The morality of owning mobile home parks

[Jess White]

Let’s deep dive on this, I really want to hear both sides of this. Let’s keep it positive and may this be a start of a conversation.

What is the morality of owning a mobile home park, specifically to those of a lower income?

Is it right to sell the dream of owning a depreciating asset to those that aren’t truly educated on the subject?

Once again, let’s keep this civil and start an ongoing conversation.

[JD Martin]

The odd thing to me about this is no one asks whether it is right to sell a person a car that isn't truly educated on the subject. Virtually all cars are depreciating assets and yet I don't remember hearing about too much cry and hue about not selling a car to someone.

First and foremost, a primary residence is a place to live. Whether or not it appreciates is not the primary function of the purchase. Lots of people in this country, even in an expanding RE market, lose money on their primary residence - especially if *all* costs have been accounted for, which usually doesn't happen when people are trying to figure out if they made any money on their home. They figure they bought it for $100k and sold it for $150k, they must have made money - but they forgot about the $30k in improvements and repairs they made while they were living in it, not to mention interest paid on the mortgage and the lost opportunity costs. 

So turn this to mobile homes. Some people might argue that it's *more* moral to sell someone the least expensive, clean, safe place they can live in as a primary residence, the same way you might consider it more "moral" to sell a low income person a $5k reliable used car rather than a $50k Suburban with a monster payment. 

Just because some - maybe a lot - of mobile home parks are run poorly and look like crap doesn't make the park itself any more or less inherently good. I can drive to a lot of places where stick-built housing is downright scary, because slumlords own it and the city doesn't care to do anything about requiring basic levels of maintenance. In fact, in my own city, the projects that are owned by the local housing authority are cleaner and better maintained than the privately-owned low income housing in the same area, which often looks junked up, failing siding, failing roofs, etc. 

Another thing - a mobile home park where the individual owns the mobile home gives people pride of ownership, which is no different to me than if you live in a house in a neighborhood. You can say "Yeah, but they're paying rent on the lot" - but so is everyone that owns a house. If I don't pay my property tax - which is state/county "rent" on my land - they foreclose on my property. If there's a homeowner's association and I don't pay my dues - the same thing. How is that any different than paying rent on a MH spot? 

A mobile home park can be run well or can be run like a dump. There are mobile home parks in Florida on the ocean & intercoastal waterways that cost more than my 2300 sf home. 

I think getting down on mobile homes and parks is an elitist attitude. I wouldn't want to live in one, but not because I think they are good or bad, the same way I wouldn't want to live in a condo or a townhouse because I want space from my neighbors. Lots of people feel differently. You couldn't pay me to live in a Manhattan penthouse, yet people pay 7+ figures to buy some of them.