Mobile Home Park News Briefing

What started as a win for residents of Little Woods Mobile Villa last week – as an arbitrator struck down a massive rent increase put forth by the park owners – quickly soured when those same park owners issued yet another proposed rent increase and formally notified the city of their intention to permanently close the park. “We will continue to arbitrate annually until we are either able to achieve long-term viability or are forced to cease operations,” said Nick Ubaldi, whose family owns the park and who oversees its day-to-day management, in an email to reporters.

For how many years have I been explaining LOW RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT. It’s called common sense. The tenants may have won the battle but they lost the war. Instead, their focus should have been to ask “we know you need to make a good return on your investment or you’ll redevelop this place, so how much does our rent need to be?” and then happily paid it on the first of each month. That would have saved the day.

What’s equally sad in these articles is that the residents are often mislead into these losing positions by non-profits suggesting that the tenants have legal rights which they simply don’t. They effectively empower these people to become homeless, then move on to lunch at the country club.

Clearly, this park is going to be torn down, as the purchase price of $7 million equates to over $100,000 per lot for this dilapidated property. And the writer is correct that mobile home parks are being redeveloped at the fastest pace in American history:

Its sale is part of a national trend: Mobile home parks are disappearing across the country — fast. Statistics on this are difficult to find, but there are reports around the country of parks being sold, demolished and redeveloped. The Associated Press reported on the trend last year, as did Forbes Magazine and Time Magazine. As housing prices and land values rise dramatically, developers are buying up the parks, forcing residents out, tearing down the trailers, and building more traditional housing in their place.

But what I find offensive about this writer’s spin on the story is this quote:

When a mobile home park is sold, residents are usually displaced one way or another, say attorneys familiar with Virginia’s Mobile Home Lot Rental Act who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow. Either the new owner raises the lot rent beyond what the current resident can afford, or decides to use the land for something else.

Clearly, the only way that a park like this would NOT be torn down is for the lot rent to go up to a level that the park is actually worth over $100,000 per space based on the true operating net income. If residents don’t want to pay market levels then, yes, the park gets demolished. It’s not rocket science. So maybe the solution is for lot rents to go up to levels high enough to make sense for some mobile home parks to stay in that line of business. It’s a total lie to claim that park buyers lose all of their tenants (more like between zero and 1%) when rents go up, and equally false to imply that the owner actually intends to displace them in the first place. But, yes, there are marginal tenants in every property in America that may not be equipped to handle modern housing costs (and not just in mobile home parks) and they need to swiftly be placed into Section 8. To claim that higher rents are inherently bad is just plain stupid, as that lame theory serves as the trigger for redevelopment and displacement of all of the residents as opposed to just a few, if any.

I don’t know any of the facts in this case, but this appears to be simply one side of the story. The facts of this narrative have nothing to do with the fairy tale of the “big, evil landlord” but simply revolve around the lease term and quasi-rent control rules of Massachusetts. Those black-and-white items can be resolved in court. But clearly this article is written by a writer with “landlord derangement syndrome” and there is much included that not only has no bearing on the story but is clearly just an attempt to manipulate the reader, like swinging a gold pocket watch in a 1940s hypnotism movie.

Only in Olympia, Washington could you find people who think that $40 million is a fair price to build 50 tiny homes – that’s nearly a million dollars per home! I’m not even sure if we should tell the non-profit the sad truth that they can bop on over to the local Clayton dealer and buy the same thing for $50,000 each – they would probably take offense at that being pointed out. What a bunch of monumental idiots.

I’m sure the owners of this park are relieved that they now can move forward to tear the park down and redevelop it, having given their best shot at keeping it in operation yet being very publicly rebuffed. I’m always amazed that people don’t see the cause and effect of restricting lot rents when it’s all around them. $5 bet the next time you hear about this park will be the announcement that it is being redeveloped into apartments.

Residents point to back-to-back rent increases, which they say is a result of "corporate greed."

