Mobile Home Park News Briefing

Over 20 percent of mobile home parks in Maine are owned by out-of-state investors, reports Zara Norman of Bangor Daily News, sparking affordability concerns among residents and housing advocates.

“Long ago, these parks were generally owned by the family owners who built them. Many of those owners are hitting retirement age and selling to corporate investors eager to scoop up some of the last bastions of affordable living,” Norman explains. “Almost always, they immediately increase lot fees on the residents that typically own their homes and steadily raise rent thereafter. New parks are almost never built, keeping rents high.”

While the...

More than a fifth of Maine’s mobile home parks are owned by out-of-state investors, with one of the nation’s biggest such companies becoming the major player here over the last decade.

It is part of a national trend that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic and the housing affordability crisis that followed. Long ago, these parks were generally owned by the family owners who built them. Many of those owners are hitting retirement age and selling to corporate investors eager to scoop up some of the last bastions of affordable living.

Sun Communities, a Michigan-based real estate investment trust with a $16 billion net worth that says...

In 2011, it was chance that took Marjory Gilsrud and her husband, Mike, to a home in the Madelia Mobile Village Cooperative. But it’s choice that has kept them in the resident-owned mobile home park in rural Minnesota.

Before her move to Madelia Mobile Village, the Gilsruds lived in a private mobile home park that got sold to an investment firm. Rent started rising while the home was in a terrible state of disrepair.

“We were paying $450 a month by the end,” Gilsrud told the Daily Yonder. “And the rents were increasing every six months like clockwork.”

The Madelia cooperative, located in the town of Madelia in Watonwan County, Minnesota,...

The future affordability of a Bellingham manufactured home park is uncertain after an attempt by the park residents to buy the land was unsuccessful and the community was sold to a new owner.

Lakeway Mobile Estates is a senior community made up of 218 individually owned manufactured homes on more than 28 acres in Bellingham’s Puget neighborhood. Residents pay a monthly fee to lease the land that their homes are on.

In December residents were notified by letter that the property owner intended to sell the community. Per city and state law meant to maintain affordable housing and prevent manufactured home park residents from being displaced...

When one thinks of Malibu, visions of luxurious beachfront properties and sprawling mansions likely come to mind. However, nestled within this upscale coastal city lies a hidden gem — the Paradise Cove Mobile Home Park, which has gained notoriety for being the priciest trailer park in America.

With homes priced in the millions, this once humble residential area for fishermen and blue-collar workers has undergone a dramatic transformation, attracting wealthy buyers and celebrity residents alike. At the forefront of this trailer park's real estate market is a three-bedroom mobile home located at 247 Paradise Cove Road, currently listed at a...

Senator Pam Helming, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Housing, Construction and Community Development, with Senate Republican Leader Rob Ortt and members of the Senate Republican Conference, today unveiled a comprehensive legislative package to increase homeownership opportunities and improve access to affordable housing options.

The package proposes tax credits and incentives, reduces regulatory burdens, and facilitates new construction as well as improvements to existing housing stock.

“Housing affordability is one of the biggest issues facing our state. Our conference has a plan to revitalize our existing housing stock by...

A new state law will permit manufactured homes to be placed on any lot that single family homes are allowed.

Advocates for the measure say they believe the law could reduce the stigma associated with manufactured and mobile homes and allow more Mainers to achieve homeownership for the first time.

State Rep. Dick Bradstreet, R-Vassalboro, also the director of the Manufactured Housing Association of Maine, said he believes the law will create more affordable options for more people.

"It's the quickest way for people to bring about personal wealth, build up equity in their homes," said Bradstreet, who also serves on the Legislature's Housing...

If Jeani Warish won the Powerball, she would buy Rocky Knoll Estates in Taunton.

Warish, a 10-year resident of the manufactured housing community, more commonly known as mobile home or trailer parks, doesn’t play the Powerball, but she and other residents have long wished they could own the 158-lot park.

“We would buy the park and then we’d be able to keep the rents down, because any profit is not going to someone else, but back into the park,” Warish said. “That’s a dream for a lot of us.”

The residents of Rocky Knoll Estates have faced yearly rent increases. The monthly rent in 2013 when Warish moved in was $401. In 2024, it is $696...

An arbitrator has issued a long-awaited decision on proposed rent increases at Petaluma’s Youngstown Mobile Home Park, raising rates more than residents had hoped, but not nearly as much as the owner had sought.

