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North Country Now: Canton supports grant to bring more manufactured homes to Church Creek

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ANTON– The town council has agreed to sponsor two grants for the rehabilitation of Church Creek manufactured home park.

Matt Welsh purchased the community in October of 2024, and appeared at Wednesday’s town board meeting via telephone to ask the town for its assistance in applying for two New York State grants to make infrastructure and other improvements in the park. 

The community is located roughly 3.5 miles west of the village of Canton on U.S. Highway 11. 

Park owner Welsh described the property  as “very scenic,” saying it has “a lot of potential” if it can receive the proper improvements. 

Welsh is seeking grant money through the...

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Our thoughts on this story:

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.

WWSB: Repairs halted at local mobile home parks

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LONGBOAT KEY, Fla. (WWSB) - After building was halted on the island by town officials on Longboat Key, many residents were forced to put home repairs on hold.

Many of these repairs include leveling their homes to ensure safety during the next hurricane season, which is just over three months away.

Gulf Shore and Twin Shores Mobile Home Parks residents say they received damage and destruction unlike they’ve ever experienced.

Residents say they’ve been approved for building permits to make necessary repairs, but they’ve been blocked by the town’s building commission.

“Look a little further, dig a little deeper,” said one resident.

Town...

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Gulf Shore and Twin Shores Mobile Home Parks residents say they received damage and destruction unlike they’ve ever experienced. Residents say they’ve been approved for building permits to make necessary repairs, but they’ve been blocked by the town’s building commission.

I saw the same thing firsthand during Hurricane Harvey in Austin, Texas. The bureaucrats and city managers in the whole surrounding area saw the flooding as an opportunity to get mobile home parks torn down so they could be rebuilt into prettier uses that would pay more property tax. However, when pushed (and under the risk of litigation) the city bureaucrats would suddenly claim that they never knew there was an issue. It’s all just a big game to them that only ends when you call their bluff.

Bangor Daily News: Bangor mobile home park residents get loan to develop 28 empty lots

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After raising $8 million to beat out a corporate investor and purchase their own mobile home park, a Bangor co-op will get another $3 million loan to develop some of the park’s empty lots.

The loan is coming from MaineHousing, the state housing authority, according to a news release from the Co-operative Development Institute, a Massachusetts nonprofit that helped the residents fundraise.

“We see this as a really good investment for us, for the number of homes that it’s able to create for that amount of investment. It’s a good deal,” said Scott Thistle, MaineHousing’s spokesperson.

MaineHousing already gave the Cedar Falls co-operative...

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Our thoughts on this story:

These folks may be in WAY over their heads, thanks to pandering non-profits that tend to build deals that are not sustainable based on the laws of economics. While there’s not a whole lot of detail given on this “tenant-owned” transaction that was built from cobbled together non-profit loans, here’s what we do know (based on this article) and why it should be of concern to those with actual real estate experience:

  • There are 129 lots but only 48 of those are occupied.
  • They paid $8 million for basically 48 occupied lots which equates to nearly $200,000 per lot.
  • Of the remaining 81 lots, only 28 of those have utilities.
  • They are spending $1 million to get those 28 lots ready, which equated to around $40,000 per lot.
  • When you put a home on those 28 lots, you’ll be in them turnkey at around $120,000 each.
  • That $120,000 does not include the lot rent.
  • The average home in Bangor, Maine sells for around $200,000, but if you go to Realtor.com you’ll see that there’s a whole lot of single-family inventory selling for far less, like this nice one for $120,000: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/156-Essex-St_Bangor_ME_04401_M32376-24560

So I guess my question would be “what was the goal here?”. If the goal was to provide affordable housing, then clearly that didn’t happen as the residents are now burdened with more debt and total housing payments than what they would have ended up with if they had bought a nice colonial home in town with a yard and a simple walk to a quaint restaurant.

I think the real goal of most of these “tenant owned” transactions are simply for the involved non-profits to believe they have “defeated” capitalism. Well, I don’t think it’s working. There’s no way this deal will survive 5 to 10 years financially. The residents will be crushed under the debt load and the non-profits will grow weary of their complaints and the risk of the debt guarantees. I’ll bet $5 this deal is back on the market within a decade and will sell, at a loss, to a professional investor. You should leave real estate up to real professionals and non-profits should focus on what they’re good at (which is not pretending to be business people).

