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What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

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Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#141

Post by ctdonath »

alacombe wrote: post #107
ctdonath wrote: post #76

Table Mound Mobile Home Park https://goo.gl/maps/8h7fxu7WjWsYzTSj9 The Park is about 90 acres. Article claims about 400 homes on site. Much laments the living conditions and abusive corporate ownership. Why do the concerned not facilitate affordable ownership, instead leaving it up to investment firms to provide the service (badly)? Under 2 miles away is a >150 acre parcel available for $6,000,000. Divided by 600, th…

If it does not include a 10-year mastermind bait-and-switch business plan, I doubt any VC/bank will put a dime toward it.

Challenge Progressives to put their money where their ideals are: crowdsource it. Buy the subdivided lots and give them to prospective residents.

Or some form of creative financing. Change the game; 1/4 acre lots for $10,000 are just sitting there waiting for someone to make 600 happen all at once.

It’s doable. Those pining for better treatment and cheaper options should step up and make it happen.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#142

Post by mchusma »

I'm sure different trailer park owners are a mixed bag, some good some bad.

The real issue is government limitations on the supply of housing (height, min parking, setbacks, etc).

Housing could be high quality and relatively cheap. From first principles, a 3 bed 2 bath apartment could easily be Allowing more competition for low cost housing would solve almost all of the systemic issues in this article.

But as other posters have mentioned, the US promotes the opposite - home ownership as a wealth building tool.

Housing is a cost, we should work to reduce it.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#143

Post by hprotagonist »

brudgers wrote: post #115
pram wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term I always heard is “manufactured home” which makes more sense. I grew up in a double wide. Once it’s set up you quite obviously can’t move it again without wrecking everything lol

The technical difference is a mobile home has a license plate, is registered with the DMV, and taxed like a vehicle. A manufactured home (or modular home) is built to the building code and taxed as real property at the same rates (typically) as a site built house. But in ordinary usage people use the terms interchangeably.

> and taxed like a vehicle.

and, critically, depreciates like one. Which is kind of the opposite of what you want in a house.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#144

Post by refurb »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #139
refurb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that solve the problem if there is enough primary residence demand to push up prices to unaffordable levels? I mean, NZ is crazy unaffordable and foreigners can’t own real estate there from what I gather. It’s purely organic demand driving up prices.

>How does that solve the problem if there is enough primary residence demand to push up prices to unaffordable levels? That mostly doesn't happen because sid countries don't generally have California style zoning (though their byzantine permitting and regulatory compliance processes are just as good as CA or NYC's when it comes to raising construction costs).

If it “mostly doesn’t happen” can you list some examples of countries who offer zero interest loans and don’t have affordability issues?

I mean Singapore offers many incentives to purchase and their housing market is nuts with the government always trying to keep prices from exploding.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#145

Post by keiferski »

RC_ITR wrote: post #64
keiferski wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The oddest part about it is how much of a mess the Bay Area is. Typically you’d expect centers of wealth to be excessively clean, filled with expensive architecture and monuments, etc. to the point of being boring. Dubai, for instance. Somehow SV just decided to not bother with that at all.

This may literally be the first time in history someone recommended San Francisco be more like Dubai. Genuine question - when you're in the bay, do you spend time in any of the following: Pac Heights / Presidio Heights / Seacliff / Woodside / St. Helena / West Palo Alto / Stanford's Campus / Saratoga? I think the reason you have the perception that you do is that the bay area is one of the least tourist-friendly loca…

Of course there are nice neighborhoods in the Bay, but I'm referring more to the area as a whole. There is a gigantic amount of wealth concentrated in such a small place, yet you almost wouldn't know.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#146

Post by opo »

starpilot wrote: post #47
Shacklz wrote: post #14

The US are such a weird country... on one hand, Silicon valley et al, producing the coolest tech & the shiniest toys, and on the other hand... people who can only afford to live in trailer parks, even with a full time job. It never ceases to amaze & depress me simultaneously.