In a world of stupid quotes, this one has to be the winner. If these residents have not noticed (and you know they have if they drive a car, shop for food, have insurance, or pay utilities) the prices under the Biden administration have risen more than 20% in the past three years. I don’t think it’s fair to say that raising lot rent every year is a sign of “corporate greed” but instead “corporate survival”.

What a ridiculous and non-supportable position to take!

A state lawmaker says large corporations are buying up mobile home parks in Florida and jacking up the prices. In two weeks, a new law, HB 613, takes effect to try to stop it.

So the idiots in the Florida legislature have decided that the best way to keep parks in operation (in the same state where insurance rates are up 400% -- if you can even get it) is to make it less compelling for private equity groups to invest there. Smart move IF YOUR GOAL IS TO TEAR DOWN ALL THE MOBILE HOME PARKS IN FLORIDA. Who do you think even wants to buy a mobile home park in Florida when the state has become hostile to business owners and landlords of all types? Clearly, the better use for many of these parks is to simply redevelop them into uses that are far less litigious and politically ensnarled with crazy politicians.

The best thing going in mobile home parks today are private equity group buyers. They are the only ones that are willing and able to inject the capital needed to bring old parks back to life and to make them profitable again. And, yes, they will definitely raise rents to provide a good return on their investment. But the residents will have a higher quality of life when they’re done and – equally importantly – they will not be displaced by the wrecking ball. Given the fact that most mobile home parks in the U.S. are around 70 years old and mom-and-pop owners have never kept them updated, only buyers with deep pockets can turn around large parks that often have price tags of $10 million to $50 million.

I have driven far more mobile home parks than probably anyone reading this (I drove 100,000 miles in 2019 alone visiting our properties) and I can tell you from experience that when you drive into the nicest parks in America they are invariably owned by private equity groups. Yes, that’s right, those “greedy”, “out of state” entities that the media and government hate. They are the very future of a large section of this industry, if it is to survive and not be redeveloped. We need new stewards of affordable housing and professional owners are the only ones qualified for that role. Don’t believe me? You need to go drive lots of parks, find the nicest ones with the happiest tenants, and then research who the owners really are. The proof is found in the pudding, not in the words of some stupid bureaucrats from Tallahassee who have probably never been inside a “trailer park” in their entire lives.

“Currently, it is not economically feasible to move forward with the multi-family residential project which has been planned for this property for more than 10 years. We have made a business decision to continue with the ownership and operation of Lord Calvert at this time,” Cherry Cove Group told The BayNet. Several meetings to discuss future plans for the park are being scheduled. Cherry Cove stated the park residents will receive appropriate advance notice, to ensure maximum attendance.

And here we have another story about a mobile home park that is being torn down to build apartments, but construction is being delayed for a while due to high interest rates on the interim loan.

Apartments slated to replace the Meridian Mobile Estates mobile home park in Puyallup have encountered delays, leaving some former residents frustrated.

Here’s another park being torn down to build apartments. Gee, I wonder if there are many parks being torn down right now? Umm …yeah, I guess so.

Another story about a mobile home park being torn down and redeveloped into a different use – this time as single-family home lots. Spotting a trend here?

“In King George, the zoning for mobile home parks is A-3 and there is very little A-3 property in King George,” Palivoda said. “You’re not going to see any more trailer parks with the current zoning. It would be more honest for them to say, ‘Trailer parks aren’t allowed.’” 

This is not really a story about a city that is blocking the use of the existing mobile home park lots – because the owner fortunately is near full occupancy – but is more a story about the simple fact that cities and counties nationwide are never going to allow any new parks to be built. But, of course, they won’t say that to your face, instead adopting the politically correct stance of “we love affordable housing and would love to give you a permit if you can only meet these one-thousand impossible conditions”.

They are also worried about redevelopment, pointing out the park is located on prime real estate about a mile from Patriot Place and Gillette Stadium and near highway access. The Cormier family that has owned the park for years has a June 6 sales agreement for $6 million with a Mark Blanchette, according to a letter dated June 12 from the owners to the tenants. Under a fairly new state law, tenants have first rights to buy a mobile home park put up for sale, and the owners provided a copy of the state law with their notification letter to the tenants as required. “The tenants have right of first refusal. They can purchase it before anyone,” owner Janet Cormier told The Foxboro Reporter. Tenants met Saturday morning to learn more about such a move. A total of 31 tenants turned out to the meeting held in the park.

