The Truth About Mobile Home Park Resident Employment By Frank Rolfe

Haven't seen Fed comments re: accuracy and subsequent months downward adjustments by [the Bureau of Labor Statistics]. These, for many months, have mostly significantly been reductions to reported numbers of new hires. I, for all of 2024, feel BLS is manipulating the initially reported nonfarm payroll number then figure the consumers will ignore AFTER numbers... all these months leading up to voting... Thus, true unemployment rate may be 4.4%. Elephant in the room?... 

That's a quote from an economics newsletter I get. The point is that the U.S. employment numbers were deliberately fabricated by around a million jobs – recently revealed by corrections in the numbers. And that should make every American a little suspicious on where employment really stands, because we now know that actual data is being manipulated for the November election. More than likely there will be a huge reveal following the election and we will all be horrified by the lies (yet to late to do anything about it politically). So if we can't really trust the nation's responsibility in macro numbers, what can we do to examine the typical mobile home park resident base as far as its exposure to what may be an extremely unfavorable job market? Here are the basic facts:

We believe that around 50% of mobile home park residents are retired

Mobile home parks have a very large concentration of retired Americans. It comes as no surprise that there are 10,000 Baby Boomers retiring in the U.S. daily, and a large number of those downsize their housing upon retirement to use that capital to invest and to reduce living expenses. While there are some parks that are nearly 100% retirees (known as "senior parks") even the average "all age" property typically exhibits a large concentration from those who have left the labor force and live on social security. As a result, mobile home parks are uniquely insulated from employment stats, in general.

We believe that substantially all mobile home park residents are in "essential" jobs

We learned, during the 2020 Covid-19 crisis, that virtually all of our residents who are employed are in – what was called by the U.S. government during that period – "essential" jobs. These are the employment sectors that make the nation function and cannot be reduced in recessions or even national emergencies. As a result, even a strong recession will be unable to stop your residents from making money to pay rent and other high-priority household bills. What's at risk in the coming employment crisis are those in "non-essential" industries and roles.

We believe that many mobile home park residents have upside in earnings even in recessions

It should come as no surprise that many mobile home park residents earn roughly the minimum wage or higher – probably somewhere around $12 to $20 per hour. And that's been the most successful earnings strata based on percentage increases. While many states have increased minimum wage levels substantially (District of Columbia has now hit $17 per hour), this is simply a starting spot for most residents. The key item is that – at these wage levels – there's nowhere to go but up. These workers are backstopped by the minimum wage, so even if there's an employment shift they can't really go down in earnings while an executive at Boeing could drop from $100,000 per year to $20,000 per year in a worst-case scenario.

Conclusion

In a world of employment uncertainty, it's refreshing that mobile home park residents are uniquely insulated from this issue. When the new Great Recession hits (which may already be here since the government information is corrupted prior to the elections), mobile home park residents should be able to negotiate those hurdles with ease, as they are in exactly the right jobs at exactly the right time.

By Frank Rolfe

Frank Rolfe has been an investor in mobile home parks for almost 30 years, and has owned and operated hundreds of mobile home parks during that time. He is currently ranked, with his partner Dave Reynolds, as the 5th largest mobile home park owner in the U.S., with around 20,000 lots spread out over 25 states. Along the way, Frank began writing about the industry, and his books, coupled with those of his partner Dave Reynolds, evolved into a course and boot camp on mobile home park investing that has become the leader in this niche of commercial real estate.