CONSUMERS : Mobile Home Owners at a Standstill
Question: My question regards real estate practices in Southern California and a mobile home park where my mother lives. The residents, all 55-years-plus, buy their mobile homes, lease their lots and pay rent monthly. Recently, changes by management have caused great unhappiness and concern. Each resident must sign an agreement with the management to maintain their home and property. The management recently required all residents to replace their black-top drives with concrete by March.
Management has required tenants to remove their carports, which were attached to the mobile homes when the residents bought the units, and allegedly required one woman to paint her home and clean her rugs. Aren’t these things capital improvements and the responsibility of management? The company also uses its “right” to assess extra fees and approve, or disapprove, all sales of the mobile homes. This appears to me to be virtual confiscation of one’s rights over his or her private property without due process.
In addition, real estate agents there are asking (demanding) a $5,000 fee, up front, to represent a seller of a mobile home. The agents say the fee is theirs whether or not they sell the property. Because the average price is about $45,000, that’s sure a lot more than the normal 6% to 7% commission. I would appreciate your opinion.--S.T.L.
Answer: It sure sounds to me as if your mother is an inmate of Stalag 17. The whole situation, in the words of a spokesman for the California Assn. of Realtors, is “bizarre.”
As is the case with individual and corporate landlords all over the world, mobile home park landlords are going to range all the way from paternalistic to sadistic. And while the situation at your mother’s park is sure a long way from “typical,” in the opinion of John Jensen, chairman of the National Federation of Mobile Home Owners (NFMHO), based in Redmond, Wash., it’s also certainly not unknown.
“State and local laws protecting mobile home owners--or not protecting them--range all over the landscape, and while some states are moving toward legislation that will help owners retain the equity in their homes, it’s far from universal,” he said.
“Commonly,” Jensen added, “when a park management exhausts its tax depreciation on the property, it simply stops maintaining the park and tries to shove this chore over onto the tenants.
“Frequently too when their depreciation runs out on the park, they try to get it rezoned to a ‘higher’ usage, and when the rezoning comes through, they throw the tenants out,” Jensen said. “San Diego, however, is an example of one city--with a high mobile home inventory--where they’ve enacted an ordinance, which, in the event of a rezoning, requires the management to relocate the tenants of a mobile home park.”
But, at the moment, tenants are at the mercy of such tactics in addition to spiraling rent increases.
The renter of a conventional property, unhappy with demands put upon him by the landlord, can simply move. Mobile home owners, however, are stuck with a unit that is “mobile” in about the same way that the Grand Canyon is “mobile.”
And, while covenants and other maintenance requirements are commonplace and expected, when one buys a unit in a park (or any variation of the condominium concept), the practice of management changing the conditions unilaterally later is a relatively new twist.
So, is there’s no recourse to the extra assessments and constantly rising rents that park operators are heaping on tenants?
“Not too many,” according to Ileana Carde, administrator for the Garden Grove-based Golden State Mobile Home Owners League.
“You can always file a complaint with the California Department of Housing and Community Development, of course,” Carde added. And the department’s mobile home ombudsman has a toll-free number: (800) 952-5275.
And, the spokesman for the California Assn. of Realtors said--in regard to that peculiar and heavy-handed approach to the fixed-fee, up-front commission demanded by the brokers--would-be sellers should definitely report this interpretation of the brokers’ role in a free economy to the Board of Realtors in the city where this is taking place.
But the final solution to the mobile home tenant’s vulnerability to park operators, both the NFMHO’s Jensen and Carde agreed, is in the tenants taking over their parks themselves and controlling their own destinies.
Your mother and her fellow tenants might consider membership in Carde’s Golden State Mobile Home Owners League, which has prepared a “how to” packet on this very subject: getting the financing for, and arranging the purchase of, your mobile home park. This, and a copy of the California Civil Codes governing mobile home parks, can be obtained by writing to the league at P.O.Box 876, Garden Grove, Calif. 92642. There is also a toll-free number: (800) 422-4471. The league also maintains a toll-free number for on-site legal advice on mobile home matters, but it’s for members only.
“Buying the mobile home park,” Carde contends, “is really the only way you can take control of your life style and we strongly recommend it. In fact, our board of directors is involved in setting up a subsidiary company to help tenants buy their parks. There’s plenty of money available for this, and in the long run, it’s no more expensive than renting.”
What your mother is experiencing, unfortunately, is far from unique, and while no one is suggesting that a majority of mobile home park operators are engaged in it, the exploitation of people who feel themselves trapped this way needs serious examination.