Clearly this park is going to be torn down and redeveloped. The price appears to be more than $100,000 per space and the tenants clearly can’t possibly make the numbers work for the park to remain in operation. But despite the fact that there is absolutely no chance of success, the seller must waste a few months giving the tenants a shot at doing the impossible. The residents would have better odds pooling their money and buying a winning Powerball ticket to pay for the purchase.

The “free rent movement” folks just can’t accept the fact that Washington nixed rent control last year despite so many woke journalists being convinced it would go through. They still have the party hats and streamers in their closets. As a result, they continue to write articles on the topic despite it having zero hope of passage at this time. Kind of reminds me of Bill Murray’s “Groundhog Day” film in which every day repeats itself when the alarm clock goes off in the morning.

The governor is expected to sign House Bill 5238, which will mandate developers and operators of mobile home communities to provide and install a weather radio in each mobile home. The bill goes further and encourages operators of mobile home communities to provide a written reminder to owners to the homes to replace the batteries in the weather radio. The operators are encouraged to provide reminders during National Fire Prevention Week.

Considering the fact that the National Weather Service interrupts every television station, radio station – and even cell phone – when there is a tornado warning, this seems more than a little unnecessary. I guess the new norm is to assume that Americans are complete idiots. Next, they’ll pass a law that all park owners must paste a reminder on the toilet tank to flush after use.

It will also provide residents a mediation period, potentially negotiating a rent increase

Yes, this is the new Florida law that allows residents to sue for mediation every time the rent goes up, despite the fact that Florida has no rent control. Florida legislators have clearly lost their minds and I can’t imagine what other idiocy they will propose next. If you thought that Florida was a red state, think again. I’m betting you’ll soon see a larger number of Florida parks for sale on Mobilehomeparkstore.com in the near future.

Ohio senior citizens are so fed up with spiraling rent costs at their mobile home parks that they want the state legislature to enact rent control laws. They recently protested in front of the statehouse to emphasize their demand for curbs on rent. However, it is unlikely that those protests will yield the results they are looking for, mainly because Ohio's state legislature enacted a statewide ban on rent control in 2022.

Ohio made rent control illegal in 2022 because IT’S A TERRIBLE IDEA. And, since Ohio legislators had the common sense to make it illegal, what’s the point in writing an article promoting the need for rent control in Ohio? I’m betting the author of this article was unaware of the 2022 law when he wrote it and then didn’t have time to write a different article when he found out this fact so he said “f**k it”, added that one sentence disclaimer, and submitted it anyway. What a waste of time.

For those who falsely claim that there will be any meaningful number of new mobile home parks built in the U.S. in the years ahead, please read this quote from the article:

Residents of Victoria Hills can breathe a sigh of relief after the Harnett County Commissioners voted unanimously to deny a request to rezone a 10.5-acre plot of land for a mobile home park.

That’s pretty much the normal reaction to proposed new mobile home park construction in every American market that I have ever attended a zoning meeting in (including my small town in Missouri). And I’ve been to hundreds of them.

You see, NOBODY wants a mobile home park built in their neighborhood. No zoning board or city council is ever going to approve a new park as a result. And no laws passed in Washington, D.C. are going to be able to negate the simple rules of local zoning.

End of story.

That does not include limited park expansions in which the “sting” of a new mobile home park neighbor is off the table nor does it mean that there is no path forward for higher-density subdivisions using new methods of construction, like 3-D printed homes. But as far as new mobile home parks – in the classical sense – that’s got about as much chance of success as me bouncing a basketball over the top of the Empire State Building – fruitless but fun to watch.

