OK, let’s cut through the B.S. and get straight to the truth:

1. Petaluma housing costs $839,600 for a house and $3,850 per month for an apartment. So a lot rent of $2,215 per month is actually insanely cheap.
2. If you are on a strict budget then you should never even think of retiring in Petaluma. That was a really bad choice.
3. The City of Petaluma set all of this in motion when they stupidly decided to pass rent control which then forced all property owners to raise rents as high as they could before future increases were capped. "As property owners, we’re seeking a fair market rent or considering closing the business before we are forced out," owner Nick Ubaldi said in a statement. The City of Petaluma passed an updated ordinance earlier this year that capped the annual rent increases allowed by mobile home parks. The intention was to strengthen protections for renters, however, it has resulted in threats of closure in July at two parks, including Little Woods.
4. The property owner will most certainly redevelop this land if it can’t command fair rents.

So who is the real culprit in this story? The City of Petaluma. And the resident who thought that this was a good place to live on a limited budget. If I went to an expensive steakhouse with $10 in my pocket, I would be accused of being out of my mind not receiving any empathy from anyone.

First, let’s review the math.

LAKELAND, Fla. (WFLA) — Deborah Dicus has lived at Holiday Mobile Home Park since 2012. Dicus said when she first moved in, her rent was $325 a month. Come January, it will be $767. Her social security check is $900 a month.

Over 11 years, the increase in rent from $325 per month to $767 equates to 10% per year. That’s pretty much in-line with most all of her other costs including gasoline, utilities, insurance – basically everything. So clearly you can’t complain that the park owner is “gouging” the rent.

The bigger issue is that – for some unexplained reason – while every other good and service in America has inflated at the same rate, only the mobile home park is singled out as the lone bill that ruins Deborah’s life.

The reality is that you can’t possibly live in Florida on a $900 per month social security check. Perhaps she has a pension or other retirement funds, but the fact is that Florida was a really poor retirement choice. If she lived in Missouri, for example, she could easily get by on a $900 per month check, as rural Missouri lot rents are maybe $250 per month.

So this is really a story about how expensive Florida is as a state coupled with how social security is not sufficient to retire on unless you made really good decisions on how and where to live in retirement.

This article was clearly written by AI as they got so many easy things wrong, such as crossing RV stats with mobile home stats (including using an RV photo on an MH article) and not knowing that Sam Zell is deceased. I can’t figure out if the point of the article is that mobile home parks are good or bad and, like most AI articles, neither did the computer that wrote it.

Why can’t they just be honest and admit that they want to kick the mobile home parks out?

Now here’s a non-profit that actually is doing good on a shoestring budget. Mobile homes are very energy inefficient but it’s easily remedied with 1) thermal switch plate covers 2) caulking around windows 3) weather stripping front and back doors 4) making sure that skirting has no gaps and 5) putting shrink-wrapped plastic over windows. We think it might save $50 per month on some homes. We have been trying to inform our own residents of these easy fixes for years. It would be great if more people want to jump on the bandwagon.

There are not that many mobile home parks in Delaware so this stat in the report was remarkable:

• The composition of the state’s housing stock has changed little over time, with the most significant change being a 6,800 unit decrease in manufactured or mobile homes.

I guess Delaware has seen quite a lot of redevelopment where mobile home parks got torn down and made into other uses (probably apartments). But any way you cut it, that’s a lot of parks lost.

This property owner gets points for creating a new word to help avoid the “trailer park” designation:

“An agrihood community”

Not sure if the variance will pass, but they should definitely get an award for creativity.

When you read this article and you cut through all the gas-lighting of 30% and 50% increases – which sound impressive – you realize that we’re talking a few hundred dollars more to live for literally $1,000 per month less than every other housing option in these markets. If your lot rent is $500 per month and goes to $700 that is a 40% increase – nobody can deny the math – but if you simply look at Bestplaces.net you see the apartment rent is $1,700+ per month. So can we please start putting the actual cost of housing in these articles? Have you noticed that none of the woke writers bother to do that even though they could get it off Bestplaces.net in ten seconds? That’s because it destroys their narrative and offends their audience.