INLANDER: Manufactured home owners are reimagining stable housing as local communities face untenable rent increases

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Jinny Curtiss' home is beautiful. It has cream siding with forest green trim around the windows. Inside, songbird knickknacks perch atop a vintage wooden hutch that separates the kitchen from a tidy, cozy living room.

Curtiss keeps a small garden fountain outside and changes the flowers around it every spring. One year they're red and yellow, another year blue and purple, another year completely pink for breast cancer awareness.

The 82-year-old was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2020. That was 13 years after she moved here. She's always planned to die here, too.

"Take me out of here in a box," she says.

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Like many mobile home residents, Curtiss owns her home, but she doesn't own the land underneath it. She lives in Bona Vista, a community in Otis Orchards. She's rented the 14-by-70-foot lot where her home sits since 2007. When Curtiss first moved in, her lot rent was $300 a month. For more than a decade, it barely increased. But in the past five years, rent in manufactured home communities have been catching up with the rest of the housing market. Curtiss' rent is set to hit $875 per month this spring.

If the rent was $300 per month in 2007 and the rent is now $875 nearly 20 years later, that works out to an increase of around 6% per year. That’s hardly excessive. Maybe they need to look at healthcare rates and car prices during that same period. In 2007 you could get health insurance for a family of four at a price of around $300 per month. That same policy today is over $2,000 per month. But, of course, it’s forbidden for woke journalists to even mention the cost of health insurance as that was the byproduct of the Obama regime and, as a result, is strictly forbidden to be discussed.

OPB: Oregon and Washington are preparing for fights over rent increases in manufactured home parks

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When Susan Zajac moved into the Royal Villas Mobile Home Park near Tigard three years ago, she thought she was making a good financial decision. She paid a mere $34,500 for her home and then rented the lot it sat on for $850 per month. Since then, her rent has steadily increased, to a current price of $1,200 per month.

Unlike many of her neighbors in the 55-and-older park, Zajac still works, but she says the increases from the park’s owner, Cal-Am Properties, are especially hard on her neighbors, many of whom are seniors on fixed incomes.

“It’s not the way it should be,” Zajac said.

She’s one of a growing number of tenants at manufactured...

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She’s one of a growing number of tenants at manufactured home parks calling foul on park owners for what they say are exorbitant rent increases and unfair fees that are threatening to push tenants out of their homes altogether.

Yes, that’s the trusty mantra of the Free Rent Movement folks. Never mind that all costs under the Biden regime rose 20%, or that housing is only the fifth largest cost of these people behind 1) healthcare 2) childcare 3) transportation and 4) taxes. The Free Rent Movement blames everything in life on “evil landlords”. The good news is that we don’t pander to those hippie idiots in the red states, and their power is relegated to simply the whack-o places like Oregon and Washington. Oregon already has rent control, but they want to amend it. Washington nearly passed rent control last year, but it failed to happen. At the end of the day, you can only trust the legal system to protect your property rights. In Oregon and Washington, they are apparently losing control of even the legal system. The solution? If you have a well-located park in Oregon or Washington, just tear it down and build apartments on the land. That seems to be what they apparently want you to do, right?

wlrn: New exhibit memorializes South Florida's disappearing mobile home communities

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Diego Waisman has captured and documented dozens of communities over several years across South Florida.

His work focuses on mobile home communities, which have been subject to development and displacement over the years. The project began in earnest in 2016, when Waisman discovered that a mobile home community—near his own home in Aventura— was being evicted.

“I went there trying to find answers, but then after I captured some of the footage from that community, I realized that this was a trend,” Waisman said. “I felt that it was kind of historic. That all those stories, all those places were going away, and that for some reason, the...

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“Sometimes the stigma is so prevalent that people don't face [the] 'inside.' They put all their biases at the entrance of those communities without realizing that it could be somebody's aunt, somebody's mother, somebody who relocated to South Florida, as many other snowbirds, for a better retirement," Waisman said.

This is the kind of action that the industry needs to help reduce the stigma against “trailer parks”: by showing real people and their stories. I am also fascinated by the assortment of residents I have met over the years and their fascinating life narratives, which includes having the “Marlboro Girl” from the 1940s in a park in Texas to a famous Russian ballerina in a park in Iowa. And that does not even include the Hollywood celebrities that have lived in those Malibu parks that include Sean Penn, Hillary Duff, Pam Anderson and many others.

