Mobile Home Park News Briefing

No offense but $269,000 for that thing is absolutely nuts. I urge anyone who thinks this is a great value to go to any city or town in the Midwest before you write that check. There are a million stick-built options at that price point that are larger, nicer, and better located.

This is smart. A city obtains a grant to replace the main water line in a mobile home park. It saves the park, saves the residents, and costs the city nothing. While the media wastes its time promoting resident-owned communities, it could be promoting this simple, effective way to actually help people immediately.

Making sense of this article is like trying to herd cats. So, let’s break it down into pieces:

ITEM #1: TENANTS HATE HIGHER RENTS.

The mobile home park resident interviewed liked paying $350 more than $700. He lives in Pensacola, Florida. Here’s what Bestplaces.net has to say: SF average $240,000, 2-Bedroom monthly rent of $1,120 per month, 3-Bedroom apartment rent of $1,550 per month. Now this guy certainly knew that he was getting a ridiculous deal at $350 per month all this time in that market and that it was obviously not going to last, and even the new rent of $700 per month is crazy cheap compared to a 3-bedroom apartment (his home looks like 3-bedrooms in the photo). He complains that it costs $10,000 or more to move the home. Why move it? Just sell it if he can no longer afford to live in Pensacola and simply move to a cheaper city. If he moves the home his new rent will be just as high or higher so that concept is pointless. The real story here is that this guy can apparently no longer afford to live in Pensacola, not that the park owner is taking advantage. His lack of ability to afford the going housing prices in Pensacola is shared, I’m sure, by many people including the apartment residents in the city – who are paying on average twice as much as he is even at this new lot rent. If this person is truly retired, why not sell the mobile home and move to a smaller town in Florida with lower housing and living costs?

ITEM #2: SOME APARTMENTS ARE IN BAD REPAIR.

Anybody could tell you that. Have you ever been in a Class B or Class C apartment? They’re awful. But what I don’t get is how this relates to the mobile home park example (which looks great in the photos, by the way). I like how they don’t clearly state in the photo that it’s from the apartment complex and not the mobile home park, so if you don’t read the article, you think the filthy shower relates to the mobile home park (nice deception).

ITEM #3: CRIME IS TERRIBLE IN AMERICA.

Absolutely true. There were 4 car jackings and 3 shootings in a single week in Missouri’s most expensive zip code, Ladue, a couple months ago. But the deterioration of safety in the U.S. is absolutely not the responsibility of any single property owner and the examples cited are unique and not representative of the norm in any way. If you want to blame someone, blame the “defund the police” movement or city halls across America that are more concerned with the rights of criminals than those of victims. In St. Louis, for example, the police are not allowed to chase criminals in any case other than murder or rape if it requires them to exceed the posted speed limit. How is that going to work?

So, when you add up the story it’s just more of the usual nonsense which is clearly not what we used to call “news” but merely manipulation of some random facts knitted together to try to persuade you, in this case, that landlords are evil and tenants are angels. There are two sides to every story and this writer only bothers to acknowledge one of those positions and that’s not fair to readers who want 360-degree visibility of issues so THEY can decide what’s correct, NOT the writer.

It’s interesting that there are two articles on the same topic this week. It’s a fact that RVs are becoming a desirable retirement housing option for many seniors and it makes a lot of sense that they are. Many Baby Boomers already own RVs, so it’s a simple transition to sell their house and move into the RV that they already own and enjoy and there’s none of the “trailer trash” stigma when you live in an RV, which has very high status ratings with their peers.

Of course, this article also brings forth the same question as the earlier one: do cities really have the right to restrict RVs in mobile home parks, since when the original permits were issued, they were all just “trailers”? If the city had not voted to allow the two RVs then the issue might have been litigated and the weakness in the city’s argument would have been exposed. Fortunately, the city saw the light here.

Wow, the “before” photo to the “after” photo of the above article. The bureaucrats are going to spend $90,000 per household to let the residents continue to live in old trailers indefinitely. Do you think the residents might have been better off getting $90,000 checks to buy brick houses in a less-expensive area? I guess nobody realizes that the $90,000 per lot will not get them nicer, newer homes or needed improvements – just the luxury of saying they own the land (and the resulting worry of paying for it). Ronald Reagan wins again.

Bingo, another city has figured out a better way to keep mobile home parks thriving:

Jurupa Valley mobile home residents will get some help fixing up their homes in the New Year thanks to a $3 million state grant.The grant, issued by the Manufactured Housing Opportunity & Revitalization Program, was secured by state Sen. Richard D. Roth (D-Riverside).Here’s how it will work for Jurupa Valley residents: In early 2024, mobile home owners can apply through the city for money to repair their plumbing, roofing, heating, ventilation and electrical work. The city said it will consider all the applicants but those who are the “most in-need household” will be first in line, according to Roth’s office. Once the most at-risk properties are helped, the grant money will open up to the remaining mobile-home owners “on a first come basis until funds are depleted.”

Any city or state could enact a program like this and it’s infinitely smarter, cheaper, and more effective than the worn out “residents buy the parks” concept.

"Shark Tank" star Barbara Corcoran, a renowned real estate mogul, surprised many when she acquired a double-wide trailer in Los Angeles.

I’m sorry but a “real estate mogul” would not have bought a mobile home in Malibu for $1 million but instead one of the real houses next door which start at $10 million. These articles are making her look dumber by the minute and she needs to quit talking to the media. Nobody is buying this nonsense.

