Predatory investors article NYer- Mobile home parks

[Michael Rodriguez]

Howdy Bigger Pockets family,

I just want to post a link to this New Yorker article describing the difficulties suffered by residents from predatory investment firms some hedge funds, and smaller investors perhaps.

I won't give an opinion here as it is not my place.  Just good reading.

What Happens When Investment Firms Acquire Trailer Parks

Stay green.

MRod

[Frank Rolfe]

As the person who is referenced in the article repeatedly, I would like to point out the simple fact that most of the mom and pop mobile home parks in the U.S. are in terrible condition (a simple drive through will prove this out) and there are only two roads to take with these properties: 1) have new owners buy them, inject capital into them to bring them back to life, install professional management and raise the rents significantly or 2) let them fall into such disrepair that the city shuts them down or new developers buy them and bulldoze them. So the residents across America in these run-down mobile home parks have two realities ahead: 1) higher rents and tougher rules or 2) finding a new place to live. You would think that the media would embrace park owners who bring these old properties back to life and preserve affordable housing (but at a slightly higher rent) but instead they take just one or two unhappy residents out of communities that have 100 or more households and build the false narrative that all residents are unhappy with the trade-off being higher rents and a higher quality of life. 

Let's look at The New Yorker itself for example. The New Yorker costs $8 an issue at the news stand. Virtually every other magazine is cheaper. But people are willing to pay more because they like the higher quality of the writing and cartoons (not my personal taste but obviously there are those that do). Life is NOT all about providing the cheapest product on earth. Value is the key and 99.9% of mobile home park resident will happily pay more rent for a nicer living environment.

Let's also all admit that the reason the The New Yorker would write such an article is that they love the narrative that all landlords are inherently evil as is capitalism in general. Here is the rundown of the magazine's readership base, straight out of Wikipedia:

According to Pew Research, 77 percent of The New Yorker's audience hold left-of-center political values, while 52 percent of those readers hold "consistently liberal" political values.[

Enough said.