FOX13: Mobile home park tenants seek help from WA Attorney General's office

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PUYALLUP, Wash. - Mobile homeowners in Pierce County report they have been struggling for over a year after their landlord, Hurst and Sons LLC, raised rent astronomically, leaving many feelings exploited. After reporting the issue to the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, tenants hoped for a resolution.

What they're saying:

Allen Marler, a resident of Cottonwood Mobile Home Park, says rent on his lot doubled in a single month. When FOX 13 first spoke to Marler in November 2023, he had threatened to leave over the steep hike. However, a year later, Marler’s trailer remains parked at the same spot in Puyallup. Marler shared the...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Allen Marler, a resident of Cottonwood Mobile Home Park, says rent on his lot doubled in a single month. When FOX 13 first spoke to Marler in November 2023, he had threatened to leave over the steep hike. However, a year later, Marler’s trailer remains parked at the same spot in Puyallup. 

The reason his trailer is still in the same place a year later is simply because he cannot find anyplace else as cheap or nice – or as good a value – than the existing park. It’s like all the people who claimed they would leave the U.S. if Trump won and now are backing down because there’s nowhere else as nice to live in the world at as low a price. The McChicken sandwich went up 300% from $1 to $3 and I still order them because they’re a better deal than the Quarter Pounder. It’s not rocket science.

Columbia Basin Herald: Bill to protect seniors’ roommate options considered in Olympia

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OLYMPIA — The Washington State Legislature took a step last week toward making senior housing costs more stable.

House Bill 1204, which passed the House Housing Committee Jan. 30, would allow residents of senior mobile and manufactured home communities to have at least one roommate, as long as that roommate also meets the age requirements of the park.

“It’s a national problem with mobile homes, especially senior mobile home communities, that the properties are being purchased, and in some instances, there has been a lack of maintenance and upgrades in the communities,” said State Rep. Carolyn Eslick, R-Sultan, who introduced the bill....

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Our thoughts on this story:

Washington has no limit to how much rent can be increased, according to WashingtonLawHelp.org, which means that a manufactured home park owner can charge pretty much whatever it wants to, as long as it gives notice to the tenants. That may be difficult enough for, say, apartment dwellers, but owners of manufactured homes don’t have the option of just packing their furniture and moving elsewhere. According to moving.com, it can cost as much as $14,000 to move a manufactured home from one property to another, assuming the home is even in movable condition.

Of all the lies that the Free Rent Movement spews forth on a regular basis, none is dumber than the claim that somehow mobile home park residents are at a disadvantage to apartment dwellers because they can’t easily move their home. Why would they ever move their home? If they want to move, simply sell it where it stands like every single-family home and condo owner does. Who came up with this argument in the first place? I was on a woke podcast a couple years ago and the host asked me “so you have the tenants trapped because they can’t move their homes” and I said “how does that make them trapped? Why can’t they just sell the homes right where they are and then buy another home somewhere else if that’s what they want to do?” He couldn’t come up with a comeback so he edited that out of the podcast. I can’t blame him – it was an idiotic argument to have made and he knew it.

WKRN: ‘Treat us with respect’: Antioch mobile home park neighbors send petition to property owner

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Neighbors at a mobile home park in Antioch are organizing to push for better treatment from their landlords.

“It is an injustice,” Suburban resident Juan expressed.

People who live at the Suburban Mobile Home Park in Antioch are protesting alongside a local advocacy group and demanding answers from their corporate management company.

One hundred twenty-nine families said they had experienced months of unjust car towing. “They are charging $500 per car whenever they take it,” Juan said.

Suburban families said there has also been a rent increase, inflated water bills, safety issues and ignored maintenance...

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So here are the tenant demands, verbatim from the article:

  • End the towing of cars
  • Allow four cars to be parked in designated parking areas, including work vans.
  • Establish a physical office for residents to file complaints, ask questions, or pay rent
  • Develop a visitor parking section
  • Create recreational space for the neighborhood children and a safe area to wait for the school bus.
  • Invest in fixing the streets within the complex, including streetlights, speed bumps, and cameras accessible to residents. They are also requesting private security.
  • Take responsibility for land maintenance, including tree maintenance to prevent tragedies during storms, proper trash management, and a winter maintenance plan for icy roads
  • End rent increases and provide transparency and clarity of water bills

So they basically want the property owner to inject around $500,000 into the park and, as a reward, they are to agree to zero rent increases in perpetuity. That’s fair, right?

