Not Your Parents’ Mobile Home
Shopping for a home in pricey Westlake Village, Stacy and John Fernandez quickly realized their $360,000 budget would get them only so far. Still, they never expected to end up in a trailer park.
But they are thrilled with the three-bedroom, two-bath double-wide they bought last December in Oak Forest, a leafy mobile home park nestled at the foot of the Santa Monica Mountains.
With its covered front porch, spacious family room and two-car garage, the 1,800-square-foot mobile home offers plenty of “house” for the money and -- best of all -- the Fernandezes own the land their home sits on.
“We’re surrounded by $1-million homes, so this is a deal,” said Stacy Fernandez, a probation officer who couldn’t afford anything else in the high-end community. “We were told by our Realtor yesterday that ... our house has gone up $30,000 in value.
With a creek running through it and oak trees arching in high tunnels over streets named Sherwood Drive, Little John Way and Friar’s Lane, Oak Forest is a nature lover’s dream. Residents proudly note that Errol Flynn wore tights, a sword and feathered cap to shoot scenes under the oaks for the 1938 movie classic “The Adventures of Robin Hood.”
Renee Michelle Alexander bought her 1970s-era trailer there in January for $400,000. New models often feature granite countertops and hardwood floors; hers has leaky toilets, old plumbing and a dark interior. But Alexander, a first-time homeowner who relocated from Pasadena to be closer to family, figures she got a deal anyway.
“Where else can you get all this space?” the artist and massage therapist said as she opened doors and closets to reveal a collection of vintage clothing, antique jewelry and garage sale curios. “Not in a condo.”
Alexander and the Fernandez family are part of a small but growing segment of people who see mobile homes as a way to achieve a piece of the American dream in hyper-expensive coastal California.
Traditionally, living in a mobile home has meant renting space for it. In exclusive beachfront parks such as Paradise Cove in Malibu, used mobile homes sell for as much as $650,000. But those price tags cover only the coach and the right to lease the space. An owner still has to pay rent, which can be as much as $2,000 a month.
In recent years, mobile home dwellers have begun forming cooperatives to buy their communities (Oak Forest residents own their plots outright). About 200 of the state’s 4,800 mobile home parks are resident-owned, according to Sheila Dey, executive director of the Western Manufactured Housing Assn. in Sacramento.
Typically, resident owners pay monthly fees of $150 to $250 to maintain the premises, which can include security gates, swimming pools, recreation rooms and lush landscaping.
“A lot of times when you buy these places, the roads are deteriorated, the water and sewage is old, the clubhouse is old and so are the amenities in it,” said Jerry Bowles, vice president of the Golden State Manufactured Home Owners League.
“It’ll have a dishwasher that hasn’t worked in 10 years, an icebox that can’t keep ice cream cold,” Bowles added. “But you see the attitude change when residents take over. There’s a lot of pride of ownership.”
In Santa Cruz County, one of the most expensive areas in the state to buy a house, with the median price hovering at $560,000, city governments are increasingly supporting conversions because other affordable housing is in such short supply.
Capitola, a coastal city there, has earmarked $400,000 in redevelopment funds to help residents of 90-unit Wharf Road Manor buy their park. In exchange for the financial assistance, residents agree that when they sell their homes they will do so at prices that “moderate income” families can afford, said community development director Kathleen Molloy.
“A lot of cities have identified mobile home parks as a source of relatively affordable housing,” Molloy said. “We’re trying to maintain the diversity of income and housing stock in the city.”
Robert and Dolores Glissman bought their mobile home in Santa Cruz County’s Scotts Valley late last year for $360,000 after a decade in a tiny beach rental. Their new place is a relative Taj Mahal, with cathedral ceilings, skylights and ample storage.
“I never thought I’d live in a mobile home,” said retiree Robert Glissman, who added that the couple had moved to Spring Lake park after tiring of the rowdy college scene in Santa Cruz. “My mother lived in one.... They were very tinny and poorly insulated. You would cook in the summer and freeze in the winter. But this is built as well as a site-built home.”
His future neighbor, Sandi Crouser, sorted her belongings on a recent morning as she prepared to downsize from a four-bedroom house on an acre in Felton to a two-bedroom mobile home in Spring Lake. With her children grown and her husband, Bill, in a nursing home, Crouser said, the family house was too big. Her coach, across the street from one of several lakes studding the grounds, cost a bit more than $400,000.
Crouser is having the old trailer, which was in disrepair, removed and replaced with a new structure.
“My kids said, ‘Mom, you know you don’t have to have a little tin box. You can have it taken away and have a nice, modular home put in.’ What I ended up with is very nice.... It’s hard to find a place with a view.”
Back in Westlake Village’s Oak Forest, a white Bentley in the driveway of a creekside dwelling says it all: Mobile homes have gone upscale.
Take the three-bedroom number recently purchased for $409,000 by professional dog-walker Kris Barnes and her husband, Stuart Steinberg, a teacher. With picture windows in the spacious living room, a kitchen equipped with full-size appliances and a small yard in the rear that borders green hillsides, their abode is a far cry from the dark, cramped trailers of days past.
About the only difference inside is a feeling of elevation; mobile homes and other kinds of manufactured housing often rest above ground level on jacks or risers.
“We really wanted to live in Westlake Village,” Barnes said. “But everything we looked at cost $800,000 or more.”
Then their real estate agent took them to Oak Forest.
“I don’t see the difference between this and a regular house,” Barnes said while sitting on an overstuffed sofa in their all-white living room.
“The only thing smaller is the storage. We had our closets redone to utilize as much space as possible. But I love this house.”