The bottom line is that these parks are the best deal in town and that’s why people live there. Period. Do residents hate higher rents? Of course. But do they move out? No, because it’s still an incredible deal even at the higher prices.

At least there’s some honesty to this article:

“The park is not closing tomorrow. Do not panic. You’re not being thrown out,” Carroll told the gathering. Not yet. But it’s coming."

The bottom line is the same as in every issue of this news analysis, so here we go again:

LOW LOT RENTS = REDEVELOPMENT.

Every park has a lot rent level that will stave off the wrecking ball. But in many cases it’s probably two or three times what the residents are paying now, which is insanely low throughout the U.S. Just go to Bestplaces.net and look at the single-family home pricing and the apartment rents and then tell me how a $300 national average lot rent is justified. It’s not.

Yes, you’re not going crazy. This is the fourth article this week stating that resident-owned communities contain unicorns and free ice cream and the whole world would be better if every park was owned by the residents. Is it working? Are you brainwashed yet? Or are you kind of “gosh, this is stupid”?

If you read the map you will quickly see that this headline is a fraud. There are 7 southern states with higher mobile home reliance yet 17 non-southern states that have roughly the same mobile home concentration. Some New York based journalists find it intellectually exciting to portray the south as poor and stupid and they equate mobile homes with that theory. However, if you actually look at the map – not the headline – you will see that among the states with the highest percentage of mobile homes as housing units is … NEW YORK. That fact must just drive these intellectual snobs crazy.

And another mobile home park bites the dust. Same old story – low rents killed the park and the city was more than happy to oblige with any zoning needed to get the park torn down.

You don’t even need to read the article. Yes, out-of-state owners raise rents. Yes, in-state residents raise rents just as far and fast. Why? Because the rents are absurdly low. When you see any market in Iowa in which mobile home park lot rents are higher than apartments or stick-built homes then you let me know. Until then, how dare you say that mobile home park rents are too high? If they were too high then they would not be 100% occupied – yet they are. It’s called supply and demand and it’s one of the most basic formulas of economics.

Sure, you’re saying “gee this looks suspicious”. No, it’s the usual media trying to change the direction of politics schtick. Hopefully the elected officials of Colorado are smart enough to see through this attempted manipulation.

Great quote from RHP:

The Wikiup Manufactured Home Community strives to provide a well-maintained community for our residents. The Community's rules and regulations are in place to benefit all residents. When issues arise, we make every effort to collaborate with our residents and have a track record of successful resolution. In this instance, our attorney is working closely with the resident's attorney to come up with a satisfactory resolution to allow the resident to maintain residency in the community. We remain committed to providing a property that ensures the stability of the entire community.
-Molly Boyle, RHP properties

Park owners HATE to lose tenants. It costs them thousands of dollars. They will always work to resolve every issue BUT THE RESIDENT HAS TO WORK WITH THEM.

OK, maybe I missed the memo that mobile home parks are supposed to be kept trashy in order to stay to the liking of the poorest 1% of the park residents:

The move away from local ownership has brought new rules for many park tenants, such as limiting the number of sheds and other exterior structures they are allowed to have, ensuring fences are stained and in good repair, and getting rid of junk cars and recreational vehicles or finding another place to store them. The rules are meant to clean things up in terms of the parks’ appearance. But they can be onerous, not to mention expensive for people who are just scraping by.

Do professional owners clean up properties and raise rents? Of course they do. It’s called progress. If you want to let old parks die and be redeveloped then listen attentively to the author of this article. If you want parks to become progressively nicer at higher rents and have longevity in a world of $2,000 per month apartment rents, then bring in every out-of-state professional investor you can possibly find to save the parks in your state from obliteration.

I know nothing about this case or about this property. But I do know there are two sides to every story and you are only hearing one. I bet that we could solve this in one day by simply putting on a new meter and seeing the reading 24-hours later. My bet is that where this water goes is not actually a mystery to the tenant, but I could be wrong.

