Mobile-home parks face pressure to sell. 2 Garden City parks just secured their future
Residents of two Garden City mobile-home parks have ended speculation that their parks could be sold to investors who might jack up rents, or to developers who might force them to move.
Tenants at 40th Street’s Buddy Manor and Native Dancer parks — one on each side of West Chinden Boulevard — have purchased the land underneath their single- and double-wide trailers, ensuring the 56 homes will stay put. They formed a cooperative, the Buddy Dancer Homeowners Cooperative, to manage the properties.
A division of Boise-based Leap Housing Solutions was behind the effort to create what is known as a resident-owned community. Leap previously established two affordable housing complexes in Northwest Boise using homes made from recycled steel shipping containers for low-income residents to rent. The nonprofit is currently working on a third complex in Northwest Boise, for people to buy.
“I’m really happy to be able to help preserve these communities in Garden City,” Matthew Fast, program director for Leap Resident Owned Communities, said by phone. “Manufactured home communities are probably the only form of naturally occurring affordable houses, where it’s just naturally affordable, where it doesn’t require a government subsidy or government programs.”
Last year, Leap ROC helped residents of 33 homes at a park in Caldwell, now known as the Pleasant View Homeowners Cooperative, buy their park. It’s the only other resident-owned park in Idaho.
Fast declined to say how much Leap paid for the Garden City properties, but said its offer was “competitive” with other offers made on the properties. Listings for two other Garden City manufactured housing parks seek just above $60,000 per space. At that price, Buddy Manor, with 33 spaces, would have been valued at $2 million and Native Dancer, with 23 spaces, would have been valued at $1.4 million.
Native Dancer, closer to the Boise River and the Greenbelt, was assessed at $1.3 million, according to the Ada County Assessor’s Office. Buddy Manor, south of Chinden, was assessed at $898,000.
The parks had been separately owned by Buddy Manor LLC and Native Dancer LLC. Filings with the Idaho Secretary of State’s Office identify Craig Noll as an owner of Buddy Manor and Donald Hanson was listed as a partner in Native Dancer. Contacted through Leap, they declined to talk about the sales.
Resident calls purchase ‘positive’
Resident Sochi Rodriguez, who lives at the former Buddy Dancer park, pays $500 a month for the space under her double-wide trailer, $200 more than under the previous owner. The extra money goes to build up a fund for park upkeep and expenses. She and other residents continue to own their individual homes.
“I’m happy with it,” Rodriguez said in an interview at the park. “It’s been a positive thing.”
Leap ROC worked with a national housing group, ROC USA, which since 2008 has helped residents of 260 manufactured housing parks in 17 states across the nation obtain ownership. Sixteen resident-owned parks are in Oregon, 12 in Washington, nine in Montana, two in Colorado and one in Utah.
Manufactured-home parks are under siege in many parts of the United States as the parcels of land become eyed for more lucrative uses, such as subdivisions for stick-built homes or commercial development. In Garden City, where the city has made strides in recent years to shed its reputation as a poor people’s suburb of Boise, larger, more expensive homes have attracted more affluent buyers.
In 2018, there were 60,586 mobile homes in Idaho, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Of those, 7,136 were in Ada County and 6,124 were in Canyon County.
Fast said Leap was able to make the deal because its offer reflected a market rate, and because no developer had come in with a plan to redevelop the property, which would have made it more valuable.
Fast said he had another factor in his favor: “The sellers were concerned about the health and welfare of their renters,” he said. “If the sellers have a relationship with their tenants, that is a very persuasive argument to them.”
It doesn’t always work out that way. Last month, residents of a Salt Lake City suburb protested the planned closure of a manufactured home park home with about four dozen residents.
A developer wants to replace Centerville Mobile Estates with townhouses, tennis courts and racquetball courts. Residents say they can’t afford to move their homes even if they could find another place to put them, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. They were given nine months to leave.
Two years ago, residents of a park in Akron, New York, a small town 25 miles northeast of Buffalo, were notified of a 40% rent increase. The new owners, a Florida investment company, said anyone who could not afford $450 a month would be evicted.
Last year, Blackstone Group, a New York private equity firm, spent $30 million buying a handful of manufactured home parks in four Florida counties. The year before, Blackstone paid $172 million for 14 parks in California and Arizona.
The company made the purchases intending to operate the parks rather than redevelop them.
Mom-and-pop park owners sell to developers, property managers
Historically, manufactured home parks were owned and operated by mom-and-pop companies. The owners may have lived in the parks or nearby. As those owners have grown older, they’ve looked to sell, attracting both developers and larger property management companies.
Stockbridge Capital, a $13 billion private-equity firm, owns more than 200 parks across the country. The company saw a return on investment of more than 30 percent between late 2016 and the end of 2017, according to documents cited by the Washington Post.
Rising rents charged by Stockbridge were responsible for the generous returns.
About 22 million people nationwide live in manufactured homes. With a median income of less than $30,000, they’re among the most vulnerable of homeowners. Many families live in manufactured homes because they can’t afford anything else.
“We’re excited that we were able to help these residents take charge of their community and not face uncertainty in the future,” Fast said.
Leap ROC and ROC USA provided financing to buy the park, with resident-owners responsible to pay back the loan. Residents pay $100 for an ownership stake in the park. That stake is sold back to the cooperative if a resident leaves.
Leap Roc’s success in purchasing the Garden City parks and Pleasant View in Caldwell on behalf of their residents gives Fast hope that Leap Roc will be able to negotiate similar deals with other local manufactured home parks. He said it’s a great opportunity for park owners who care about their residents and who don’t want to see them gouged or evicted by new owners.
As Garden City builds more expensive houses and sheds its image as Boise’s poor cousin, it could make the land under existing parks more valuable. Which could make Fast’s job more difficult.
“I’m hoping that what we’ve done here will snowball,” he said.
