m sorry but I do not believe for one second that any park owner would block residents from having air conditioning. In fact, the article cites not one actual example of this, only the theoretical concept that the reason that around 140 people per year die of heat stroke in mobile homes in Arizona must be because evil park owners won’t let them install A/C. The truth is more likely that the tenant does not want to spend the money, or their home does not have big enough wiring to handle the load of the A/C and they then seal their own fate.  But that simple reasoning is not part of the new U.S. “victim mentality” that declares that nobody is actually accountable for anything they do and, instead, it’s always the landlord’s fault.

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.

“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.

20% is simply not enough discount for a consumer to choose a modular home over a stick-built home. It would have to be more like 50% off to get any traction. Every time I go to the annual mobile home show and walk these $150,000 modular homes I think how crazy it is for manufacturers to think that those are going to sell when you can buy a stick-built – without the stigma – for nearly the same price. I must be correct because all of this misplaced “CrossMod” excitement has amounted to nearly nothing in actual sales.

Throughout the book’s chapters, Hormel shows how rural working-class people are immiserated by the structures of capitalism, particularly global “campaigns of privatization and deregulation”.

Thank goodness the “free rent movement” gang has shown up again in the news this week with their endless allegations that capitalism is inherently evil. Of course, the problem is that the only way that housing gets built is capitalists in search of profit. I haven’t seen too many woke socialists building much of anything in America – just criticizing those who actually invest and construct things that they then live in and complain about.