Investors drive up rents in mobile home communities, squeezing residents

Mobile home communities are one of the last options for affordable housing.

The average price for a new home in the United States is $540,000.

The average manufactured home, also known as a mobile home, sells for $123,300.

That’s according to the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Development.

But a recent trend in mobile home communities in the Northwest is making it harder for residents to afford to stay in those parks: Investors are purchasing and centralizing communities, driving up rents for manufactured home owners in the process.

Mai Hoang and Farah Eltohamy wrote about how residents of these communities are responding to this trend for Crosscut and followed one company called Hurst and Son LLC.

“Their reach has expanded quite rapidly over the last six years," Hoang said. "They've purchased 60 mobile home parks in the Pacific Northwest since 2017. They now own 73 communities in five states, including 56 parks in just Washington state.”

When Hurst and Son took over a community in Aberdeen called Leisure Manor Estates in 2021, residents immediately noticed rent increases.

Originally, residents were paying in the $400 a month range.

“After Hurst acquired them, they got notices that their rents would go up to $635,” Eltohamy said. Hurst also started charging residents for utilities.

But Hurst & Son isn’t the only company that engages in this practice. There is are online courses teaching mobile home owners how to invest in these communities, “this is a plan that a lot of like corporate, mobile home owners are adopting,” Hoang said. “So they'll come in, raise the rent, and the idea is that over time, you acquire a certain group of people that can afford those rents. So, it gets to the point where manufactured homes are an option for higher income earners.”

Mobile home communities are one of the few remaining options for affordable housing and home ownership for many people. But owners have to rent the property underneath and so-called mobile homes aren't particularily easy to move, especially as they age.

Some of the residents of these homes have lived in the same community for decades. Those homes are often difficult to move “so you have to give up the home and sign over the home to the manufactured home community owner,” Hoang said. “You’re in a situation where you could be homeless or having to scramble to find a new place to live.”

Eltohamy and Hoang spoke with dozens of residents of Hurst and Son properties across the state and found a network of mobile home community members who met over Zoom to compare notes and talk about their experiences with the management company.

Many are organizing across mobile home communities. At Leisure Manor Estates, two residents have led a charge to create more protections for manufactured home owners.

“They recently helped push an ordinance in the city of Aberdeen that would require landlords to tell residents in manufactured housing about these rent hikes much sooner in advance,” Eltohamy said. The law requires landlords to give residents a 120-day notice versus a 90-day notice.

"And that was something that they really pushed forth through petitioning, and through inviting politicians over to the community,” Eltohamy added.

There has been some movement in Olympia toward additional protections for mobile home owners, too. A bill introduced by Sen. Kevin Van de Wege (D-Lake Sutherland) would have capped rent increases that were greater than the rate of inflation. That proposal ultimately failed to pass.

However, the state legislature did pass a bill this year that would require landlords to notify a community if they intend to purchase it.

“That gives the residents the option of pooling in the money and implementing the co-op model,” Eltohamy explained, “where instead of a landlord coming in and owning their community,” residents can own that community themselves.

The co-op practice isn’t particularly common. Hoang said that this law may change that.

“Before this law was passed, the landlords didn't have to notify that they were selling,” she said. “So you had a situation where, when we had that very hot real estate market, and during Covid, you just had owners selling and buying like crazy. And so, there was really no opportunity for these manufactured home owners to take the initiative.”