I read that the world needs both types of economies. The US is a dynamic, freewheeling sort with the most extremes. You can get incredibly rich, but the bottom has no floor. It's easy to amass capital and to pay workers. Or have western Europe, which is a relatively painful climate for businesses. Taxation for extensive social services is stifling, but at least most of the middle people are OK.

>... but the bottom has no floor.

That really doesn't represent reality.

The majority of federal spending goes to transfer payments:

>...The federal government spent $2.87 trillion on transfers to individuals in 2017, accounting for 72.2 percent of federal spending.

https://www.concordcoalition.org/issue-brief/troubling-trend...

One estimate is that about 22% of state government is spent on public welfare:

>...Another 22 percent of expenditures went toward public welfare. Public welfare includes spending on means-tested programs, such as Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income.

https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...

The people of the US also give a great deal of money to charity:

>...The United States has been the most generous country in the world over the past decade.

>That’s the conclusion of the World Giving Index, a ranking that measured how likely residents of 128 countries were to practice acts of generosity.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-us-is-the-most-generou...

>...Americans give around 3 percent of our collective income to charity — more than the citizens of any other country. Better yet, these are individual Americans, not the government, who are generating the lion’s share of the contributions.

https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/opinion/columnists/2017...

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#147

Post by brudgers »

hprotagonist wrote: post #143
brudgers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technical difference is a mobile home has a license plate, is registered with the DMV, and taxed like a vehicle. A manufactured home (or modular home) is built to the building code and taxed as real property at the same rates (typically) as a site built house. But in ordinary usage people use the terms interchangeably.

> and taxed like a vehicle. and, critically, depreciates like one. Which is kind of the opposite of what you want in a house.

Location is what matters. If a home depreciates, that is why.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#148

Post by ScottBurson »

djbebs wrote: post #125
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Localities can fight back by reforming zoning laws & applying land value taxes instead of property taxes. In many areas of the country it is illegal to build anything but a single-family home. To people familiar with supply & demand this should be an obvious problem.

Whats the difference in thise taxes? Whats to stop those added costs from being passed to consumers?

A Land Value Tax applies, as the name suggests, only to the value of land, not that of any structures built on it. Most real property taxes apply to both. Thus, the latter somewhat discourage construction for higher density. (Though in practice, zoning laws are a much bigger barrier.)

The intuition behind the LVT is that increases in the value of land, in urban areas, are mostly driven by a growing local economy; therefore the community should benefit from them. Increases in the value of structures, OTOH, mostly come from investments by the property owner.

There's a fascinating book (well, if you have any interest in economics) about the LVT, from 1879, by Henry George: http://www.henrygeorge.org/pcontents.htm

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#149

Post by tibbydudeza »

frongpik wrote: post #129
tibbydudeza wrote: post #3

Ready Player One and the dystopian future of trailers that are packed on top of each other reaching up like sky scrapers.

The dystopian future is towers of sleep boxes that the poor rent to sleep 8 hours a day (so 3 persons per day). Something in the Matrix style. The sleep boxes are poorly built, but thanks to the laws limiting the supply, the workers have to pay thru the nose to rent those boxes. These towers are built on compact lots of land and around it there are 1 sq mi lots with proper houses for the rich 0.01%. This is essential…

Remember an episode of an sci-fi anthology show of a dome city on Earth where resources are limited.

There is a sleep pod that is shared by two people.

One person works during the day while the other person is put into some sort of hibernation and they swap places at midnight.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#150

Post by CalRobert »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #138
CalRobert wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a a convenient accident more than an intentional outcome, but one that established homeowners and assetholders benefit from so it's encouraged. If nothing else, can you actually imagine a politician celebrating houses going down in price? Picture yourself walking up to a podium and announcing that the average 3 bed 2 bath in San Jose is now only $200,000, and what a fantastic achievement this is and how…

> If nothing else, can you actually imagine a politician celebrating houses going down in price This is a big part of the problem imho - its a treadmill that you can't get off. With an ageing population that all own houses and getting generally more conservative, I can't see it changing any time soon. It strikes me as odd that everything is getting cheaper except houses - and you may say its land, but if thats the ca…

everything else getting cheaper is part of _why_ houses are getting more expensive. The savings get poured in to outbidding each other.
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