I know that there are many in the mobile home industry that talk about this topic constantly. So here’s my challenge. If I’m wrong on this theory, please send me a list of actual new parks with addresses constructed over the last few years. Not just talked about. Not just plans drawn. Not just investor funds raised. And with around 44,000 mobile home parks in the U.S., for new construction to be “meaningful” it would have to be an addition to the established list of parks of at least 5%, or 2,200 new parks, to be even worth talking about. If you have that list of fully constructed new parks, send it my way. But don’t feel bad if you can’t come up with any to put on the list – I can’t either.

Virtually the entire town of Montpelier, Vermont was wiped out in a recent flood. However, it appears that only the mobile home parks are having problems with the city allowing them to put their businesses back in order. Sure, you can claim it’s for the common good, but we all know that it’s probably simply the city trying to find a good excuse to get the “trailer parks” out of their town. Considering that downtown Montpelier had 5’ of floodwater it only makes sense that those high-rise buildings need to come down, too, unless they can be raised out of the flood zone, right?

Wikipedia tells us that Montpelier has flooded three times over the last 100 years, with the last time being in 1992. Seems odd that the city had no problem letting the mobile home parks be rebuilt in 1992 but now something has changed. That “something” is probably the city’s desire to take advantage of the situation to get the mobile home parks and their residents out of the city limits, of course.

Baltimore Terrace Mobile Home Park in Hastings on Monday, April 17, 2023. After the mobile home park was purchased by hedge fund-linked investment firm, some residents say the water quality is poor and repairs are being ignored while rent prices have increased. 

There’s probably no bigger falsehood forwarded by woke media outlets than the narrative that private equity groups do a worse job of maintaining their properties than mom and pop owners ever did. When a new buyer closes on a deal, they can’t make immediate enhancements without following a defined timeline that includes statues on enactment of rules enforcement, lining up contractors who are often months out on availability, and having to contend with weather issues (for example, you can’t pave roads in the winter, etc.). That means that any writer could drive through virtually any newly acquired mobile home park a few days after closing and declare “look, it’s just as bad as it was before” since there’s no possibility that anything has yet been accomplished. Of course, if they visited a few months later they would be blown away by the extensive improvements and the happy tenants who now love where they live. This reality is further backstopped by institutional lenders that produce property condition reports as part of loans and require improvements to be made within certain time boundaries.

Therefore, the truth – as any person with common sense would already grasp – is that private equity groups inject millions of dollars into infrastructure and home improvements in American mobile home parks on a regular basis (exactly what mom and pop owners cannot afford to do) and, without these groups entering the industry, the overall quality of parks would be substantially lower with a larger number of parks having been torn down and redeveloped.

While it is true that private equity group buyers often raise rents, that’s also true of any new buyer – large or small – and that includes even when the residents buy the parks themselves under a “resident-owned community” structure. Higher rents are necessitated by servicing large, new loans, fixing up infrastructure, installing professional management, and covering ever-escalating operating costs thanks to the highest inflation in 40 years. With the average U.S. mobile home park lot rent standing at around $300 per month vs. $2,000 per month for apartments, it’s baffling how park owners are endlessly criticized for rent increases which normally hover around $50 per year. The last time I looked, that’s how much more I’m paying for a single gas tank fill-up under the Biden administration.

Did you notice the date on the caption on this article’s photo? April 17, 2023. That’s over a year ago. Why did the writer not use a current photo? Probably because the improvements have now been made and the park  looks a thousand times nicer after the private equity group finished their property improvements! You gotta love the media’s manipulation of the facts.

One solution is cooperatives, where mobile home residents pool money together to buy their park and share ownership. This way, they’re not subject to rent increases or displacement when the park land changes hands. However, this is an underused option, as only about 2% of manufactured housing parks were community owned in 2019, according to a Freddie Mac report.

Why do you suppose that in all these decades -- in the “bluest” of all red states -- only 2% of mobile home parks are resident-owned communities? After all, it’s not a new idea. The problem is, of course, that this concept requires an outside donor for the downpayment and then another non-profit to personally guarantee the loan. In none of these deals do the residents ever “pool their own money” to buy it – they have no money. It’s just a game of massive subsidies from outside the park. Apparently, very few groups want to give away free money or co-sign mortgages. With that reality in mind, can we please stop throwing out this stupid notion that, although it’s failed for decades, somehow it now suddenly has a shot of working? After all, 2% in 20+ years is not much of a track record to brag about.

