The Guardian recently requested free passes to attend our Mobile Home Park Boot Camp, which we happily gave them. We get requests from media outlets all the time, which are gathering information for a story. The Guardian said that they were doing a piece on alternative investments, but we knew better. Still, we like to give any legitimate group the truth about the mobile home park business, so that they can at least get their facts straight about the affordable housing industry. However, this reporter apparently was not paying attention in class, or was trying to make a name for himself. Regardless, there are a few points that need to be made to bring the article into perspective.
Read "America's trailer parks: the residents may be poor but the owners are getting rich"
Apparently, being a liberal publication is less than profitable
The Guardian is a well-known liberal publication out of the U.K. However, we did some research on them and found that their financial performance is less than stellar. Here’s their own financial report from the most recent quarter http://www.gmgplc.co.uk/press-releases/2014/guardian-media-group-plc-gmg-today-announces-its-results-for-the-financial-year-ended-30-march-2014/ We sensed early on the reporter’s frustration that our industry is doing extremely well financially. Perhaps liberal reporters do not realize that there is such a thing as a profitable business, and that there are ways to generate income besides income tax revenues. His hostility grew as he saw the financial performance of the typical mobile home park.
Perhaps they were at our Boot Camp to come up with a different line of work
It’s unclear if the Guardian has a business model that is sustainable. Here’s an article on that topic http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/10182263/Guardian-publisher-loses-31m.html. There’s a ton of them on the internet. Scary to think that every one of the 170 mobile home parks we own generates more net income than the Guardian. Scary to think that people have invested big amounts of capital in a company that can’t beat a 30-space mobile home park that cost $300,000, in terms of cash flow.
Have they heard of “don’t throw stones in a glass house”?
The Guardian liked to point out that mobile home park owners raise rents frequently. Perhaps they are unaware that their own newspaper cost has been pushed from 50 pence (they are British) in 2001 to 1 pound British Sterling today? Look it up on line. That’s a 100% increase. Mobile home park rents have increased at roughly the same rate over that time. Between that little known fact and their constant harping on the evils of making money, it would appear that they have a corporate goal of maximizing hypocrisy and insulting the intelligence of their readers. Maybe they should focus on making money themselves, so they can remain in business, rather than trying to do negative press on those with wildly successful business models.
Conclusion
We had frankly never heard of the Guardian before they came to our Boot Camp. But now that we’ve done some research on them, it appears to us that they are perhaps the poster-child of hypocrisy and poor business practices. At least the reporter now has an idea of which industry to go into when his pink slip arrives.