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The Economics of Everyday Things

18. Mobile Home Parks

The Economics of Everyday Things

Freakonomics Network

Business

4.81.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 September 2023

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

They’ve long been associated with crime and blight. Now, the investors are moving in. Zachary Crockett follows the trail.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

In 2012, a small audience of real estate investors gathered in a conference room in Colorado to learn about a lucrative opportunity.

0:15.4

We'll meet together the next three days, just one goal, and estimate everybody here a

0:19.2

competent mobile loan parked investor.

0:21.6

So we're going to show you how to find properties, negotiate,

0:25.0

renegotiate them, finance them. That's Frank Rolf, co-owner of Mobile Home

0:30.7

University. Do due diligence on them.

0:34.0

I'd properly buy them, close on them.

0:36.0

Turn them around and operate them and even sell them.

0:39.0

This kind of college styled about 30 hours in length where we teach them everything

0:44.3

from finding mobile home parks to evaluating them and running them.

0:50.3

11 years ago capitalists weren't clamoring to own mobile home parks.

0:55.0

That has changed.

0:57.0

Today, investors are cashing in on one of America's biggest and most vulnerable affordable housing markets.

1:05.0

When I bought Leadhaven, my very eviction, was a veteran who had severe mental problems.

1:17.6

Very nice individual, but didn't have their act together in a big way and hadn't paid rent in months and I then

1:26.9

had to evict her for non-payment. I had to do something.

1:31.3

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things.

1:35.0

I'm Zachary Crockett. Today, mobile home parks.

1:40.0

At the dawn of the automobile industry in the 1920s, trailers were toys for the

1:47.8

rich, a way to travel the country in luxury. That changed during World War II

1:54.0

when the federal government bought tens of thousands of trailers

1:58.0

and used them to create permanent housing communities

...

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