Preview:
A hedge fund has found a new venture: mobile home parks.
Mobile homeowners across Michigan say rents jumped, maintenance declined and it became nearly impossible to move after their communities came under new ownership. Each park has been purchased by a different LLC, but breadcrumbs trail back to a $1 billion New York-based hedge fund called Alden Global Capital.
Suzanne Clevenger, 64, says conditions have worsened at River Springs Estates since she moved into a doublewide with her husband seven years ago. A flood devastated the Berrien Springs park in 2018. And now she says broken pipes have been a problem for two years – sewage...
Read MoreOur thoughts on this story:
Let’s break this article down into components:
- The residents claim that a $390 per month lot rent in Hastings, Michigan is “insanely high”. A quick trip to Bestplaces.net proves out that the median home price in Hastings is $281,400 and the average three-bedroom apartment rent is $1,530 per month. Therefore, clearly, the tenants’ claim is BOGUS.
- The tenants claim that the rent has gone up since the private equity group bought the property. TRUE. And that the quality of the maintenance has declined. BOGUS. They have no examples of this supposed “decline” in maintenance of the property, but I know from experience that a private equity group ALWAYS runs the park they buy better than mom and pop did.
- The writer claims that private equity groups are destroying the wonderful quality of Michigan mobile home parks. BOGUS. These groups are, in fact, the only pioneers bringing these old parks back to life.
- As with what we see every week, new owners raise rents and fix up parks and marginal tenants (maybe 1%) are willing to live in total squalor rather than pay $100 per month more. Nobody agrees with this philosophy except this strange tiny slice of the tenant pie. BOGUS.
Can AI PLEASE hurry up and put all these woke journalists out of their jobs? Any computer would instinctively know that there are two sides to every story – not just the one expressed by a few hoarder tenants.