Freedom is a tricky thing. For instance, the freedom from regulation in the mobile home park business gives the landlords lots of freedom but leaves tenants in fear of losing their homes.
Such is the freedom-tension playing out at Prairie Acres Estates on the north side of Rapid City, where new out-of-state owners appear to be jacking up the rent, piling repair demands on tenants, and threatening to evict those who don’t comply before winter:
A concerned mother of a tenant recounted her son’s experience with rent increases and a subsequent list of repairs.
“He has had his rent increase. And then six months after that, another increase, which amounted to around 70% in about 13 to 14 months,” she told the council. “Following the last $100 increase, we received an extensive repair list. I have my son’s list here, which included requests to repaint the mobile home, paint the skirting, and more. It felt overwhelming.”
…The struggles at Prairie Acres Estates extend beyond maintenance woes. For many, the mobility of their older mobile homes is constrained, rendering them immobile when lease agreements are terminated or eviction looms. These homes represent not just a place to live but a significant investment. Without the ability to move, residents face the grim prospect of losing their valuable property.
In the state of South Dakota, it’s crucial to note that mobile home owners have no legal protections distinct from typical renters in this scenario. If a lease is terminated or a resident is evicted, and the tenant leaves behind belongings with a total value less than $500, the landlord is not obligated to store them and may treat them as abandoned property, disposing of them accordingly. However, if the belongings are estimated to have a value exceeding $500, the landlord must store them for 30 days. During this period, the landlord can request reimbursement for handling and storage costs before returning the property. After the 30-day storage period, the landlord is no longer required to store the belongings and can dispose of them. If a tenant leaves the mobile home on the property after being evicted, the landlord can pursue legal action to obtain title to the mobile home and subsequently sell it [Catherine Maher, “Between Homes and Heartaches: The Unsettled Lives of Rapid City Mobile Home Owners,” Rapid City Journal, 2023.10.14].
Lawyer kin of a couple Prairie Estates residents points out that Colorado recently enacted laws to prevent exactly that sort of home loss:
Amid this backdrop, Amber Munck, an attorney from Colorado, voiced her concerns. Her niece and sister reside within the park. The contrast between Colorado, where protections for mobile home park residents have been enacted, and South Dakota, where similar safeguards are lacking, was stark, she said.
“Colorado put additional protections allowing for additional time for mobile homeowners in that situation to sell their homes. But be that as it may, this is allowed in South Dakota,” Munck said. “What I think is truly not allowed is the repeated violation letters, identifying subjective, aesthetic elements that are not stated as requirements in the lease.”
In 2019, Colorado enacted a bill called the Mobile Home Park Act to protect mobile home owners, granting counties and municipalities the power to enact certain ordinances for mobile home parks, extending the time period between the notice of nonpayment of rent and the termination of any tenancy or other estate at will or lease in a mobile home park, and extending the time a mobile home owner has to vacate a mobile home park after a court enters an eviction order [Maher, 2023.10.14].
Colorado’s Mobile Home Park Act doesn’t solve every problem for every tenant, but it at least gives mobile home owners a little more freedom to live without fear of losing their entire abode. The law includes the Colorado General Assembly’s finding that mobile homes are a vital part of meeting Colorado’s need for affordable housing.
Freedom doesn’t mean a simple absence of laws. An unregulated marketplace often leads to an imbalance of power, with the already rich and powerful depriving the poor of what little wealth they have. A regulated marketplace can protect the meager wealth of the many from the greed of the few, thus ensuring a better distribution of freedom (or, more aptly, in the context of a robust social contract, liberty) to all.
And it’s hard to feel free when the fact that your paycheck can’t stretch for a few repairs means you could lose the home you’ve owned for years.
In many cases, deregulate is just code for plunder.
A Mobile Home Park is nothing but a regular 160 or 320 acreage or estate of land owned by the Landowner, who controls many aspects of the land itself. They agree to annex their acreage into the political subdivision (the state) with the goal of subdividing their land into 1 acre units of land to be used for “Residential Space”. They agree to convey part of their land to connect it to city utilities, water, sewer, while maintaining full ownership of their own land, infrastructure, and roads within the estate. Knowing that South Dakota is one of the remaining “Homestead States” in the country, Texas and Florida being the same as, all the power is held by the landowner. Property Rights is 9/10th’s of the law, and they own it. They get to set the rates such as “renting out their land” for a monthly fee, they control the water usage rates, the sewer rates, as well as the electricity in most cases. The Landowner is agreeing by contract to use the “CITY” services, while subleasing, and charging out those fees based on a pre-arranged agreement with the “Renter” themselves. In many cases, the renters are billed on a “month-to-month” fixed chartged rate for Electric, Water, Sewer, unless the Landowner agrees to invest in metering system which is NOT mandatory in the State, let alone Sioux Falls.The City could maybe adopt an ordinance to mandate such, however, being a Homestead State, as based on Article 22, Section 2, if the landowner has control of all covenants, the patents, etc, the city has no power to hold them to such ordinance. So your back to square one…
Manufactured housing is one of the biggest victims of cartelization in the housing sector. REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) control more manufactured housing parks than ever before, and have gotten considerably larger than they were twenty or even ten years ago, when the owner generally lived in the park as well and charged reasonable fees. Now, REITs have cartelized and taken over vast swaths of what we derisively refer to as “trailer parks” and raised lot fees to sometimes unconscionable levels. We’re talking $1,000-$1,500 in expensive parts of the U.S. That is just for the lot and not for the lot and the home itself, nor any other bills, utilities, or maintenance. Most manufactured homes, especially those built prior to the new millennium, are extremely difficult to actually move. So when they jack up the lot fees, it is oftentimes a ploy to dispossess the owner out of title to their home. When the owner is evicted and cannot afford to move (or move regardless of expense) the home, the park owner now gets to own their home at no cost to them, aside from the eviction paperwork.