The arbitrator granted park owners a permanent monthly rent increase of $118 per mobile home space, retroactive to Dec. 1 last year.

The rent hike was unwelcome news to residents, who say they are already squeezed by climbing monthly charges. But it was far below the more than $900-per-month increase the park owners sought going back to January 2023.

"We feel it’s a loss for everyone in the park and everywhere else,“ said Jodi...

An aging mobile home park on the north side of Davenport has for nearly two decades avoided upgrading its wastewater treatment system and excessively polluted a creek that flows through the city, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

The DNR recently fined the Mt. Joy Mobile Home Park and its owner Daniel Peeters $10,000 for failing to comply with a 2016 court order to remedy the situation, failing to monitor and report the ammonia and bacteria it was discharging, and for not reporting wastewater that bypassed the system in 2023, a department order said.

The “failure to implement necessary improvements and report the...

Few concepts in the world of tiny living are as unique and ingenious as the Kew West capsule collection created by O'Hara. This prestigious mobile house company in France drew its primary inspiration from a very unique source – the architecture of the classic houses we see in the southern states of the US. It happened in a very personal way. Annette and Louis-Claude Roux took a memorable trip to America in the early '90s and were deeply impressed by the local mobile home phenomenon.

They also happened to be the founders of one of the most luxurious boat-building companies in Europe, currently operating as Groupe Beneteau. An auspicious...

Hey BridgeDetroit readers! 👋🏼

Residents living in manufactured homes and advocates are fighting back against rent hikes and ‘deplorable’ conditions. 

One woman doesn’t let her son play outside in the summer because of the stench of sewage. 

Another worries that if her rent keeps rising, she’ll end up homeless.

They both live in manufactured housing — the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country, particularly for seniors and low-income households. But advocates say that type of housing is quickly becoming unaffordable as private equity firms buy up parks and hike up rents.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been...

If Carla Kinsey's rent keeps rising, she worries she'll end up homeless.

For more than a decade, she has lived in Avon on the Lake, a community of manufactured homes for older adults in Rochester Hills. When she moved there in 2010, Kinsey was looking to settle in what she called her “final home.”  

But now, her rent, including the cost of the land where her home sits, consumes more than half of her monthly income. She pays more than $700 every month, up 57% since she moved in. 

If it wasn’t for food assistance benefits, she said she wouldn’t be able to eat. Kinsey — who is on a fixed income — is also juggling the cost of car and health...

ESCONDIDO — For the third time since late February, the City Council has increased the rent for residents of a local mobile home park. 

As a result of the council’s unanimous March 20 decision, nearly half of the residents at Greencrest Mobilehome Park will see an average increase of about $20.45, averaging between $13.74 and $27.51. The increase will apply to 69 of the park’s 129 spaces, subject to rent control.

Before last week’s decision, the council approved rent hikes at Casa Grande Mobile Estates and Town and Country Club Mobilehome Park, both of which are age-restricted to seniors only. 

The city’s Proposition K, which voters...

WISCASSET, Maine — Twin mobile home parks sit on opposite sides of Route 27. They were once owned by two local brothers who kept the rent stable and performed timely repairs.

The McMorrow brothers paid at least $616,000 to buy the Whippoorwill and Maplewood Hill mobile home parks in 2006 and 2016, respectively. They aged into their 70s during the COVID-19 pandemic as the housing market peaked. That led them to sell the parks for at least $1.9 million in separate 2021 and 2022 transactions, real estate documents show.

A man from Idaho bought Whippoorwill, and a small team of Colorado investors with Maine ties bought Maplewood Hill. Both...

Mobile homes are an often overlooked but crucial part of this country’s affordable housing stock. While residents may own their manufactured home or trailer outright, they usually have to pay rent for the land it sits on. 

In California a group of mobile home park residents have done something that might seem impossible. They purchased their park from their corporate landlord, securing stable affordable housing for themselves. But the road to get there wasn’t easy. 

When Juanita Perez Sierra was seven years old, her parents moved their family of eight from San Miguel Cuevas in Oaxaca, Mexico, to the U.S. After weeks of living out of their...

PAGE, Arizona — The Navajo Nation is pumping nearly $75 million into a manufactured housing firm leaders hope will ease the housing crunch on the reservation, create jobs and spur economic activity.

