re: Chart of the Day: Mobile Homes as Percentage of Housing, US States

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It's now called Manufactured Housing, and is a huge growing segment of home sales.

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If you've either built a new home within the last 5 years, or know something about how/why construction costs have skyrocketed in the last 5 years, you'll understand why this segment of the market has taken off.

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I personally wouldn't have the patience or the time to deal with the type of renters that live in trailers, but he said he'd own a thousand of them if he could.

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I believe John Oliver had something on that topic with his HBO show "Last Week Tonight". Basically once a mobile home is put down it doesn't take very long for it become an immobile home. So your customers are more or less trapped there.

If you are renting them space in the mobile home park they really can't leave without abandoning their home. If you are renting out the mobile home itself to them you are still sitting pretty.

You don't have to spend a lot on upkeep for the property and those folks are usually to poor to move somewhere on you. You aren't making as much in rent but you are renting to a captive market so to speak.

A nice home or apartment complex requires a lot of upkeep to continue looking nice. For a mobile home park you just have to keep it from looking like the town garbage dump.

Not to mention, as Coachcrisp said, building a traditional home or apartment complex has gotten insanely expensive. Its a lot cheaper to buy manufactured homes which means its a lot easier to recoup your initial investment.