Perhaps the tenants should just join together, buy the park from the current owner, and do these things themselves. I’m sure that lenders will just be jumping at the chance to finance a group with this great a mastery of numbers and common sense. Sure, give it a try.

M Live: Township spends $10M to stop mobile home park plans near Ann Arbor

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WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI — Disputes over a mobile home project near Ann Arbor have been put to rest. No mobile homes will come to an agricultural property in Ann Arbor Township.

The township purchased nearly 140 acres for $10 million from J.A. Bloch and Co., a Southfield-based real estate firm that had been working with manufactured home firm Sun Communities Inc. to bring nearly 500 mobile homes on both sides of U.S. 23 north of Warren Road. The township closed on the sale Dec. 30, 2024.

“No bonds or property tax increase were needed to fund the purchase,” according to a township release.

 

The project was tied up in court for years after...

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“Township officials analyzed “potential impacts on the environment and township resources of having 500 units in an area that didn’t have access to public water and sewer, and the possibility of more traffic on Warren Road,” she said, also noting “that’s what prompted the negotiations.”

Yeah, right … I’m sure those were the reasons. Do you think the truth might really have been just that they didn’t want to have a “trailer park” in their town? Nah, no way that ever even came up in the conversation, right?

Now that Trump is in office, do you think we can all just be honest again and stop all the ridiculous fake wordsmithing? It comes off like a bad Hallmark card.

KPIC 4: Bill aims to protect tenants from rent hikes, mandates fair buyer application process

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SALEM, Ore. (KATU) — House Bill 3054 would reduce maximum rent increases for renters in manufactured living communities. The bill would require the rent increases to align with the Consumer Price Index.

Manufactured homes are individually owned homes that sit in rented living spaces. Those who live in these spaces are often seniors living on a fixed income. Many tenants are growing frustrated with year-over-year hikes, with some facing eviction.

"What is truly not workable is seniors on a fixed income getting slammed with rent increases that are sometimes triple the amount of their cost of living adjustment from Social Security," said...

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Those who support the bill claim that rent increases in spaces like RV parks are unethical and driving people into homelessness.

Warning: idiot zombies have apparently taken over the Oregon state government. Remember that Oregon already HAS rent control – but now they want to reduce the amount that park owners can charge even farther because CPI is just evil, don’t you know. How stupid do you have to be to say something like “raising RV rent is unethical”? If this bill passes I guarantee you that a ton of mobile home parks in Oregon close and get redeveloped into more profitable uses and nobody could possibly blame them.

The Minnesota Star Tribune: Jury mostly sides with mobile home park owners in lawsuit alleging negligence

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MARSHALL, MINN. – The roads at Broadmoor Valley, the largest mobile home park in Lyon County, were pocked with suspension-jarring potholes, some a few yards wide and filled with January’s snowmelt.

Just hours before and a few miles away, Bennett Hartz, assistant attorney general for Minnesota, made an impassioned speech on the conditions at the park during his closing arguments against the owners of Broadmoor Valley.

A civil lawsuit, launched with great fanfare in 2021 by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, accused controversial Colorado businessman Paul Schierholz and his company Schierholz and Associates of neglecting...

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Our thoughts on this story:

The final argument by the Minnesota Attorney General’s office, which filed the suit, was struck from the record after warnings about misstatements.

I’ve never even heard of that before. Sounds like the tide is turning, as I discussed last week.

Bangor Daily News: 4 big housing ideas from Maine lawmakers

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Maine legislators have submitted a score of bills aimed at alleviating the state’s acute housing shortage.

Many of those bills correspond to recommendations issued by a new state report that came out last week and outlined some of the barriers to Maine doubling its housing production and meeting lofty state goals.

Here are four of those big ideas you can expect to see debated in Augusta this session.

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Our thoughts on this story:

The bills have been motivated by fears around out-of-state corporate buyers purchasing Maine mobile home parks and increasing lot rents, placing vulnerable tenants at risk of eviction. Rep. Golek said her bill would exempt resident-owned communities from the rent hikes.

