SNOW HILL– Plans for the expansion of a West Ocean City mobile home park moved ahead last week following approval by county officials.

The Worcester County Planning Commission last Thursday voted unanimously to approve a site plan for Salt Life Park. The project consists of a 34-lot expansion of an existing manufactured home park on Old Bridge Road.

“It’s really a nice continuation of the old park,” attorney Hugh Cropper said.

Cropper told the commission his client, Mark Odachowski, had purchased the existing park and started working to improve it. The 34-lot expansion is part of that improvement effort.

“It was really an eyesore,”...

The hunt for yield has pushed private equity firms and professional investors into new segments of the real estate market.

In recent years, sophisticated investors have snapped up multi-family units and single-family homes. Now, corporate landlords are targeting the most cost-effective segment of the real estate market: mobile home parks.

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ROCHESTER — A potential agreement with four residents at Bob’s Trailer Park is in the works more than a month after they lost running water in their trailers.

“Two weeks should be sufficient time to iron out a few details,” Rochester attorney Travis Ohly told Olmsted County District Court referee Erin Felten during an online hearing Tuesday.

Ohly, who represents the property owner, Pennsylvania-based TSJ Parks LLC, said work has started in an agreement, but final terms couldn’t be reached Tuesday.

Court staff said negotiations were the cause of an approximately one-hour delay for Tuesday’s hearing, which was attended by TSJ Parks member...

BARNSTABLE — A Superior Court judge found on Wednesday that Crown Communities LLC is the rightful buyer of a Pocasset mobile home park.

The 15-page decision comes after a years-long legal battle between the Wyoming investment firm and the Pocasset Park Association, with both sides seeking ownership of the Bourne park, which is home to about 170 people at its prime location off Barlow's Landing Road.

"The Association lacked sufficient support (and authority) to exercise lawfully its right of first refusal and to purchase the park," wrote Judge Michael Callan, who decided the jury-waived trial.

In a statement to the Times, Walter B....

If you have a favorite cashier at the store, or a favorite nurse’s aide at the nursing home who takes care of your mother, or you belong to a veterans association, you might know someone who lives in a mobile home park in Iowa. If you do, they, like me, are either already in trouble, or headed that way. Here’s why.

Mobile home parks are the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S. The residents own their homes, but not the land their homes are on. So, they must pay lot rent every month to the park owners. Therein lies the problem.

Several years ago, out-of-state investment firms started buying up MHPs in Iowa and...

Large investors have been buying up mobile home communities at a rapid pace over the past few years, including here in Massachusetts. WBUR reporter Simon Rios dives into his reporting on two local mobile home communities that were faced with corporate buyouts, and the two very different outcomes they saw.

This week’s storms in the South that killed at least three people and injured nearly 25 more highlight the dangers of being inside a mobile home or manufactured home during severe weather. Most of the homes destroyed in the storm were manufactured. And at least one of the deaths occurred in a manufactured home.

In fact, of the 104 tornado fatalities in 2021, 23 were in manufactured homes, according to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center. In 2020, 39 of the 76 tornado deaths that year were in manufactured homes. Through Nov. 30 of this year, more than half of tornado deaths — 13 out of 22 — happened in manufactured homes. That's a lot,...