The State of the Union Rebuttal By Frank Rolfe

During Joe Biden’s latest State of the Union address many issues were discussed but Biden, who owns no mobile home parks, did not really reflect the opinions of mobile home park owners so we wanted to put together this official rebuttal of the President’s remarks.

• 12 million new jobs and a low unemployment rate. Good news for park owners, as high levels of employment mean plenty of customers who can afford to pay rent. Of course, this statistic is somewhat misleading, as it’s not just about the creation of jobs but rather the creation of higher paying jobs, which did not actually materialize. In fact, roughly 218,000 of the roughly 500,000 jobs added in January were in the low-paying hospitality sector. This is particularly good news for mobile home park owners as the sectors that represent the bulk of mobile home park resident jobs have shown the most gains, including hospitality, food production, transportation, and similar venues. While high-paying tech companies lay off by the thousands, these are not mobile home park customers. 

• Inflation. There are only two types of assets that do well in times of high inflation: 

  1) precious metals and 2) real estate. Of these two, real estate pays monthly dividends while precious metals do not. And of the real estate options, mobile home parks are the superior choice in times of high inflation for two main reasons including 1) the ability to raise rents aggressively to match increases in costs thanks to moms and pops “quantitative easing” rents by refusing to raise them for decades despite he level of inflation and 

  2) the endless demand for affordable housing which is essential as high inflation typically leads to a recession or depression. 

• The infrastructure bill. This is great news for park owners as the infrastructure bill disproportionally benefits the “rust belt” and similar markets where mobile home parks frequently can be found and need a shot in the arm. Additionally, the top industries that will receive big orders to rebuild worn-out infrastructure are such employers as John Deere and Caterpillar, which are in the states where there are a lot of parks and hire a lot of park residents. 

• Gun violence. This is not a real issue for mobile home park owners as most mobile home parks are in suburbs and exurbs and not in urban centers where gun violence actually is an issue.

• Fentanyl crisis. This is a serious issue and one that needs to be addressed. It’s not currently. But everyone hopes it will be. 

• Invasion of Ukraine. America’s approach to the Ukraine war is to supply it with endless weapons. Those weapons are built in factories. Those factories are mostly located in Texas, which is the largest military contractor state. Texas also is #1 in number of mobile home parks, and those parks directly benefit from all those munition orders.

• Debt ceiling crisis. America is over $30 trillion in debt, which works out to the unsustainable amount of nearly $100,000 per person. Considering the fact that less than 50% of Americans pay any taxes at all, the burden per actual taxpayer is around $200,000 per person. Nobody has an actual plan to fix this. As a result, America’s decline will be endless, and recessions will continue as a continual factor in U.S. living. This means an endless demand for affordable housing since Americans – whether they like it or not – are becoming poorer on a daily basis, and unable to pay current housing prices.

Of course, this is just the State of the Union from a park owner’s perspective. But if you’re looking at buying and operating a mobile home park, that’s all that matters. And if you want to learn the correct way to identify, evaluate, negotiate, perform due diligence on, renegotiate, finance, turn-around and operate there’s no better source than the guy the New York Times calls “the human encyclopedia of all things mobile home park”: Frank Rolfe. He sees the world from only one perspective and that’s the only one that should be important to you if you are serious about getting into the mobile home park business. Frank Rolfe has been a manufactured home community owner for almost two decades, and currently ranks as part of the 5th largest community owner in the United States, with more than 23,000 lots in 28 states in the Great Plains and Midwest. His books and courses on community acquisitions and management are the top-selling ones in the industry. To learn more about Frank’s views on the manufactured home community industry visit the CREU University.

Frank Rolfe has been a manufactured home community owner for almost two decades, and currently ranks as part of the 5th largest community owner in the United States, with more than 23,000 lots in 28 states in the Great Plains and Midwest. His books and courses on community acquisitions and management are the top-selling ones in the industry. To learn more about Frank’s views on the manufactured home community industry visit the CREU University