California MHP News

Sat, Dec 31, 2021 – In December 2021, ELS completed the acquisition of MHVillage/Datacomp for a purchase price of $43 million. MHVillage is the premier online marketplace dedicated to manufactured home buying and selling. Datacomp provides independent, market-based valuations for manufactured homes in land lease communities.

Sat, Dec 18, 2021 – When mobile home park investors like Havenpark put the squeeze on residents like Hunt, they’re getting help from an unlikely source: federally backed companies with a core mission of helping to make homeownership affordable.

When private investors come to buy parks, [they] raise the rent, sometimes 20, sometimes 50, sometimes 70% says economist George McCarthy, president of the nonprofit Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. And, he says – what’s really troubling to him – is that the government is basically turbocharging this trend.

Several industry insiders tell NPR that this is the way it works: When a company raises the rents and fees in a park, that increases the cash flow and makes the park more valuable on paper. So the company can then borrow more money against the property.

The loans often have very low interest rates because they’re guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – the government-backed entities at the heart of the U.S. mortgage market.

Tue, Dec 14, 2021 – About a half-dozen residents gathered around a folding table in an unheated community room at Westwinds Mobile Home Park to spark more interest in their bold, yet overlooked, gambit: buy their 80-acre park on prime, North San Jose property. But to do it, they need wide support from the 1,600 residents of the city’s largest mobile home park.

They tossed out ideas to get neighbors to support their audacious plan. Put up a lending library and draw people with a collection of potboilers and romances. Sponsor a spay-and-neuter clinic. Invite mayoral candidates to speak to residents.

It won’t be easy. The Westwinds group needs to convince enough of their neighbors to join a co-op, hire a room full of lawyers and real estate mavens, raise $500 million, more or less, and buy the land underneath their Silicon Valley homes.

Mon, Dec 13, 2021 – A co-op formed to help the residents of a manufactured home community in Little River purchase the 43 acres of land on which their homes sit has closed the deal, according to a press release issued by The Woods. Residents say they will have a bigger say in how the neighborhood is run, like setting the price of rent. Rent is expected to go up for some residents, but a $500,000 fund has been established to help subsidize housing costs for residents unable to afford the increase.

The Woods residents, ages 55 to 101, owned the upscale modular homes they live in but not the land itself. When San Francisco-based Sequoia Living put the property up for sale, they grew concerned that a developer might buy it, raise the rent and price them out – potentially forcing residents to sell their homes. The co-op’s offer wasn’t the highest received by the seller, but it was selected to allow residents to remain in their homes and avoid displacement in the Mendocino Coast’s tight housing market. The closing price has not yet been announced as part of a nondisclosure agreement.

The Woods includes 109 manufactured homes in a park-like setting with towering fir, pine and redwood trees that make it seem like living in a forest. It has a number of amenities, including a clubhouse, indoor pool and spa, and The Lodge, a former assisted living residence. Plans are in the works to turn what was The Lodge into senior living apartments. Currently 98 of the homeowners are part of The Woods Cooperative Association. Residents who don’t join the Association simply pay rent, as they have been doing all along.