Many landlords are scared to push their rents right now. ... Articles are abundant, talking about the inability of office and commercial landlords to maintain current rent levels if they want to attract or retain tenants.
Well, it’s a different story in mobile home park land. And it highlights some of the key reasons that mobile home parks are the best niche in real estate investing. ...
So how can you raise mobile home park rents when every other landlord is stopped dead in their tracks? ... Basically, you can continue to raise rents because the cost for the tenant to move is far higher than the resulting rent increase.
... If you want to find a class of investments that allows you to increase the rents a significant amount each year, whether it's feast or famine in the general economy, then mobile home parks are worthy of further examination.
I'd do a better opening post talking about how past generations had no problem discussing differences between classes, but as the middle class shrinks away from the upper, ruling class, to make one aware of this is to be labeled an outsider when it comes to reasonable thought. TR had no problem mentioning it when he busted trusts and FDR had no trouble mentioning it when he supported the growing unions, but today it's considered virtually libelous. Then I'd mention something along the lines of the oligarchical WASPs in power maintaining the status quo of the hegemony by marginalizing every other group, but the Nyquil's kicking in.
That's pretty sad, but I'm not seeing the outrage. A mobile home park is not a charity, and their owners have the right to evict and build better development.
And mobile homes are cars, not houses. That means that they depreciate to the point where they can't drive anymore. 90 days might have been a more reasonable time to evict the residents, but other than that it's just something that's unfortunate, not unethical.
I thought that mobile homes would be discouraged as much as possible by the government they use less services, plumber electrician etc and buy less consumer goods, i can see why they are being evicted as many trailer parks which were one the outskirts are now in prime residential land.....its sad but inevitable
If you're padding your profits because someone literally cannot move out of your way, I would say it is unethical. Unlawful, however? That's a much harder sell.
I can't speak for the rest of the country and my data is a little out of date. However most of the rent raising in trailer parks seems to be market readjustment. Trailer parks near the coastal resort areas had long been well below market price. The landlords noticed that their peers in other markets were charging far more for the land and so started charging more for their land. Increases in rent reflect a move towards the market value of the land.
I can't say about existing home sales, but there has been a sharp decline in manufactered home sales over the past three years. So landlords are looking at a failing business model and may want to loose residents to attrition and then build multi-family homes which is a more sustainable business model and can get tax-credits and other government subsidy.
Edit: Also 60 days for eviction proceedings sounds about right. It's been a while since I last read the Delaware Landlord-Tenant Code, but I'm pretty sure 60 days is the minimum for rental units. Seems reasonable for the same standard to apply to manufactured housing.
Just a fun fact: In Texas, you can miss one rent check (for any rental dwelling) and be evicted before the next one is due (theoretically; the court calendar and the temperament of your judge would obviously play a large role how quickly the process moved). But the law only requires a total of 20-23 days, according to this site, before the sheriff can throw your stuff on the curb.
I had an unoriginal thought and I figured I would post it here since I'm stuck on campus for a few hours with nothing better to do. I'm thinking that a big part of the fall of American industry (and the hundreds of thousands of jobs lost) didn't occur just because of outsourcing and the shift to high tech industry. The deregulated financial market has given those of means a place to make boatloads of money without actually creating and real economic growth. Some people, instead of actually doing something constructive, play the worst run casino on the face of the earth.
Especially when they sell and bet on people's mortgages, which is essentially what happened. Then houses started flipping, people went underwater and abandoned them and it all fell apart. Deregulation and lack of oversight let the floor fall in.
I'm more and more of the opinion the war is over, and we lost. At this point they're just dividing up the spoils. Foreclosure fraud, corporate mergers, citizens united. I'm sure many of these fuckers are still planning on getting social security privatized to get their hands on it's $2 trillion worth of assets. There really is nothing left for them to take.
While this doesn't directly address this threads topic, it does show that not all US Americans are not complacent and apathetic. A great many will rise up and address redresses of grievances in whatever manner possible. When petitioning Congress and its Representatives falls upon uncaring and deaf ears, a call to physical displays of objection will be taken.
