Mobile Home Park News Briefing

"The first year to 18 months, we expect to do 12 houses a year," Firnhaber said. "And then we want to double that after about two years."The factory — a partnership with Habitat for Humanity — is meant to boost access to homeownership.“If we were to sell these on the free market in Boulder, they'd be million-dollar homes. And they'll be sold for, depending on the household, between $280,000 and $380,000,” Firnhaber said.“We're actually pricing them at a level which they can afford,” he said. It’s a big investment — the factory alone cost $11 million. Still, it’s cheaper to build homes this way, which is why policy analysts like the Urban Institute's Daniel Pang see these facilities as a tool to address the affordable-housing crisis. “You can sort of wholesale buy a lot of the material that you need to build these homes and property, and you have a sort of standardized, almost like a car creation line, where a lot of the parts are very similar in all the different builds. ... [It] definitely makes the cost a lot lower,” Pang said.

They should nominate this concept for the Academy Awards of Stupid. Sorry Habitat for Humanity, but mobile home manufacturing already exists in the for-profit world and the average U.S. factory makes 7 homes a day. You’re going to spend $11 million to build a factory that makes 12 houses per year?  On top of that, your mobile homes are going to cost $280,000 to $380,000 each when the regular factories produce them for around $80,000. Can you get any dumber?

Of course, we all suspect what’s really going on here. Somewhere out there is probably a well-connected friend of a Board Member who owns the land they’re building this factory on, and another one that sells lumber for mobile home manufacturing. That’s the normal non-profit story if you dig deep enough. Situations this stupid always seem to tie back to self-dealing. I mean, there’s no way that adults can act this dumb unless there’s money in it, right?

STUPIDITY LEVEL: INSANELY HIGH

In the years since Legacy Communities took over the park, some current residents have reported a collective 24% increase. 

This article is lacking in granular detail, but just this one sentence makes it stupid. Since Biden took office inflation has increased the cost all goods and services by over 20%. If the rent has gone up only 24% it’s completely in-line with every other expense that Americans face today. Unhappy about it? Blame the Biden administration, not the park owners.

In 2024, Havenpark plans to invest $27.6 million in its communities to improve infrastructure, add state-of-the-art community amenities, landscaping, enhanced curbside appeal, and new signage. Havenpark also plans to add more than 200 high-quality, affordable homes across its community portfolio.

I hope that the woke journalists that write about how “big out-of-state owners are ruining the mobile home parks they buy” are reading this article. It’s owners like Havenpark that are bringing old mobile home parks back to life and saving this form of affordable housing from the wrecking ball to the benefit of the millions of Americans that need it.

In 30 years, I have never heard of anyone claiming that RV air-conditioning is so poor that residents die from it. The reason that people are dying in Arizona RVs is probably because either their air-conditioning is broken or they’re keeping the temperatures set too high. This is like blaming automobile manufacturers for DUI deaths. It’s called personal accountability.

“My intention in doing this tonight is to make sure there will never be another mobile home park.”

At least this city is honest about it. It’s what all cities think but few will admit.

Alternatively, new park owners could decide to redevelop the nine-acre property to a type of housing with a higher resale value in an effort to recoup their investment, forcing residents to relocate or abandon their homes. A 1,600 square-foot single family home a block away from the park is currently listed for $949,000.

That pretty much tells the whole story. If you were paying $200,000 a lot for this park, and homes sell for $949,000 for similar square footage down the street, this park is certainly going to be redeveloped as soon as the permit can be obtained for demolition. There is no way the tenants can match this offer – it is not supported by existing cash-flow but only development land value – and it’s a waste of time to pretend that they can.

This Park is located in Belmont, New Hampshire. The average house there is $365,000. The average apartment rent is $1,760 per month. And you’re telling me that $1,000 per month lot rent is too high? The reason this resident can’t sell their home is probably because they overpaid for it to begin with. All over America the average homeowner is upside down on their mortgage thanks to Jerome Powell and his 40-year-high Fed funds rate. That’s not the park owner’s fault.

Same old story: no city in America wants new mobile home parks to be built there (not even in Alaska). And, as always, another week has passed without one person giving me the name and address of a single new park having been built anywhere in the U.S. 

The Edwardsville, Illinois market is a great one – one of the best in the state – and I’m glad the new owner was able to get this deal worked out. It was smart of the city to recognize the opportunity to get this community restored to its former glory.

