Mobile home parks are predatory. Unlike a traditional home, "owners" own only the home and pay an exorbitant land rent each month. So, unlike a traditional home where the land appreciates and you maintain the home, you get in effect, the worst of both worlds. You get zero land equity for rents approaching mortgages (YMMV. They are very high in desirable CA locations.), and still pay to maintain the home.
Of course, private equity firms love the idea. Price-fixing among park owners happens. [1] Some comments [2]
Pro's and Cons[0]
I live in a double-wide manufactured home in the country, and own the land, quite a bit of it (sharpens chain saw ) Spare you the details.
How is this different than owning a house or a condo? A house you still pay property tax on the land. A condo you still pay an association fee. Both of which generally go up continually every year.
This is also not a surprise that they don’t own the land. At any time they can move their mobile home, unlike a house or condo. They fully know what they signed up for.
I pay about $2000 a year for property tax (It's in the boondocks). That's it. A land rent may be a big chunk of that every month. It varies a lot, so run the numbers.
A Condo owner owns the land and pays property tax and HOA fees, which can be steep, so there's land appreciation.
Why pay so much every month to get zero land equity and zero home maintenance?
Run some numbers. I did sometime back. And don't forget, these are microscopic lots. Barely room for a couple of storage shelves under a car awning.
The references say that the mobile homes depreciate, so they're not even worth moving, and landlords charge anyway. I linked to very short ones that bring up key issues.
The major difference is condominium associations are cooperatives, and mobile home parks are owned by a landlord while you are the tenant. The point that is being made is there's a trend for these landlords to become predatory.
In a condominium you are a member in the association that owns the common areas and have a voice. The board is other people who own condominiums there, and will at least try to do things in the best interest of the condominium owners.
> "owners" own only the home and pay an exorbitant land rent each month. So, unlike a traditional home where the land appreciates
Isn't this the same as many apartments with body corporates that lease the land they are on? Called "Stratum in Leasehold" in New Zealand (although uncommon except for some inner city - I think because riskier so harder to get a mortgage).
Leasehold isn't common for residential in New Zealand AFAIK. And mobile home parks are uncommon too.
But with a lease it's up to the landlord to maintain the property. That's what he is saying you get the downsides of both lease and ownership with none of the upsides.
In california I think these parks are fairly well protected from increases in rent, and the over-age-<nn> parks might be super-cheap. I remember seeing an over-50 park in the bay area was $300/month space rent.
But I don't know how change in ownership and/or tricks can figure into things.
A while back, when there was after-school education money, I was interested in creating labs for students to go out and measure things and reduce the data in class/lab and/or do so at home with a live linux distro or remotely on a class server.
The idea was to take real measurements and use open source tools, this being their introduction to them, to analyze.
Fact is that most run cross-platform, but are at last glance, included in most linux distros other than the smallest ones. Knoppix was being updated regularly at the time and was my choice. If it ran at all, it was easier than downloading those apps. Boot and run. (or run remotely)
That program (i.e. the money) wound down. Computers AND exercise. If it involved trips to the marsh, a chance to photograph some shorebirds, as well.
not sure if it involved actually building simple instruments, though that would have been fun. I was always intrigued by the "Amateur Scientist" sections in old Sci-Am magazines.
Education is really interesting, because everything is new to kids, and people in this community know that growth and real innovation come from facing new, undocumented, challenges and "finding a way". I tried to automate (some but not all) tasks via scripts rather than one-off tinkering, and what I gained was skill at scripting, especially when "Mr. Internet" didn't have a ready-made solution ...
Trump: We don't want to be the policemen of the world BY BRETT SAMUELS - 04/30/18. [0]
> President Trump on Monday said the U.S. should no longer serve as the “policemen of the world.”
> “We more and more are not wanting to be the policemen of the world,” Trump said during a joint press conference with Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari.
> “We’re spending tremendous amounts of money for decades policing the world, and that shouldn’t be the priority,”
> Trump ran on the promise that he would extricate the U.S. from foreign wars.
California passed a law to make it easier to convert strip malls to housing. Uptake has been slow, and ADU's seem more successful, but it's a start. Can't speak to larger malls.
I only know two "nearby" in the central valley, and they seem OK, though I only ever visit one because it has the only Apple store in a very large area. I spend more time at thrift stores, mainly for the unpredictable items that show up. And the Hawaiian shirts at a fraction of retail prices. Large, unfortunately, falls past my knees. Aloha, HN'ers!
Looks similar to an iPad in the fancy case. I even added a mouse.
For all the discussion, IMNSHO, the big deal is the (unknown) software.
I miss some vital things in iOS. First, I can't right/control click on an online image to get its URL. I have to hold down, "share" it to email and grab the URL there. OOPS, for focus, I disable email on the iPad. I think I tried messages and dropped that for whatever reason.
Big plus, iOS makes text selection a horror. Try dragging your finger through 20 screens. Gimme a keyboard! Command-A totally wins (or click/shift-click).
You can get command-line and unix utils only in virtual machines like a-shell.
For various reasons, I find MacOS hundreds or thousands of times more productive than iOS, and given that many iOS apps run on MacOS, that works.
Having been through chips from 6800 and 6502 to the latest, "The software is the computer" whether installed or web-based, or, if Apple trims this down to Sunray proportions, "The network is the computer."
They must choose wisely. Without Steve Jobs ...
Along those lines, I have favored a home server (a la Cobalt) to do many chores, and one could run a bunch of stuff, TBD.
There's an old adage, I don't know if it's still valid, that a higher price makes some people think that the product or service is actually worth more than a cheaper one. (think open source apps and operating systems)
That said, I believe that music/video production apps start around $5 and a lot more on ios, some unknown number on mac (many ios apps run on Macs since M1/Ventura)
I don't follow mac app prices/bargains since some sale sites shut down or are just too hard to find. For ios, I look at the bargain page below, which is how I got that rough lower bound.
The "virtue" of the mac app store is the visibility to many, whereas selling outside of it (still possible and desirable) has a findability problem, unless you know how to find your customer base by whatever means
P.S. I sometimes find useful mac apps via Hacker News, but I avoid "help, get me out of here" popular social sites.
I've noticed some Chinese developers create 2-3 different versions of the same app with different name and slightly different layout, and sell it at different price point on the App Store. That's a great way to determine how much to price your product.
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