This is not a singular event in Ohio, nor the USofA.
As an Ohioan, I will point to the Kent State Massacre. I am sure that many others within this community can bring forth examples of passionate displays of what defines us as United Americans of the States and our willingness to exemplify why we as a People came to this country.
What I find appalling is that no Congressperson is willing to stand up for what we, the People, stand for, except for Ron Paul.
I will promote the standings of Marcy Kaptur (my local House Rep), but I will appear to be hawing my local Rep. Say what you will about her, but one of her most recent rants and standing on the Floor was to not only her Constituents, but to all US of Americans:
"If you are being foreclosed on and forced out of your home, DO NOT MOVE OUT! Force the bank to produce the Mortgage and force them to evict you trough the PROPER channels. If you need assistance, CALL MY OFFICE!"
We, the People, of the UNITED STATES, so need this kind of commitment from our Representatives to maintain our status as a Republic (which has been long forsaken).
I hold that we as a Nation lost the War Between the States and that as States we lost what defined us, State Power. We are now slaves unto the Oligarch that is the USA.
2005 Toledo Riot About this which admittedly, I have not heard of before , it seems like it's the exception that proves my point. People weren't up in arms about a state overreach, poor working/living conditions, or environmental issues. It wasn't an anti-war protest or anything. They were pissed off at a bunch of neo-nazis. Most people I talk to (around urban and suburban Detroit, so not really a great cross section of the US) only see the government as a force that causes problems, not a vehicle to fix anything. So to many, it makes no sense to ask for a redress of grievances, to use constitutional language, because it is one of the least productive things that can be done.
This is the same reason I think voter turnout is so low. Corporate media has painted the picture of government as the definition of bureaucracy and incompetence. Americans won't go out of their way to participate in it, because to them it doesn't make sense to do so. I'll make the claim that even if the separation between the wealthy and the rest of us reaches levels we can't even think of now, unemployment hits 20%, etc.. We will not see any populist movement large and organized enough to press for changes, and succeed in getting them. Of course there will be some, and they may have a bit of success on some issues, but for the most part they will not change the way things work.
Take the Tea Party movement. It started out as a grass roots organization with some key goals. It didn't even really have any kind of organization hierarchy. They are a collection of independent groups with common goals. But look what happened when they fielded candidates for office. The doors had been opened for unlimited corporate advertising, and pretty much all of the candidates we're willing to start playing the game. Now we have dozens of these people bought and paid for by the same people who put us in this economic mess. And that is the real tragedy right there. Even with all of the public anger against corporate practices, most notably wallstreet and BP, we still have a significant part of the population who feel it is the government who is to blame for all of this. So we're left with only a small portion of the populace who believe the government can and should be used to advance the interests of the people. Everyone else thinks it doesn't work, or it can't work, or it shouldn't work.
Perhaps I'm being far to cynical, but as it stands right now I plan on leaving the country rather than staying to help fix it.
What I find appalling is that no Congressperson is willing to stand up for what we, the People, stand for, except for Ron Paul.
I'd add a few more people to this list. Franken, Kucinich maybe, and Bernie Sanders. I wouldn't dare add any of my state reps to that list. Of course, if we can only point to a handful out of our entire congress, there is a fucking problem.
Barny Frank has supported financial deregulation in the past. I'm pretty sure he was involved in crafting the laws (or lack thereof) that led to the mortgage crises. That's why I didn't include him.
Let's make one thing perfectly clear. These actions were not imposed on Obama. They are not the inescapable outcome of political circumstances. He chose this path. It conforms to his behavior from the very start of his presidency. It was a newly-elected Obama who hand-picked Geithner and Summers. Who installed as his right-hand man Rahm Emanuel from the board of scandal-ridden Freddie Mac and deal-maker at Dresdner Kleinwort. Who declared at a press conference on the eve of his inauguration that he would not seek to repeal the Bush tax cuts but rather let them drain Treasury revenues until they expired, which of course he has conspired to prevent. Who met clandestinely with Big Pharma to cut a secret deal that ruled out the government's bargaining on drug prices. Who met clandestinely with health industry giants to cut a secret deal that ruled out the public option.