Per the arrangement with ZenniHome, a startup builder of manufactured housing, the Navajo Nation will pump $24 million into construction of a new, larger ZenniHome facility adjacent to its existing plant in Page, Arizona, near the Utah border and within Navajo Nation territory. That new plant will enable ZenniHome to bolster production, and, parallel to that, the Navajo Nation plans to spend another $50 million to buy around 200 of the...

A relatively new plan of the Biden administration should improve financing for manufactured homes though an update in Title I of the Fair Housing Act.

On the last day of February, the White House released a document on boosting housing supply and lowering costs. One part was about manufactured homes, the “largest form of...

You might call it a worst-case scenario: Residents of manufactured homes have some of the lowest incomes and highest energy burdens in the U.S., with limited ways to make their homes more energy efficient.

But it’s also an opportunity for innovative solutions: A new study of Michigan manufactured housing proposes reducing utility bills by pairing clean community solar power with programs to weatherize manufactured homes – especially in combination with efficient electrification upgrades.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) defines community solar power as any solar project or purchasing program within a geographic area that benefits...

A tornado that touched down near Indian Lake in Logan County on Thursday night tore through communities where many people live in mobile homes, which are especially vulnerable to storm damage.

Mobile homes, also known as manufactured homes, are at high risk of being rolled or thrown in hurricanes and tornadoes if they are not properly anchored, experts say.

Nationwide, about 53% of all people killed at home by a tornado between 1996 and 2023 were killed in mobile or manufactured homes, according to an AP analysis of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data.

"This is a common theme that we see in tornado deaths, is if you're...

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — There are about 80 mobile homes at the Twin City Mobile Home Community and nearly as many opinions from residents who are figuring out what to do after Pinellas County sent them “substantial damage” letters after Hurricane Idalia flooded the park in August 2023.

Some have already moved, others are attempting to sell for as much as they can, but most are just going to stay and see what happens after a June 1 deadline. That’s when the new hurricane season begins and is when their temporary occupancy notices expire.

Only one resident we talked to wanted to go on camera, however, they say they feared harassment...

Alpine Village resident Ann Premo says frequent rent increases and a decline in services have made it difficult for her to continue to live in the mobile home community in the northwest part of Midland.

These concerns have also driven her to become active with the national group, Manufactured Housing Action (MHAction). 

Premo is an advocate for state legislation that would make it more difficult for mobile home park owners to raise lot rents. She hopes the bills, in committee in the state Senate in Lansing, would hold mobile home park ownerships more accountable, including Havenpark Communities, which owns Alpine Village.

"They...

Living in a mobile home or trailer probably doesn’t always have a positive connotation among the wealthiest class. But, that perception apparently didn’t stop “Shark Tank” businesswoman and real estate entrepreneur Barbara Corcoran from buying a double-wide trailer in Los Angeles.

She recently showed off her mobile home to TikTok star Caleb Simpson in a video tour. Corcoran previously walked the TikTok star through her Manhattan apartment about a year ago, which she also owns.

The Pacific Palisades trailer cost Corcoran $800,000 and she said she put another $150,000 into it.

For comparison, the average price of a new double-wide...

CHICO, Calif. - The Chico City Council on Tuesday will discuss rent regulations on mobile home parks.

People living at Pleasant Valley Mobile Estates want more rent comfort in mobile homes. After fighting a thirty percent increase and settling with a 10 percent hike at the beginning of the year, homeowners say they want to make sure there is accountability from management and the city council.

People living at Pleasant Valley Mobile Estates are mostly seniors, veterans or people on fixed incomes. The owner, Legacy Communities, said they raised rent to cover increased operating expenses, like property taxes and interest rates.

The rent...

In 2011, it was chance that took Marjory Gilsrud and her husband, Mike, to a home in the Madelia Mobile Village Cooperative. But it’s choice that has kept them in the resident-owned mobile home park in rural Minnesota.

Before her move to Madelia Mobile Village, the Gilsruds lived in a private mobile home park that got sold to an investment firm. Rent started rising while the home was in a terrible state of disrepair. 

“We were paying $450 a month by the end,” Gilsrud told the Daily Yonder. “And the rents were increasing every six months like clockwork.”

The Madelia cooperative, located in the town of Madelia in Watonwan County,...