What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks • Hacker News Board

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#161

Post by JeremyNT » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 10:32 PM UTC

dhbradshaw wrote: post #48

After a cold snap recently I went out to visit an older couple in a trailer who had had their plumbing burst due to freezing. The trailer was in really rough shape. They were huddling under blankets because heating and insulation were inadequate. And now they had no water. Two things make me angry about the trailer park situation. 1. people living there who only get poorer from it. They own the portion of the home th…

> In the end at least in my area of the country it's much less expensive to buy a modest home.

There's another option of course, which is to buy a piece of land and put a trailer on it. Land's pretty cheap out in "real America."

A lot of my buddies growing up lived in mobile homes but none of them lived in trailer parks. If you can afford to buy a lot (but not yet build your dream house) it could make financial sense to get a basic model and plop it there while you save up for the next few years. You might at least beat renting.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#162

Post by CuriouslyC » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 12:20 AM UTC

exolymph wrote: post #42

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.

The United States is the land of high variance. We let people crash and burn, but we also let people soar. A society that permits the former is unremarkable — letting people suffer is the default in poverty, and most countries are relatively quite poor. But the latter, letting the tall poppies stand proud with not much more than heckling for their height, is something special, and it's a big part of how we've become…

We don't so much let people soar by design, as have systems in place to capitalize on fame that end up earning more for the entrenched plutocrats than suppressing it would. That is why you hear the term "kingmaker" in the music and television industries, and why people were willing to put up with so much abuse from people like Harvey Weinstein. Find the most marketable thing you can and use all your money to shove it down people's throats as hard as your can. This is also why mainstream American culture has been mostly shit for the last 20-odd years.

In non-cultural areas, letting people "soar" is just the result of whitewashed bribery through campaign finance and lobbying.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#163

Post by burntoutfire » Thu, Mar 11, 2021, 9:01 PM UTC

alacombe wrote: post #109

burntoutfire wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I suspect we gutted our middle class with globalization. It's not about middle class. In other rich countries, everyone, incl. the lower class, can afford to live in apartments, and doesn't have to resort to living in trailers.

> the lower class, can afford to live in apartments Do you mean the same crime ridden inner cities slums ?

There's practically no visible crime in Poland. The worst you're going to get in the shittiest districts of shittiest cities (we're talking places where you can get a studio in city center for $10000) is potentially some obnoxious drunks for neighbors. No one is going to break in into your car or mug you on the streets.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#164

Post by yencabulator » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 3:05 AM UTC

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.

A 10 year old mobile home is pretty much worthless on paper too; they're built to fall apart quickly.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#165

Post by knowaveragejoe » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

mike_d wrote: post #50

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.

In almost every part of the US anything except a single family home should be illegal to build. Land is in extreme abundance and multi-tenant properties are almost always built and owned by corporations.

Do you like suburban sprawl & all of the negatives that brings? Because that's how you get it.

Re: What happens when investment firms acquire trailer parks

#166

Post by LoneStarNot » Sat, Mar 13, 2021, 11:00 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #128

klipt wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All buildings depreciate though. It's only land that appreciates.

Is that true though? In the Bay Area the cost of new construction keeps going up ($400-500/sq ft for the most basic). If it costs more to replace a house than it cost to originally construct it I could see the value of the house appreciating.

Convoluted, but comprehensible. CA let landowners legislatively lock real estate(RE) revenue down with Prop13, even as the economy grew behind tech, AND steeper-than-avg regulation slowed construction. Choked supply and growing demand exploded prices. RE became a no-brainer for speculators. LOTS of CA land is held OUT of development ... likely because development is riskier than cashing in on the RE bidding wars. NO family sells CA land because _renting_ it is so profitable with demand insanely outstripping supply. Scott Weiner has repeatedly tried to get the legislature to a) relieve the economic stress on families, b) help the environment, by building greener, ESPECIALLY near public transit, to pay back the public investment in transit, and c) to densify, for the myriad of benefits. But the same right-wing segment who gave us Warren, and Reagan has protected the RE windfall to landowners even as exploding RE prices and the salary inflation that demands has pushed many hi-tech firms out of the state.

LOCAL construction costs, and the cost of everything else not easily transported, get pushed up by the RE cost hitting _everyone_ but the land OWNERS.

Complaints of complex, costly regulations are real; but the factors noted seem bigger. AND ... factory-built processes reduce the per/unit cost of regulation by letting regulators approve factory PROCESSES instead of individual homes.