Mobile homes and RVs were one and the same until about 1976 with the establishment of the HUD seal. About 90% of all mobile home parks were built prior to 1976 and are grandfathered. So I seriously doubt that cities really have the right to restrict putting an RV on a lot. Most park owners are good-natured and don’t press this potentially false policy, but the demand for long-term RV spaces is growing and this is going to be a much bigger issue going forward. Probably time for some case law to bring this issue to an end.

When a private owner does this, they are publicly shamed as evil. When the City of Benton, Arkansas does this, it’s basically no problem. Love the double standard.

These articles remind me of someone hawking a timeshare. The numbers don’t compute but the salespeople try to use your ego as a tool to make you make a clearly stupid decision sometimes. Just read these two quotes from the article:

1. "Just to have that peace of mind, to know that our rent is going to be locked in for awhile and not keep going up, and also knowing that our rent monies … are going back into the property, that is the cool part," she said.
2. The required rent increase to go co-op was even steeper in Evergreen Village Cooperative in Mount Bethel, Pennsylvania, — from $460 a month to $750 to pay off the $12 million loan.

When the residents buy their own property, what do they get? A big debt burden and higher lot rent most of the time. And what they lose is professional management that actually collects rents and doesn’t play favorites. Not a great trade.

When you are an early-stage buyer into any planned development, you always run the risk of the plans being altered. There’s not a thing the council to do to solve this situation and giving false hope to the residents that bought into the concept early is only going to lead to further disappointment.

Let’s cut through the B.S. and get down to the facts. The reason it now takes 80 days to renovate a property instead of 29 pre-Covid is that nobody wants to work anymore. You see it all around you. Covid is long gone but nobody is returning to the job. When you give U.S. workers a 2-year snow day, they apparently never come back to school.

OK, let me decipher this for you. When they said “the city council received 18 letters and emails from area residents opposed to the proposed development, one raising concerns and six in support” what they really meant was they received 18 letters opposed from the actual neighbors, one raising concerns that lives about a block away and six in support that actually worked for the developer and mobile home sales lot.

I know it’s a free country, but whoever wrote this article is pretty much wrong about everything. No, people don’t prefer to live in properties that have no amenities or luxuries of any type. No, people don’t dream of building their own RV from scratch by mounting assorted crap on a suburban. No, most people with kids have no interest in raising their family in a tiny travel trailer. No, most RV owners do not live in poverty. No, they should not give media space to people who write articles that basically insult the intelligence of all known forms of life.

The folks that turned down the new owner’s request to go from $300 to $600 in monthly lot rent are the ones that signed the death warrant for this property. They have nobody to blame but themselves. Here’s the only part of the article that tells the truth: 

“We’re disappointed because we fought really hard to stay here. We went to the city council meetings, you know, we wanted our voices to be heard, but obviously, it wasn’t enough,” Franquez said. Most units pay about $300 in rent. Several residents told GV Wire that Harmony tried to nearly double the rent. “They did try and they were only able to raise it $20,” Franquez said.

The median home price in Fresno is $350,000 and the average apartment is $1.770 per month. So let me get this straight: the bureaucrats will only let the new owners raise the rents to $320 per month – which is $1,450 per month less than apartments? 

If they had let the rent go to $600 per month, these residents would still have the sweetest housing deal in Fresno. Instead, they are all displaced and the land will be built into something else.

Smart move, Fresno officials.

“If I were to come home and I would look over there and see a mobile home park on that hill, I would not want to stay there,” resident James Travis told the commissioners. And that was the end of it, as the council voted “no” on rezoning the land to mobile home park. And James Travis’ thoughts are echoed across America when the idea of building a new mobile home park comes up. That’s why the concept of building new mobile home parks as an investment never works. By the time you find a piece of land so far out in the county that nobody complains about a mobile home park, there’s no demand to rent the lots or buy the homes.

Not to offend anyone, but you kind of have to be insane to pay $4 million plus $2,500 per month in lot rent to live in a mobile home park – even if it’s in Malibu. You could spend $4 million without lot rent to get a tremendous oceanside brick house in just about every other beach town in the U.S. I get a call about once a year from somebody looking at buying one of these mobile homes in Paradise Cove, and they want to know what happens if they lose their lease for the lot. I explain to them that the mobile home they just bought for $4 million would be worth about $4,000 as a 1970s trailer on a sales lot along the freeway. On the Sam Zell “risk vs. reward” index I can’t understand any of this. But then again, I’m not a Californian.

A Democrat wants to regulate not only the safety of Colorado drinking water but also the “smell, taste and color”. I guess that’s fine, but whoever votes for this proposal needs to be reminded that the science required to alter the “smell, taste and color” will probably be really expensive, and lot rents will go up as a result. I’m not sure how many people want to pay to correct the “color” of their water – or if they will have that option. Since most Colorado mobile home parks are on city utilities, the only way to fix the “smell, taste and color” will be for the municipal water district to do so, which will probably cost tens of millions of dollars to accommodate on their part. Colorado is not exactly brimming with excess cash as a state, with the 20^th largest debt load and nearly $20 billion owed to creditors. Spending money chasing the goal of Fiji water coming out of facets is not going to come cheap.