You have to hand it to the folks that promote the “tenant-owned community” model. They have somehow brainwashed otherwise intelligent adults like Representative Golek into believing that corporate owners are “evil” and charge higher rents than the tenants would have to, which is clearly false based on simple common sense. Unless someone can show me how the tenants with the same mortgage and costs can charge a lower rent than a professional owner, then I’m going to continue to point out this falsehood in perpetuity. Just last week, a resident-owned community admitted they had to raise the rent over $100 per month MORE than the corporate owner had proposed. Stop lying to people!

KGET: Edison Mobile Home Park residents have hope due to new owner

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BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — The Edison Mobile Home Park is under new management after residents were left in the dark for nearly two months due to a fire left two women dead. Flames destroyed two trailers and knocked out power to the park.

The new owner fixed sewer lines, hauled out old trailers and more.

“He told us that he’s gonna get power restored and get us rental agreements and all that. So that’s an upside … a little more hope to the dark situation we’re in,” said Shawn Highfill, a resident.

The new owner also replaced sewer lines and hauled out unfixable trailers. Highfill lives with his mother at the park. They share a studio...

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Our thoughts on this story:

The new owner also replaced sewer lines and hauled out unfixable trailers.

Another case of the “evil corporate landlord” ruining the quality of life for residents, right? Clearly, corporate owners are the ones that are putting millions of dollars annually into bringing old parks back to life. Nobody else is doing so. But all corporate owners typically get are insults. At least this writer was honest about the good work the new landlord was performing.

Vermont Public: Vermont is desperate for new homes. Is it time to build them in factories?

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This story, by Report for America corps member Carly Berlin, was produced through a partnership between VTDigger and Vermont Public.

Inside a cavernous factory at the end of a road in East Montpelier, houses get built piece by piece on an assembly line.

Each of the homes starts off in one corner of the 100,000-square-foot shop as a series of humble “Lego blocks,” as Huntington Homes co-owner Jason Webster put it on a recent tour of the company’s humming factory floor. At the first stops on the production line, the blocks get floors, walls, and ceilings; then they get wired, insulated, taped, and painted.

Your typical home builder would...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Another positive industry article – and from Vermont, no less. What would Bernie Sanders say (particularly if you didn’t pay him to say it)?

Mountain View Voice: Mountain View strengthens rent control protections for mobile homes

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Mountain View’s mobile home park tenants scored a big win Tuesday evening, following a yearslong effort to get the city to offer more rent control protections and cap annual rent increases below the rate of inflation.

In a split 4-3 vote, the City Council approved limiting rent increases to 60% of the Consumer Price Index, with a 0% floor and 3% ceiling, at their meeting on Jan. 28.

Mayor Ellen Kamei and Council members John McAlister and Chris Clark voted against the motion, instead expressing a preference for the staff recommendation, which was to limit rent increases to 75% CPI with a 1% floor and 5% ceiling.

The current ordinance,...

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Our thoughts on this story:

In a split 4-3 vote, the City Council approved limiting rent increases to 60% of the Consumer Price Index, with a 0% floor and 3% ceiling, at their meeting on Jan. 28.

Looks like the City Council of Mountainview is moving one step closer to shutting down every mobile home park in town for new redevelopment into apartments. Is that their secret goal? Must be. No way they could be this stupid otherwise, right?

Planetizen: How to Make Manufactured Housing More Resilien

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A valuable source of affordable housing in the United States is also one of the most vulnerable housing types to climate hazards. Over 5 million manufactured housing units are located in areas exposed to climate hazards, and are often in communities with limited resources for recovery.

According to a report from the Urban Institute, “By prioritizing climate safety, policymakers can improve housing security for the 18 million Americans living in manufactured housing today and unlock changes that will improve the resilience of future manufactured homes.”

The report highlights key policy changes that the federal government could make to...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Another overall positive commentary on the industry, but from the perspective of weather events and calling for greater federal/state/city support of mobile home parks.

NBC MIAMI: ‘It's been a hard process': Families move out of Sweetwater mobile home park by first deadline

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Friday is the deadline for people at a Sweetwater mobile home park to move out of their homes and receive the highest possible financial incentive package.

Tenants of the Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park were told in November they had to move out by May. On Thursday, several moving trucks were seen throughout the neighborhood.