Can we just be honest here? Having sold more than one mobile home park to the residents I can tell you that there is a reason why only 12 parks out of 900 in Colorado (yes, that’s only 0.013%) are resident-owned communities. I’ll lay it out in simple terms:

1. Most residents don’t want to own their own community. How do I know? Just go ask the tenants.
2. These type of transactions take at least two times longer normally that a regular sale and most sellers are not willing to wait around for it.
3. A huge number of these deals fall apart in the end so after wasting months of time the seller is left to start over again.
4. Non-profits are required to guarantee the loans, and most have zero interest in guaranteeing a “trailer park”.

But then there’s the reality of what happens after these incredibly rare and few deals actually close, namely:

1. Rents seem to go up just as fast or faster (the park we sold in Austin to the tenants had to raise rents faster than we ever did just to cover the bills because they had no idea how to manage a property).
2. Tenants are often miserable because their elected officers play favorites and there is no uniformity in rules enforcement, etc.
3. These properties often look terrible as without professional management nobody follows any codes at all.

I love the fact that the writer of this article used New Hampshire as the gold standard of how great the concept is … since New Hampshire has among the fewest mobile home parks in the U.S. That would be like me comparing the cost of snow skiing equipment in Hawaii.

Now I know that the folks that facilitate these transactions really work the media to make dumb articles like this possible, but those are the facts and no amount of B.S. can change them.

Basically the same article as above. What happens is that these non-profits get with the media and start to do a ton of articles trying to persuade elected officials that their dumb ideas are actually genius. Unfortunately, all of the facts shown above hold true regardless of how you sugar-coat it, and that’s why the chances of pulling off a resident-owned community will remain at 0.013%. You have better odds of winning the lottery at the gas station.

Another article about a park being torn down for a more profitable use. Week after week I remind viewers that low rents = homelessness. Apparently not enough people read this.

A park owner got a giant offer of $50 million to demolish the mobile home park and put it to a more profitable use. They notified the residents, who now are trying to organize politically to somehow match the offer, naming their group “One Wake” (which maybe should have been “One Woke”?). Of course, this concept has a zero percent chance of ever happening as no non-profit is ever going to spend $250,000 per household to buy the park – and any sensible person would understand that.

Connect the dots from these passages:

It’s part of an ownership trend away from family-owned trailer parks (as they used to be called) — often built by farming and ranching families as a way to bring in additional income through rents and to help house workers for large public works projects in the mid- to late 20th century — and toward out-of-state real estate investment interests.

The move away from local ownership has brought new rules for many park tenants, such as limiting the number of sheds and other exterior structures they are allowed to have, ensuring fences are stained and in good repair, and getting rid of junk cars and recreational vehicles or finding another place to store them. The rules are meant to clean things up in terms of the parks’ appearance. But they can be onerous, not to mention expensive for people who are just scraping by

Having grown up and continuing to reside at the Cottonwood Springs Mobile Home Park, near Rifle, Muñoz said he’s used to rent increases, but usually no more than $10 or $15 a year. So, you go from paying maybe $410 to $425 in a year, where some of these corporate-owned parks are jumping from $400 to $500 or $600 in a single year,” he said. “And we don’t have any sort of legislation to prohibit that.”

So all this article is really about is that some tenants hate rent increases and rules enforcement. But how can you bring old parks back to life and make them nice without those two factors? The answer is: you can’t.

Those who want to live in filth and squalor because it’s cheap need to go to those type of properties. But the majority of tenants – 99% of them – want to live in a nice, updated property and pay higher rent for the right to do so. Don’t let this tiny minority of residents dictate and ruin the quality of life for the majority. It’s just plain stupid.

Clearly this writer has no idea how the real-world works:

“I think a lot of these improvements in that industry have gone unnoticed by local officials, planning administrators, those who write those ordinances and regulations. I think it may be time to take a fresh look at that”

No, it’s not the fresh look of mobile home parks that will open the floodgates to new construction. The reason virtually no city in the U.S. allows for the construction of new mobile home parks is simply because they cost the city a ton of money on school tuition and city services while bringing in only a fraction of their cost in property tax. Since almost all U.S. cities are having a cash-flow shortage it’s fully understandable why they view new mobile home parks as economic suicide.