Maybe the person who wrote this article should have read the one above to get real scoop on what happens when the tenants buy the property.

Finally, the truth is coming out about what happens when the residents buy their community. Here’s the quote from this article “BVCC became a cooperative three years ago and in those years it has been led by three different sets of board of directors. Now our park is in financial shambles. In our view, we have experienced board members not following our bylaws and not applying the rules consistently to every resident. This is not unique to our community. Neighbor governing neighbor has been a disaster."

Gee, I would never have guessed that a bunch of mobile home park residents would be less successful at managing a park than the professionals. This is why some of these deals are already going back on the market for sale as residents are desperate to get professional management back.

Even in Australia the mobile home park residents feel that a 7% annual rent increase is unfair.

Can we please stop with the narrative that Congress is going to force cities and towns to build affordable housing? The government is bad enough at what they do and don’t need to take on and destroy any new projects. If any of this were to ever come to pass, the cities will litigate and I’m sure the Supreme Court will uphold their right to determine their own zoning laws and codes.

“Residents hate the new rent of $750 per month in Santa Fe, NM”. Here’s what Bestplaces.net has to say:

• Median Single-Family Home $541,100
• Average 2-bedroom apartment $1,290 per month
• Average 3-bedroom apartment $1,640 per month

I think everyone knows that Santa Fe is an incredibly expensive place to live. If the residents of the park cannot afford $750 per month, perhaps they should find a less expensive city to live in. But you can’t criticize the park owner in this case, as the rent is still insanely cheap at $750 per month.

Here’s a quote from the article: “Village residents are irked that their monthly property rental rate shot up to $425 per month from $355 under new ownership.”

Here’s the housing stats for Bethlehem, Ohio from Bestplaces.net:

• Median single-family home $143,400
• Average 2-bedroom apartment: $702 per month
• Average 3-bedroom apartment: $892 per month

So $425 is a bad deal? Seriously?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) clearly wrote this article, and the mistakes are hilarious. For example, the term “manufactured home” came into vogue in 1976 and not 1989, and the average mobile home does not cost $169,000. But when you use AI it relies on other published information to come up with what it writes and there is very little information on the mobile home park industry to go by.

Sabatini said they could pursue legal action against the “grossly large” amount of the fine.

“We’re not done fighting yet,” he said.

On Wednesday, Mayor Castor applauded the court’s decision.

“I hope this sends a very strong message to everyone that the City of Tampa cherishes our tree canopy, will work hard to protect it and won’t tolerate the illegal destruction of protected trees,” she said via text. “Tampa needs more trees, not fewer, and everyone should think long and hard before cutting corners to remove beautiful trees.”

This town had only 60 residents, and the tornado happened to hit a mobile home and an RV. Of course, a stick-built house is stronger and can withstand a tornado better, but at 170 mph nothing is going to survive. This article deliberately is trying to pretend like mobile homes and RVs are inherently dangerous, which they are not. 

Interesting how the media hates mobile home parks when they’re operating – delighting in publicly shaming the owners -- and then suddenly misses them when they’re closing. You can’t have it both ways.

Sure, this park appears to be a mess, but all that trash, furniture and debris is NOT coming from the owner. How come there is not one mention of accountability of the residents for these living conditions in the entire article. Sure, the rules were not enforced, but that’s a two way street and the owner was probably too good natured to enforce the rules and things got out of hand over the years. If the media wants the park to be torn down and the residents displaced, then just keep doing what you’re doing. A better solution would be for the city to go to the elderly owner and work with them – providing grant money if needed – to bring the park back to life.

The residents of this park hope to buy it for $16.25 million and are trying to raise the money for the downpayment. So they set up a GoFundMe account and “as of April 3, the campaign had raised $500 of its $1 million goal with 14 donors”. I think it’s pretty clear this is another “first option” failure, and states that require a tenant “first option to purchase” requirement are doing nothing but giving people false hope and slowing down the rights of park owners to sell on the open market at the best price they can obtain.

If the residents did buy it – which is clearly not going to happen – how would they possibly afford to pay the regular cap-x issues that pop up? Another GoFundMe pitch?

Contrary to what woke journalists and advocates care to accept, owning real estate is capital intensive and you simply can’t participate if you are underfunded like this.

It’s still nowhere close to the record for a single mobile home park, with the one near Silicon Valley selling for over $200 million a few years ago. But a nice try anyway.

When someone coins their proposed law as a “Bill of Rights” you know it’s just a P.R. stunt trying to pander to voters who don’t know any better. Behind the fancy title, all you have is a bill that will help deadbeats stay on property without paying and the very rules violators who ruin life for the entire community to continue with their antics without any accountability. Hopefully there are enough smart people in Montana’s state house to realize this is a terrible idea.