While I sort-of agree with Mr. Zitterich, this area is distinct from home ownership or normal apartment/house rental. If I get evicted from an apartment, I can move into another apartment. I lose no equity in the unit itself. With a manufactured home, I likely own title to the home but not the land. While manufactured housing park owners may have the right to increase lot fees, their means or reasons for doing so are not necessarily ethical or moral, and should be prevented from dispossessing owners out of their homes or otherwise gaining title to it through a process of eviction.
Additionally, virtually all manufacturing is controlled by Berkshire Hathaway in a nearly perfectly vertically integrated manner. They own two or three of the largest manufacturers, including Clayton Homes. The financing? A huge, huge portion of the financing for manufactured housing is controlled by Berkshire Hathaway as well. Less now that Berkshire has divested much of its Wells Fargo ownership, but still, they own a lot. Would not be surprised to learn that Berkshire Hathaway owns a substantial number of REITs as well, although I have no proof to that effect. But they own everything else in the industry, so missing out of the last piece of the pie seems unlikely.
Let this be a lesson to you all. Do not live in these “manufactured housing” units. Trailers, we used to call them. A trailer house, because you could trailer it around if you needed to. And if you must or choose to live in a trailer house, make sure it has axles and wheels so you can trailer it around when you need to.
Agree with Grudz and surprisingly Mike Z. Lot leases arent permanent housing.
I dont know what happens to these ‘title takeovers’ but cant imagine they are making a killing flipping and selling them. My guess is they essentially raze them so a better unit can come in. Cant be much market value.
Im not saying its not painful, but how much money do these people have invested in these immobile mobile homes?
I agree improved laws could make the process a little less bumpy. Buyer Beware!
Zit, there is no such thing as ” …..full ownership of their own land…..” Like every other holder of a title in fees simple to real property in the US, the owner(s) of mobile home parks simply ow n a “title”, a document that enables them to occupy and use the described real property so long as they follow the landlord’s rules for allowed uses (see your own description of some of the details of what the state’s rules are for this particular use), and pay the rent fee (property taxes). Some day you “sovereigntists” will learn to use the correct language. @ real property.
Mark, “Im not saying it’s not painful, but how much money do these people have invested in these immobile mobile homes?” Unfortunately, the answer is everything they have — literally.
Under SD abandoned property law the owner of a moblie home park has no right to take ownership of a moble home left behind by a tenant. Instead, that owner must take several steps, eventually transferring the property to the State Treasurer (who is labeled the “administrator” in SD statutes). See SDCL 43-41B-18 through SDCL 43-41B-23. These statutes are a bit wordy and perhaps confusing, but the impact means that no one has the right to simply take property they find abandoned, including a landlord.
If the tenant owes the landlord a debt, and obtains a court judgment, the landlord can direct the county sheriff to sell that property and pay over the amount of the debt, plus court costs etc, to the landlord tosatisfy that judgment (and may buy a mobile home the sheriff offers for sale, subject to SD Homestead exemption and protection statutes – See SDCL 43-31-2). If the sale yields more than what is owed the balance must be returned to the owner. Likewise, with abandoned property that after 3 years is not claimed by the owner, the State Treasurer may sell that property, and the landlord can bid on it just like any other member of the public (although the landlord would certainly be in a better position to buy for very little cost if the expense of moving the moble home was greater than its market value).
Bottom line, any historical “finders-keepers” rule has been superceded by State law, and no landlord may willy nilly keep property left behind by a tenant, even if it is only a small amount og of property (SDCL 43-32-25), let alone a moble home. Instead the “abandoned property” statutes at SDCL 43-41B-18 through SDCL 43-41B-23 govern. (There may be some exceptions that permit retention in unique cases, but I haven’t found them and see none in the chapter (SDCL ch 43-32) dealing with leased property (i.e. land-tenant)