These articles just keep getting ever more ridiculous. Here’s a case of a private property owner shutting down a park as the result of rent control, and the residents wanting them to prove how not raising rents is a hardship before they can tear the park down – as though the owner has any legal requirement to get their approval.

“It was a despondent sight last week as the residents of Youngstown Mobile Home Park gathered on the corner of North McDowell Boulevard, protest signs clutched in hand. A similar scene played out on Aug. 29 at Little Woods Mobile Villa on Lakeville Highway.

At both protests, there was an air of desperation — these aren’t people fighting for a principle, they are fighting for their homes.

The owner of the Youngstown Mobile Home Park called for its closure shortly after the city capped rent increases at mobile home parks to 4% of current rates, or by 70% of the Bay Area Consumer Price Index, whichever is less.

“Some people have ended up in the hospital because of all the fear and anxiety,” Mary Ruppenthal, a park resident since 1987, told the Argus-Courier. “We tried to allay their fears and calm them down, but none of us know for sure what's going to come of it all.”

I know that 70% of Millennials have said they would vote for a socialist candidate (that study came out during the Bernie Sanders campaign) but here’s a painful fact: property owners have the right to do whatever they want with their property. Really want to stop parks from being torn down? Then embrace much higher rents as that’s the only shot you have. Otherwise, there are few parks out there that might not be more profitable as apartment complexes which rent for an average of $2,000 per month when parks average $300. Rent control is a death sentence for mobile home parks, which have rents so low that they’re not sustainable. Any sensible person understands this.

This is one of the dumbest articles of 2023 – on a number of levels:

Dumb #1:  mobile homes contain virtually no asbestos and everyone knows it. The article admits that the only possible areas of concern would be “window caulking, window glaze and roof paint” – which effectively equals zero. A regular stick-built house of the right vintage would have asbestos throughout, from the roof shingles to the insulation to the flooring.

Dumb #2:  the mobile homes in question were never proven to have any asbestos in any possible way.

Dumb #3:  the park owner was then fined for tearing the homes down without asbestos testing – even though they had no asbestos in all likelihood (and I’m betting the baseless testing costs more than the demolition).

Dumb #4:  this whole issue with asbestos has been blown completely out of context for decades. Everyone knows that. Asbestos litigation originated with workers who inhaled asbestos in factories 8 hours a day. At that level, you can potentially have health hazards. But how in the world can anyone have serious ramifications from the incredibly tiny amount of asbestos from supposed ‘window caulking” which they might be exposed to – assuming they were standing next to the home being demolished and deliberately breathing in every fume they could find? Here’s what I found on the internet regarding the phobia over asbestos:

The definitive article exposing fraud in the diagnosis of asbestosis was by Gitlin et al. of Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. In this study published in 2004 films read by plaintiffs’ radiologists were compared to the readings of the same films by independent radiologists. The plaintiffs’ radiologists read 95.9% of the films positive for abnormalities that were compensable for pulmonary asbestosis. The independent radiologists who were unaware of the readings by the plaintiffs’ radiologists read the same set of films as positive in only 4.5% of cases.1

A couple of examples of massive fraud perpetrated by doctors reading films for asbestosis attorneys highlight how expert witnesses can abuse the legal process and undermine the search for truth and justice. One doctor, Ray Harron, personally diagnosed 51,048 asbestos claims. He diagnosed a record number of 515 people in one day, which amounts to one diagnosis per minute. Another doctor, Ray Segarra, a pulmonologist diagnosed 29,000 claims of asbestosis. He estimates that he has made about $10 million doing this work. When questioned on National Public Radio about his readings of chest x-rays, Segarra replied, “I’m certainly not a schemer at all…but am I an opportunistic? I suppose I am. But everybody is.”

I rest my case.