Bad bargain? Manufactured homeowners feel the financial strain | PBS NewsHour
STEPHEN FEE: She bought this three-bedroom manufactured home for $113,000 dollars in a town where the median home value is $500,000.
CARLA BURR: “I chose to move here because it was a beautiful house. And I thought, man I could retire here.”
STEPHEN FEE: Now 61 years old, Burr – and her home – may need to move. While she owns the home — she made the purchase in cash — she doesn’t own the land underneath.
Every month, Burr pays rent to a property manager. Over the past ten years, that lot rent has gone up 30 percent, from $740 a month to $1,022 a month.
CARLA BURR: “I had no clue that the rent was going to go up the way it did. I mean, it’s to the point now where it’s more than half my Social Security. I would love to stay. And I would love to keep it right where it is. Because everything I have is here. All my church is here, my family’s here, everybody’s here.”
2 comments:
Well Evan how is it any better to "own" both the house and the land when you have to pay private "assessments" to an involuntary membership corporation in perpetuity? Perpetual liens that can never be paid off... You have no control over the debt incurred by the HOA corporation and you have private vendors encouraging the HOA to spend more, more, more. The HOA corporation has zero obligations to the homeowners and in most cases the authority but not the obligation to maintain anything. The money from the homeowners is free to spend and the amounts demanded can increase with impunity. Nope, owning land burdened by an HOA corporation is worse than renting the land.
IC,
H.I.N.O.s — homeowners in name only — do not own “their“ H.O.A.-burdened property. They are merely licensing it from the H.O.A. corporation.
As you, and regular readers of this blog, are aware -- but our policy makers seem not to be (nor care) -- the H.O.A. regime imposes all of the burdens, obligations, and responsibilities of property ownership without all of the rights that used to come with it in these United States of America. A H.I.N.O.'s property rights have been delegated to the corporation, which also has authority and power over the property (and by extension, the so-called “owners“).
Burdens, obligations, and responsibilities on one side -- authority, power, and rights on the other. The system is fundamentally flawed and unworkable. Yet whatever it is that calls itself an H.O.A. reform movement in this country is obsessed with trying to achieve a so-called "balance" where none is possible.
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