Mobile Home Brokers Face Challenges during the Recession
Mobile home brokers in Michigan, California and other states have been facing various challenges during the downturn, as the demand for mobile homes or manufactured homes have been declining since the late 1990s.
In Michigan, sales of mobile homes have dropped from the peak sales of 11,792 mobile homes in 1999 to only 1,695 units in 2006, the last year of sales recorded by the Michigan Manufactured Housing Association.
In Ventura County, California, a rising number of manufactured home owners have been leaving their trailer parks as park owners started converting their parks into condominium units or mobile home lots for sale.
The problem has even worsened to a point that California legislators needed to pass legislation to protect families living in manufactured home parks from sudden conversions of their parks into condominiums. Currently, park owners in California can convert their parks into condominiums even if their survey of residents show that many residents do not approve the planned conversion.
Critics and housing advocates in California claim that park owners are just finding a way to skirt the rent control law. Landlords know that even if just one lot is acquired as a condominium lot, they can increase the rent they charge because the rent control law does not apply to condominium developments.
While many mobile home brokers are distracted by these problems of mobile home owners and park owners, many others have been successfully selling mobile homes to families who have lost their houses to foreclosures and to families finding cheaper housing alternatives during the recession.
At the Tanglewood Village in Brownstown Township, Michigan, many premium mobile homes have been delivered to households who have decided to buy upper-end manufactured homes with larger spaces and more rooms rather than struggle paying their detached single-family homes.
One family of four decided to leave their mortgage-burdened $125,000 Taylor home behind and buy a four-bedroom house at half the price of their old house and around 60 percent of the median sale price for a non-foreclosed house in Detroit.
Based on data from Manufactured Housing Institute, the overall sales of mobile homes have been declining in the past decades, but the sales of premium mobile homes have been rising.
According to the association, a total of 3,967 premium units were sold in the Great Lakes area in 2007, an increase from the 2,247 units sold in 2006. With this rising pace, mobile home brokers still have opportunities to pursue their businesses.
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