Another bill is being drafted that would give residents access to a loan fund that would help them compete with private equity firms, many of which receive government-sponsored financing to purchase parks. The bill would also limit rent increases to 3 percent a year. Boesenecker proposes requiring park owners to allow residents or a local government to make the first offer. In legislation introduced this month, Mr. State Representative Andrew Boesenecker, whose home city of Fort Collins has seen a flurry of park sales in the last few years including a recent sale for $57 million, says the opportunity-to-purchase law doesn’t go nearly far enough. In others, residents were notified but struggled to coalesce quickly enough to make a purchase offer. In 20 cases, park owners failed to notify residents in compliance with the law before selling, according to data from the state Department of Local Affairs. Many young professional families and college students turn to mobile home parks as a final vestige of relatively affordable housing.īut in the two years since Colorado’s opportunity-to-purchase law went into effect, only Sans Souci and two other parks have been sold to residents. With prices and rents for all kinds of housing soaring in many parts of the country, demand for manufactured housing is climbing. From auto insurance to homeowners or business insurance, we have the solution to. If residents of mobile-home parks can’t keep up with rising rents, or can’t afford to make the often extensive alterations to porches, gardens and awnings that are required under the new management’s rules, they are swiftly replaced. Protect your personal and business investments with Travelers Insurance. And Fannie Mae said that manufactured housing represents more than 6 percent of the nation’s housing units. Some 22 million people live in manufactured homes in the United States, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute, a national trade organization. That has made the investors among the country’s largest landlords. Real Capital Analytics, a market research firm, said in a June 2021 report that institutional investors had accounted for 23 percent of manufactured housing park purchases over the previous two years, up from 13 percent in the two years before that. Once again, though, the deal fell through, when the company declined the residents’ offer in January. Then, just a month after purchasing the park, the company offered to sell it to the residents - at a far higher price than the company had just paid for it. Antypas said, adding that the additional revenue would go toward repair costs and that there were need-based subsidies available from the city. “We believe in charging a fair market rent,” Mr. The company quickly proved the Golden Hills residents’ fears correct, applying 50-percent rent increases and issuing a 12-page single-spaced list of new park rules.Ī spokesman for Harmony Communities, George Antypas, defended the rent increase, noting that the new rents were still below those at similar parks nearby. But to no avail: In July, the owners rejected their initial offer and a higher one a few months later, and sold the park instead to Harmony Communities, a manufactured-home operator with 5,000 residents in 33 parks across the western United States.
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