You’d never find it in a mainstream media outlet today, but there is still fair and balanced journalism to be found in places like Hazleton, Iowa, which recently published this story on the turn-around of a mobile home park. Here’s a quote from the story:

While most mobile home park owners take comfort in letting someone else do the honors, there’s nothing wrong with being the market leader in lot rents. However, there is a process to taking that role and it comes with responsibilities and strategic thought. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the role of being market leader and how to do a good job of it.

Recessions are unpredictable, right? Not if you simply follow the science of past downturns. That’s the focus of this Lecture Series Event. It’s titled “The Recession Playbook,” and it’s a candid discussion of the math and science behind recessions and how past performance data can be overlayed onto the current situation for an educated guess on what will unfold. And the focus, of course, will be on what these predictions mean for the mobile home park industry.

Most apartment tenants dream of lower rent payments and detest increases. The same is true of those who live in mobile homes. One big difference; apartment dwellers can more easily move while mobile home buyers own their home. That makes comparison difficult, so what determines “fair” park rent?

With apartments having reached a cyclical high and mobile home parks still running with plenty of value-building opportunity, many apartment owners are looking at buying mobile home parks. If you fit that profile, then the key initial question is “what are the big differences between the two?” In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the differences between these two housing investment options.

Stanley Marcus – the founder of Neiman Marcus – once said “take your markdowns on people and merchandise as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, many mobile home park owners refuse to follow this advice and end up holding on to unsuccessful managers for months or years longer than they should. So why do they do this and how do you correct this behavior? That’s the focus of this episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast.

One of the strange media fixations on the mobile home park industry is that “mobile” homes are anything but mobile. Between the high cost to move a home ($5,000+) and the dangers involved (the home can fall to pieces in transport) it makes about as much sense to move a mobile home as it does a stick-built one. Yet the media frequently fakes moral outrage that these dwelling units can’t just be hitched to the back of your minivan and hauled down the highway like a U-haul trailer. Let’s analyze why this argument is so absurd.

The late Tony Hsieh (founder of Zappos and near-billionaire) had an affection for mobile home parks. One that was so strong he chose to leave his Las Vegas penthouse and become a resident of his trailer park creation called Airstream Village. Tony’s assistant gave us a tour of that property while he was still alive, and what was fascinating was how much effort Tony was putting into trying to perfect the “sense of community” and common areas. His vision was that he wanted all the residents to spend all their time together in a communal area and only go back to their trailers to sleep. The mobile home park was populated with a mixture of tiny homes and Airstreams and even included a communal pet llama.

The U.S. demand for affordable housing is huge, but you can’t rent or sell a mobile home unless it’s been renovated. Home readiness is, in fact, the number one problem for most park owners that have vacant units. But it’s perpetually harder to find those who will work on mobile homes as they seek better paying alternatives. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review some fresh ideas that we’re implementing to find home renovation workers in a tough U.S. workplace.