“Living here at first was actually peaceful,” Navaro said. “We didn’t have issues.” She says that changed when a different management company took over the properties, and new rules were put in place without residents being told. Navaro said her neighbors are tired of what they call predatory towing and constant fines. “The fines became very, very consistent,” Navaro said about the major complaints protestors have with management. “started putting boots on cars, towing cars all at once.”

Obviously, what happened here is that the new owner has started enforcing the park rules and those that hate rules (which is the same rowdy crowd that can’t even march down a street without getting into a fight) don’t like it one bit. Up to bat next are higher rents, nicer property condition, and pride of ownership. They better get ready to march against those, too.

Let me get this straight. A mobile home park is pulverized by a tornado in March. It’s officially closed forever in April since the owner just wants to develop the land into a different use rather than attempt to put it all back together. So he clears the land at 100% his own expense. The tenants did nothing to help nor did they pay a dime. And now they are suing the park owner because he carted away their destroyed homes for free yet did not give them enough time to sift through the debris to look for things like a “measuring cup”? As I see it, the tenants owe the park owner thousands of dollars, not vice versa.

House Bill 73 — This will require courts to automatically expunge eviction records for cases that have been dismissed after 30 days.

House Bill 764 — This bill will give domestic violence or sexual abuse victims the right to terminate a lease agreement early should they have a permanent protective order and need to move residences for their safety. 

House Bill 86 — This bill mandates that during eviction cases, landlords notify tenants of any increases to any money that is requested. 

House Bill 477 and Senate Bill 50 – These bills extend Virginia’s eviction diversion pilot program for another year. 

House Bill 368 and Senate Bill 538 — These increase the maximum fine that localities can impose on repeated violations of the Uniform Statewide Building Code. 

House Bill 1203 — This bill increases tax credit amounts available to landlords who rent to Housing Choice Voucher holders. There is also an earmark for use in rural regions of Virginia. 

House Bill 478 and Senate Bill 49 — These allow localities to set up Community Revitalization Funds, which can be used to prevent neighborhood deterioration, such as revamping blighted structures for continued use. 

Senate Bill 489 — This bill establishes a workgroup that can analyze the possibility and options for creating a Virginia Residential Development Infrastructure fund. 

Apparently, the bureaucrats that run Virginia want all the parks torn down. These new rules are a good start.

Everything in this article seems more than a little odd. The mobile homes shown in the photos are newer models and don’t look that bad. I’m not even sure that the park owner owns these mobile homes, since the monthly rent is $800 per month, which in Florida is around lot rent levels not including the homes. On top of that, the residents are claiming that the park needs to provide 24/7 security, which they don’t by law. And then there’s the resident that says she won’t call 911 because “it’s a pain”. None of it really adds up to me.

There are two sides to every story. I’m betting the news agency is getting “played for fools” by the residents, who are hoping to get their rent reduced as a result. Reminds me of the time that National Geographic did a segment at one of our parks and a resident conned them into going over to their house to “reveal” that we had sold them a mobile home with a furnace that didn’t work. We showed National Geographic that the reason the tenant’s heat was not working was because they had simply not paid their gas bill and they didn’t run that story as a result.

Again, there’s two sides to every story and this article only provides one of them.

With every other form of real estate, once you build it you’re stuck. If you build an office building you have so much money invested in the construction that – no matter what the city later declares – you have no choice but to accept it because there’s no other way out. But mobile home parks are basically just parking lots and it costs virtually nothing to tear them down and redevelop. As a result, while California may allow crime in retail centers without worrying about closure – because nobody can afford to tear their malls down – mobile home park owners have freedom of choice and no economic barriers to preclude them from building something back on the land that’s more profitable.

As a result, the city’s attempt to control the park owners is simply going to displace the tenants and not really harm the park owners that much. But perhaps that was the plan to begin with, since most cities want all the mobile home parks removed, right?