The residents of Southern Hills/Northridge Place mobile home park became concerned after they say they found out the property under their homes had been sold without their knowledge, 

If there is no legal requirement to notify the residents of the ownership change, then why is this article even relevant? In today’s world the media and residents have little to no appreciation for the realities of business and investment and their only interest in knowing of any ownership change is to try to block it or harass the current owner. It’s a sad commentary, but let’s be honest: the new woke America has every business suspicious of motives and has made everyone a little less transparent for their own protection.

If spending $369,500 to live in this mobile home in Maine is on your bucket list, then you need to expand your horizons. You can get the same thing for $36,950 in Missouri with the same scenery and better weather.  

Spending $23 million to build 47 apartments in an old school building on the bad side of town is one of those non-profit projects that only somebody with zero common sense or business experience would love. I mean, that works out to around $489,000 per apartment. You could literally move those 47 families to Arkansas, buy them nice brick homes with yards on the good side of town, give them the houses free and clear of any mortgage, and have around $16 million left over. What a bunch of idiots.

All the insurance companies will ultimately leave Florida unless they can make a profit there. The state would be smart to immediately pass some type of law in which the state guarantees profitability for any insurance company crazy enough to underwrite policies in Florida. Instead, Florida keeps heaping on new laws that only end up with more litigation and liability claims, which accelerates the end of insurance in that state.

Ron DeSantis has done a terrible job on this topic, happily signing into law such bad ideas as the “$100,000 per condo regulatory safety surcharge” as well as a new law that gives mobile home residents the ability to force mediation for raising rents even $1. What happened to that guy?

People who live at Oak Park Terrace are worried that 80 more homes could be added, making their already crowded community even tighter. They believe this move is driven by corporate greed. “It’s just not the same. When I moved here 30 years ago, I had a larger lot. When they put the double lot in next to me, it shrunk my lot but didn’t shrink my rent,” Pat Huxtable, a homeowner at Oak Park Terrace, said. “It’s all about expansion. They just want to keep growing. More money, more money, more money, but that’s corporate for you.”

Now here’s a new one. Instead of the regular “raising rent is evil” narrative now it is apparently “evil” to simply fill your vacant lots. Never mind that the residents are only paying for one lot and yet have strewn their stuff across the vacant ones without paying a penny of rent for all these years, but now that the owners are filling those vacant lots with homes they claim it has injured them because they liked that extra free space.

Only a liberal U.S. media would support this logic. Using this same argument I could also complain that Southwest Airlines is “evil” because their ridership is up and the middle seats are now filled. What a pile of rubbish.

It has been five days since the Town of Southport issued a Notice of Violation to the Cherry Lane Mobile Home Park. On Thursday, August 1st, a special town board meeting was held to discuss what comes next for the park. The board decided to hold a hearing to determine whether the park should keep its operating license. Cherry Lane Park could lose its license to operate as early as the second week of August.

If a homeowner didn’t mow their yard the city would have to go through a lengthy process that could take months to resolve simply to force the property owner to get the grass length corrected. The system is built that way to make sure that all the rights of the homeowner are respected. So doesn’t it seem odd that the city wants to skip the same formalities that they would on lawn mowing so they can suddenly shut this mobile home park down before anyone can even file a legal challenge? I think this park owner needs to find a good municipal attorney who can hit the brakes, sift through the facts, and get to the bottom of it all – the whole scenario seems suspicious to me.

Awfully interesting that this mobile home park has operated just fine for decades and suddenly the state and city will do absolutely anything to get it shut down immediately. Another “more than meets the eye” story and I think any rational person would be suspicious of the sudden change in bureaucratic direction without any apparent desire to work together in a transparent and inclusive manner.

On Monday night, the Charlottesville City Council voted on and unanimously approved providing funding to help Habitat for Humanity and its partners make a counteroffer to purchase the Carlton Mobile Home Park.

You probably remember this story from last week, in which Habitat for Humanity is going to buy this mobile home park and promises the residents they won’t tear the park down and build apartments on it for three years (but no commitment after that). Clearly there is more going on here than meets the eye. Habitat owns most of the surrounding apartments. My bet is that the city council was willing to provide the money for Habitat because it gives them the ability to get the park torn down without leaving any fingerprints on the demolition, using Habitat as the hit man

At Harmony Communities we don't believe in housing discrimination.  We believe a single mother with two kids should have the same affordable housing opportunities as people over the age of 55.  We believe our community is well suited to accommodate struggling families and this change will help open housing opportunities for all, and in a non-discriminatory manner. 