Rocio Loaisiga has lived with her mom at Li’l Abner for about 10 years. They spent Thursday moving out the last of their things. On Friday, they'll leave and they won't look back.

“It's been a hard process,” Loaisiga said. “It was very hard for us to move out.”

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Our thoughts on this story:

Lil’ Abner Mobile Home Park is being torn down to make way for a giant apartment complex. Once again, the lot rents were not high enough to make the land more compelling to remain as a mobile home park. It’s the same old story we cover week after week. Mobile home parks make perfect spots for a large number of uses and apartments are hard to beat since they can be stacked two or three high and mobile homes can’t.

But there’s another part of the Lil’ Abner story that is also worthy of discussion:

“We were planning on moving it, but it would have taken too long and it was costing us around $32,000”

Federal, state and city bureaucracy is a big reason that mobile homes are anything but “mobile”. The media always wants to blame it on park owners, but they have nothing to do with the simple cost and process of moving mobile homes. In HUD states the cost of moving is doubled or tripled because they require concrete pads, piers or runners to be built under the home, with no appreciable value for the customer to do so. In Texas, for example, they require no such concrete structures and everything works fine.

Jomfruland.net: Unlocking Hidden Wealth: Why Manufactured Home Communities Are Your Next Smart Investment

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Diving into the world of real estate can be daunting, but investing in manufactured home communities offers a unique and rewarding opportunity. These often-overlooked gems have proven to be particularly resilient, thriving in a landscape where housing affordability is a pressing issue. The demand for these communities remains steady, as moving a manufactured home is no easy feat.

Leading the charge in this niche market are Sun Communities and Equity LifeStyle Properties—two real estate investment trusts (REITs) excelling in offering attractive dividends. Sun Communities operates 288 manufactured housing sites and boasts a staggering 660...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Another positive article with no woke trappings at all.

CBS19: Habitat for Humanity gives an update on mobile home park

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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (CBS19 NEWS) -- The mobile home park on Carlton Avenue faced an uncertain future just months ago, but today, residents are still in their homes, and there are no plans to change that.

During the summer of 2024, Carlton Mobile Home Park was set to be sold to a private developer.

But Habitat for Humanity and the city of Charlottesville quickly secured the funds to match the offer, ensuring that everyone living there could stay.

"We've been thrilled, thrilled with what's been going on over the last few months," said Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville.

Following...

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While residents were concerned about housing affordability, Habitat says there is a plan in place. "We promised we'd keep rent stable, and we don't plan to redevelop for a while so we can work together to plan the future," Rosensweig said.

What a mess for the residents who originally celebrated Habitat for Humanity outbidding the corporate buyer who wanted to keep this as a mobile home park. Instead, they now are realizing that Habitat is going to tear the park down and build apartments on the land in the near future. Pretty sneaky non-profit antics, right? Not really. All these non-profit deals are built on short-term debt, and that means short-term commitment. The corporate owner would have left it a mobile home park, probably forever. Shame on the media for relentlessly supporting the “non-profit owned” community concept

Realtor.com: EXCLUSIVE: Sarah Paulson Takes $1.8 Million Trailer Home Off the Market Weeks After Fires Tore Through Nearby Mobile Home Park

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American Horror Story" star Sarah Paulson has quietly removed the listing for her ultrapricey Malibu mobile home just weeks after the local area was decimated by the deadly California wildfires.

Paulson, 50, initially listed the property for $2 million back in May 2024, three years after she purchased it for less than half of that price.

In August of that same year, she offered up a discount to potential buyers, reducing her ask to $1.79 million—but even that steep drop appears to have failed to secure any interested parties.

Now, in the wake of the devastating Palisades Fire, which began tearing through Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7—before...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Take a look at the photos, take a look at the price, and then feel good that you don’t live in California.

The Eastsider: Eagle Rock’s hidden gem: a thriving mobile home community

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Eagle Rock -- A half-block south of busy Colorado Boulevard is an anomaly: easy to overlook, the Eagle Rock Springs Mobile Home Community is an acre of truly affordable housing in an increasingly expensive area.

“We joke it’s like the Hotel California here,” says resident Brandie Posey, reflecting how owners love and hold onto their mobile homes until death or a necessary relocation.