I love how the residents hired an “expert” to say that the lot rents should only be $850 per month. Well, maybe the “expert” doesn’t own a computer because a quick search of Bestplaces.net shows that Bradenton Beach has the following real estate prices:

Single Family Home: $775,100

2 Bedroom Apartment Rent: $1,620 per month

3 Bedroom Apartment Rent: $2,150 per month

The bottom line is that a lot rent over $1,000 per month is perfectly reasonable in this market and you can go hire 100 “experts” to tell the owner that $75 per month is right but nobody is going to buy that argument.

Sure, tenants were getting a ridiculous deal from mom and pop for decades. That has nothing to do with the actual value and new owners are not going to be compelled to keep lot rents ridiculously low like their predecessors did. Sorry, but it’s just not going to happen.

The city of Fresno, California is finally getting wise to how to keep mobile home parks from being torn down and redeveloped:

“We are now connecting mobile home parks to water and sewer systems to make sure that they have a sustainable water source and have a necessary sewage infrastructure,” Arias continued. “We are taking responsibility to inspect and monitor all mobile home parks within the city’s boundaries, and now we’re actually funding the renovation and preservation of mobile home parks.”

More cities should adopt this attitude.

I’m glad this had potentially a happy ending, but what I take issue with is that the concept of forcing tenants to bring property up to minimum standards is now taken by the media as an unfair request.

The inspections and subsequent notices of violation “are not intended to be an avenue for evictions and that is not our goal when we issue them,” Shah said to deFaria in an email. “Just like how an HOA operates, we expect residents to comply to the rules and regulations… to address safety hazards that are common with older homes and to improve the quality of homes and lots so that the community remains a high quality, safe, and clean place to live.”

The win/win here is that the owner got the property fixes done with volunteer labor. But the requests were never wrong and should not have been portrayed by the media in that manner. 

Read this carefully and see if you remember this park from 2017:

The Santa Clara County Housing Authority, which purchased the park at 3980 El Camino Real in 2017, submitted this week plans to redevelop the park and turn it into Buena Vista Village. According to the newly submitted plans, the rebuilt park would include an apartment building with 61 units, ranging from junior 1-bedroom apartments to 3-bedroom ones. It would also replace existing mobile homes and RVs, many of which fail to comply with local codes, with 44 new coaches of various types.

The goal of retaining residents marks the project as very different from the prior redevelopment proposal, which would have replaced Buena Vista with a high-end condominium development. That plan, which was pitched by the Jisser family in 2013, ran into massive community opposition and ultimately prompted the city and Santa Clara County to facilitate the Housing Authority's purchase of the Barron Park property.

This time, the project is expected to encounter little resistance. Earlier this year, Housing Authority CEO Preston Prince emphasized in a presentation to the City Council that in pursuing the redevelopment, it is "inspired by the values of equity, preservation and anti-displacement."

In the near term, however, the 260 current residents will have to decide what to do during the construction period and determine whether they want to return to the new Buena Vista Village once the project is complete. In response to an inquiry from this publication, the Housing Authority noted that residents are still living in the park and will continue to do so until the renovation starts.

I hope that all the cities and states that are hyped up on the residents buying their own communities sees this as a wake-up call that maybe the concept does not work as planned.

If you recall back in 2017 the media and the residents very publicly blasted the owner of the park who was going to redevelop it into high-end condominiums. They blocked and litigated him at every turn and eventually forced him to sell the park to the city for the perceived and widely promoted benefit of the residents (do you remember when they even pitched Steve Jobs’ wife to buy it and donate it?). Well, that was only 5 years ago and now Palo Alto is giving up on the concept and going to tear the park down themselves and do exactly what the prior owner was going to do only with the spin that maybe the residents can move back in some day – yeah, right.

If they had simply given the residents that park money back in 2017 – of which I publicly wrote articles on back then – those folks could have pocketed about $400,000 each and bought a nice brick house in an exurban California market with lower home prices. Instead, they are now the proud owners of … homelessness. Ronald Reagan once said that the nine scariest words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” – and he nailed this one.

More folks drinking the Kool-Aid that owning their park will make unicorns descend from the heavens and end world hunger when, in fact, it will probably only usher in higher lot rents due to poor collections while the park slips into an infrastructure mess because they have no realistic financial plan to make cap-x repairs.

Here’s the ugly truth: nobody is going to buy a modular home if it’s only 16% cheaper. The negative stigma and appearance of modular is worth way more than 16% to the consumer. Until the price of modular is more like 50% less than a stick-built home it will likely never get off the ground in a big way.

Am I crazy or is this perhaps the ugliest home ever created? How in the world can the U.S. designers screw up 3-D printed homes so bad when overseas they look so good. I feel like it’s the 1980s when U.S. car designers deliberately built some of the ugliest models ever made and foreign car companies stole all their market share.

Lobbyist Chester Baldwin summed it up:

“There is no such thing as affordable housing in the state anymore because we have put so much cost and regulation onto housing – that housing is expensive,” he said. “No one can build it affordably.” 

Does anyone but Baldwin in the entire State of Washington have any common sense? Apparently not.

No offense to the bureaucrats but when you can buy a 29-space park in Massachusetts for $600,000 ($20,000 per space) you know it has some significant cap-x problems in store for the new owner.  I hope they have a plan to pay for those, (and I bet they don’t). I assume the bureaucrats did zero due diligence and are about to find out the hard way how infrastructure and 1001 real-life things work when they have no money to pay for them.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.