Mobile Home Owner News – September 2024
Resident curated mobile home owners news and information for residents of Mobile Home Parks owned by Kort & Scott (KS) companies. The MHPHOA also provides news coverage for Mobile Home Parks not owned by KS companies.
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RE: California
Sat, Sep 14, 2024 – This table of Mobile Home Parks, RV Parks, and Manufactured Home Communities for Sale in California is a work in progress as of Saturday, September 14, 2024. Data is being updated regularly.
This is a partial listing and covers the period 2021-01-01 to 2024-09-14. This is NOT a complete list of mobile home parks for sale in California. Many sales of mobile home parks are usually done via Pocket Listings (aka Off-Market Listings, Exclusive Listings), they are not marketed via public channels.
RE: Petaluma, California / Capri Mobile Villa / Nick Ubaldi / Harmony Communities
Fri, Sep 13, 2024 – Residents of Capri Villa mobile home park and their supporters gathered last Sunday alongside a busy Petaluma thoroughfare to protest what they have described as injustices by park owners.
The protest comes as residents at Capri Villa, Little Woods Mobile Villa and Youngstown – all Petaluma mobile home parks – are asking the city to enforce its regulations while park owners repeatedly attempt to raise rents by hundreds of dollars per month. Each proposed rent hike automatically triggers costly arbitration hearings.
Meanwhile, park owners of Little Woods and Youngstown have threatened to close both of those parks. Park owners have said said the city’s regulations do not allow them to remain economically viable in the long term and have sought the right to reset a lot’s rent to market rates after mobile homes are sold.
Park owners at Youngstown and Little Woods formally stated their intent to close in a June 21, 2024 letter. In August, the city added new fees to its master fee schedule as it begins the process to prepare necessary reports and gather information per its closure procedures.
RE: San Bernardino, California / Community Land Trust / Neighborhood Partnership Housing Services
Thu, Sep 12, 2024 – Soaring prices put purchasing homes out of reach for most people, but building new housing is slow and expensive.
So far, most solutions to this housing crisis have focused on subsidizing prospective buyers. But what if there were a way to make housing cheaper at every step of the process: cheaper to build, cheaper to buy, and still affordable for the next resident?
In San Bernardino, a sunny California city located about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, a first-of-its-kind experiment is underway to test these ideas on a single plot of land. Think of it as an affordable housing policy trifecta: three different strategies to bring down housing costs – all at once.
The first innovation is to streamline manufacturing. About 90 percent of homes are built on the land they rest on, but in San Bernardino, manufacturers assembled a modest house – 1,462 square feet, three bedrooms – in a factory before transporting it to its final destination on Ramona Avenue.
RE: Fresno, California / La Hacienda Mobile Estates / Harmony Communities
Tue, Sep 3, 2024 – The owner of a controversial mobile home park is suing the city of Fresno for $1 million, alleging that rent control has cost the company money and diminished the park’s value.
The lawsuit from La Hacienda Mobile Estates says Fresno’s Mobile Home Park Rent Review and Stabilization Commission’s November 2023 decision to only allow a minimum rent increase has prevented the park from being profitable.
Harmony said it needed to increase rents at the park by $350 a month – a 150% increase – to earn a 12% rate of return on the company’s investment and help pay for significant repairs to the property.
Since Harmony took over, occupancy at the park has fallen below 50% largely due to evictions, according to Mariah Thompson, senior attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance, who represents many mobile home owners at La Hacienda.
RE: California Mobile/Manufactured Home Parks
Sun, Sep 1, 2024 – If you are planning on purchasing a home in one of California’s 5,230 mobile/manufactured home and RV parks, here are your basic options in order of Best to Worst Case Scenarios.
- Option 1 – Buy the Home, Buy the Land/Lot (HOA Fee), Resident Owned Community (ROC)
- Option 2 – Buy the Home, Lease the Land/Lot (Space Rent), Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO), Private
- Option 3 – Buy the Home, Lease the Land/Lot (Space Rent), RSO, Corporate
- Option 4 – Buy the Home, Lease the Land/Lot (Space Rent), No RSO, Private
- Option 5 – Buy the Home, Lease the Land/Lot (Space Rent), No RSO, Corporate
Note: Labels: Private = Privately Owned, Corporate = Corporate Owned