This is the same Obama who does not know the main provisions of the Social Security Act of 1935 -- as evinced on repeated occasions. Who put Social Security and Medicare on the rack by rigging his deficit commission with the appointment of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. The Obama who avowedly takes his inspiration from Ronald Reagan; who spent his holiday in Hawaii reading an account of how the Gipper's White House office was run for him. The Obama who has reserved his harshest and heartfelt words for attacks on progressives. Political expediency is not the reason for turning his back on his supporters and on his pledges. After all, spurning his constituents and kowtowing to the entrenched interests led to the biggest off-year disaster in American electoral history. In short, all the evidence is that an old-school "moderate" Republican occupies the White House.
So, what are liberals/progressives to do? They should begin by recognizing who they are and how they typically behave. Democrats generally see themselves as more "responsible" than Republicans. They worry about the consequences of their actions for the country, for our public institutions. They fret about being too assertive, about rupturing ties. Liberals are more "responsible" than conservative Democrats. They carry free-floating guilt for whatever goes wrong, or might go wrong. They hate the thought of hurting people. Self-labeled progressive Democrats are the kind of people that your mother wanted you to hang out with in high school -- short of Canadian exchange students being available. Faced with passionate and unscrupulous enemies, they are confused and uncomprehending. Just as if they accidentally found themselves in the midst of a Saturday night bar room brawl. Such brutal faces; such tortured souls. They wonder how these people became so maladjusted; how sad that their families didn't get the attention of a really good, caring social worker.
Faced with betrayal, they freeze at pronouncing the word, of thinking the thought, of feeling the emotion. They are easy marks for the upscale con man with the high-minded rhetoric. They see taking offense as itself somehow offensive. They shy away from accusing, from denouncing. So when Mr. Obama spits in their face week after week, they are stunned into denial. Some declare: Our Saviour is also a rainmaker -- a thousand blessings be upon him! Others turn the other cheek. A few instinctively reach for a handkerchief. The more imaginative suggest that he was really aiming at the Republicans, but he's under such great stress that he lost his aim. The truly original believe that it's all part of a clever strategy so ingenious that we poor mortals can't conceive of it. Mysterious are the ways of Our Saviour.
This guy's writing style reaaally gets under my skin.
Oh, the author is a fucking pain. It was really just the basic content that I cared about. Namely, that wall street is running the white house.
I'm actually kind of concerned no one has come on this thread offering a rebuttal to my assessment of the current state of the union. Is everyone really as jaded and pessimistic as myself?
"If you are being foreclosed on and forced out of your home, DO NOT MOVE OUT! Force the bank to produce the Mortgage and force them to evict you trough the PROPER channels. If you need assistance, CALL MY OFFICE!"
My agency along with a partnership with the state Attorney General's office (their consumer protection department to be specific) have been saying pretty much the same thing. You (the individual) need to force the bank to follow the legal guidelines for foreclosure. The AGs office is more than willing to back you up if the bank is taking advantage of you.
But the other side of the coin is, you the individual took out a loan and used the house as collateral for that loan. You signed a legal document to assume the financial risks of home ownership and if you renege on that promise, then the bank has every right to claim the collateral.
Problem being that banks have now outsourced their foreclosure filings to third parties who are basically mercenary thugs. They don't do due diligence to determine whether the bank in question actually has rights to foreclose and if they go and throw all of your shit out of your house and padlock the door while you're not there you are SOL.
There are too many foreclosures in the pipeline for them to do it by the book.
That's why the AG is having a field day with it. Plus all the fraudsters who offer "help" which basically just robs the homeowner of all their home's equity. That's if they are lucky. If they are unlucky, they end up renting the house they had previously owned and one missed rent check away from an eviction.
My question is, if things like this keep up in the U.S., U.K., and across the world, will we ever be able to roll it back? Or are we looking at something quite diabolical.