A podcaster and comedian, Posey occupies a spacious 950-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath mobile home. The ceiling shows a bright blue sky and white cloud scene (left by the previous owner) and there are funky wooden features. She bought it in 2014 for...

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She credits manager Danielle Sargent for revamping the culture of a community that, for years, had struggled with drugs, prostitution and other issues. Now there are potlucks and sing-alongs, as well as neighbors who deliver food after surgery, watch your pet when you’re out of town, or stop by to chat for no particular reason. Sargent took on the managerial role 10 years ago because of her background in construction and property management, and because she believes in the communal power of a mobile home community.

OK, that’s a change. A positive article about mobile home parks. Wow.

Prism: How a mobile home community in South Florida is organizing against a looming eviction

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The fuschia hibiscus bush encircling Sergio Zamora’s home in Li’l Abner Mobile Home Park was planted over 30 years ago. Zamora’s in-laws planted the bush as a young seedling, knowing that over time, it would act as a natural fence for the property in Florida. Behind the verdant veneer, a screened porch houses a collection of orchids, tended to with care by Zamora’s family over three decades. But soon, the orchids will need to find new homes, and the hibiscus bush will become dust as tenants in the enclave are threatened with a potential eviction.

Residents were ordered to leave the mobile home park in Sweetwater, Florida, when its...

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Our thoughts on this story:

Residents were ordered to leave the mobile home park in Sweetwater, Florida, when its management company, CREI Holdings, announced plans to redevelop the site into government-subsidized affordable housing, displacing nearly 6,000 residents across 900 homes. Notices were issued in October 2024, giving residents until May 19 to make alternative living arrangements, a move many residents and legal experts argue violates Florida’s landlord-tenant statutes. 

Yes, even non-profits have figured out that mobile home parks make for GREAT redevelopment parcels. Once again, these 6,000 residents could have been saved from all of this if the lot rents had been high enough to make it the best use of the land. They failed.

Ana Maria Island Sun: Pines owners offer to sell to homeowners for $75 million

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BRADENTON BEACH – 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.

At that price, each of the 86 mobile homeowners would be responsible for $872,093.02.

“This has got to be a joke,” said one Pines resident, who asked not to be named.

On Aug. 5, 2023, Pines Park Investors, LLC purchased the 2.78-acre waterfront mobile home property from The Jackson Partnership LLLP for $16.25 million. The manager of Pines Park Investors LLC is Shawn Kaleta.

The park sustained damage from both Hurricanes Helene and Milton but many...

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BRADENTON BEACH – 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. At that price, each of the 86 mobile homeowners would be responsible for $872,093.02.

To make this mobile home park worth $872,093 per lot, at a 6% cap rate, would require a monthly lot rent of around $8,000 per month. That’s probably not going to work. Some mobile home parks can’t make sense continuing in that capacity regardless of how high you raise the lot rent.

The News&Observer: Apartments, townhomes could replace Cary mobile home park, plans show

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Hundreds of apartments and townhomes could replace one of Cary’s two mobile home parks, preliminary plans shared with the town show.

Two pre-application meetings were held last fall among the town, the owner of Chatham Estates Mobile Home Park and WithersRavenel, a Raleigh-based engineering firm.

A concept plan by WithersRavenel dated Oct. 2 showed 90 townhomes and 328 multi-family units on 27 acres at 607 Cedar St., which is the mobile home park’s address.

On Dogwood Street, the opposite side of the park, the plan shows a three-story building with 26 apartments on each floor with a pool and gathering space.

The preliminary plans come...

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A concept plan by WithersRavenel dated Oct. 2 showed 90 townhomes and 328 multi-family units on 27 acres at 607 Cedar St., which is the mobile home park’s address.

Clearly, being able to replace around 270 mobile home park lots that rent for $400 per month with 90 townhomes and 328 apartments that will rent for around $2,000 per month is a no-brainer financially. And this is the story for most of the mobile home parks in the U.S. in the years ahead. As I’ve been writing about for years now, mobile home parks make ideal redevelopment parcels as they have 1) great locations 2) great road frontage 3) access to all utilities 4) the correct acreage size and 5) the city is willing to give out whatever permits you need to get the park torn down. The sooner that people understand this, the better. Owners are not stuck with mobile home parks as their only option, and only higher lot rents will fend off the wrecking ball. In this case, the lot rents simply weren’t high enough.