Am I the only one that has always found it odd that HUD allows you to discriminate based on age? It seems to be completely inconsistent with HUD’s mission and I can’t help but wonder what really happened behind the scenes for it to come about. I also wonder how they picked “55” as the age of a “senior” since retirement begins at “62”.

You’re going to see more of these cases in the years ahead, because Baby Boomers are shrinking as a demographic and Millennials are growing in stature. When you run ads offering mobile homes for sale in mobile home parks, 9 out of 10 callers are younger than 55. That’s who really needs the bulk of the affordable housing stock in the U.S.

It will be interesting to see how this problem – which HUD created – gets resolved.

Over the last decade, mobile home parks — or trailer parks, as they are commonly known — have become something of a rarity in South Florida. As the price of land has creeped up to unprecedented heights, investors have increasingly targeted these sites and the acres they sit upon as being ripe for development.

The harsh reality of the situation has forced many to question the very foundations of the region’s socioeconomic foundation, as decades-long residents are forced to leave the region.

Several residents WLRN spoke to who faced eviction from a Hialeah trailer park in 2018 said the experience made them consider returning to Communist Cuba, faulting the lack of tenant protections in the US for their plight. “We live in a capitalist country,” Carlos Hernandez, the then-mayor of that city, explained at the time. “This is a trailer park where the owners of the land sold it to another company.”

So apparently now even the re-development of mobile home park land is evil. Although mobile home parks represent .000000000000000000000000000000001% of all American land mass, the mere concept of building an apartment complex on the old park site is more evil than “Communist Cuba” (their quote, not mine).

Since LOW LOT RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT, maybe this reporter should instead write an article urging park owners to raise their rent significantly to stave off the wrecking ball?

I loved this example from the article, which might qualify as the dumbest case study of all time:

Someone buying a $185,000 manufactured home with 20% down would pay around $960 in principal and interest a month on a 30-year mortgage…

They engineered this scenario to prove that a mobile home in a park costs more than a $2,000 per month apartment. Here’s the problem: THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A MOBILE HOME IN THE HISTORY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE THAT HAS EVER COST $185,000. Maybe more like $85,000 new. And 99% of them cost more like $25,000 new. And probably 90% of every used mobile home in New Hampshire sells for less than $10,000.

Either the reporter is an idiot or is hoping the readers are.

A picture tells a thousand words. Look at how out-of-place the park is surrounded by new multi-story apartment buildings. And then look at what Habitat for Humanity promised the residents if they let them match the developer’s offer of $7 million for the land:

The agreement says that Habitat for Humanity and Piedmont Housing Alliance commit to allowing current residents to continue renting their trailer pad (also called a lot) for at least three years from the date of purchase, as long as residents follow community rules. The organizations also commit to not increasing lot rents more than 5% or $15 per year, whichever is smaller.

Clearly, all Habitat is going to do is to get the land bought, use three years to get their plans approved, get their financing worked out, and then demolish the park to build more of these apartments you see in the picture. The story references that they have done that on former park purchases, too.

Habitat simply doesn’t want another developer to buy the land as they don’t want any competition.

As always TENANTS DON’T BUY MOBILE HOME PARKS: NON-PROFITS DON’T. Or in this case, the non-profit is buying the land for their own use – not the tenants – and then cutting them loose.

Another park bites the dust. Same old story: “LOW LOT RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT”.

Oh, I see. It’s OK for the city to jack up the rates for water/sewer for the park owner but when the park owner raises rents to accommodate these cost increases the media will no doubt go berserk. I’m so sick of all this hypocrisy. 

The previous owner first put the mobile home park up for sale in 2021. Fearing an investor would buy the park and force them out, residents banded together to try and purchase the property. They formed a new homeowners association, called Organización de Nuevas Esperanzas (ONE). But the timeline was too tight, and after spotty communication with the former owner, the deal fell through.

So let me get this straight. The residents tried to buy this park just two years ago and failed miserably on meeting the required timetable of 90 days. Now the price has doubled and they expect anyone to believe that they can pull it off again? The problem on these deals is that the tenants are NOT buying the park, non-profits are and – just like last time – the residents are never going to find non-profits to cough up the down payment and personally guarantee the mortgage. My new saying for this nonsense is: TENANTS DON’T BUY THEIR MOBILE HOME PARKS: NON-PROFITS DON’T. That’s the sad truth.