> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://millionaire-marketing.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Increase That Lands on the Sale Price - URL: https://millionaire-marketing.ghost.io/the-increase-that-lands-on-the-sale-price/ - Published: 2026-10-23T11:10:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T11:09:59.000Z - Author: John Stone Several state legislatures took up caps on manufactured home lot rents this year, and the coverage treated it as an ordinary rent control fight. Washington has a five percent annual cap in force, now under constitutional attack in a Spokane County courtroom. Oregon's cap, six percent in communities with more than thirty spaces, took effect in September 2025\. Pennsylvania's version passed the House in June 2025 and has sat in a Senate committee since. Minnesota's passed the Senate in April and died in the House. What the fight is actually about is not the monthly payment. In these communities the resident owns the house and rents the ground under it, which describes roughly 1.7 million households, about a quarter of the 6.7 million occupied manufactured homes counted in the 2021 American Housing Survey. When the ground rent rises, most of the increase comes out of the price the house will fetch when the owner tries to sell. ### Two Different Numbers for the Same Thing Lot rents are reported in two incompatible ways. Households surveyed by the Census reported a median lot rent of $378 a month. Brokerages surveying institutionally owned communities put the average near $750 entering 2025\. The first number includes tiny rural parks and tenancies decades old. The second describes the kind of community an investment fund buys. The publicly traded owners report quarterly. In the first quarter of 2026, Equity LifeStyle Properties reported same-store rent of $948 a site, Sun Communities $762, and UMH Properties $581, with rental income growth of 5.7, 6.7 and 7.6 percent. None of those increases are unusual by the standards of the last three years. ### The Mechanics of a Rent Increase Priced Into the Next Buyer A park in Hopkinton, New Hampshire, documents the mechanism cleanly. It sold in December 2025 to a Michigan investment firm. One resident had bought his home there for $215,000 in 2024\. He listed it in January 2026 at $249,000, cut to $229,000, then to $179,000, which is $35,000 below what he paid. His own lot rent had gone up $35 a month, to $680\. Prospective buyers were being quoted $1,285. That is the whole structure in one transaction. The seller's monthly cost rose by $35\. The incoming resident's cost was set at nearly double his. A buyer doing the arithmetic on a payment that includes $1,285 of ground rent simply offers less for the house, and the increase the owner never paid shows up as a hole in his equity. Older research isolating tenure from construction found the same thing from the other direction. Manufactured homes depreciated about 1.5 percent a year while conventional houses appreciated, but units on land the owner held appreciated much like site-built homes. The chassis is not what destroys the value. The lease is. ### Why Nobody Simply Leaves The obvious answer, move the house, costs a meaningful fraction of what the house is worth. Industry estimates put a typical move between $5,000 and $20,000, averaging around $9,000, with setup alone running three or four thousand before transport. Against a home that changes hands for $25,000 or $50,000 on a rented lot, that is a cost no seller recovers. National vacancy in these communities ran 5.2 percent entering 2025 and 3.2 percent in age-restricted ones, so the receiving lot frequently does not exist. Financing closes the door the rest of the way. Federal regulators reported this year that 70 to 80 percent of new manufactured homes are titled as personal property rather than real estate, which routes the buyer into a chattel loan. Chattel applicants are denied at 65.6 percent against 8.8 percent for site-built homes, and approved borrowers pay an average 9.24 percent against 6.63 percent on a conventional mortgage. ### What the Purchase Rights Actually Buy Roughly a dozen states now give residents first crack at buying the community when it sells, with windows from 60 to 140 days. The results are modest. Somewhere between 300 and 380 resident-owned communities exist nationally, against 43,000 to 51,000 altogether, which is well under one percent. In one Washington county, four parks tried under a 70-day law and none succeeded. The arithmetic usually fails on price. A 213-home community in Boulder County, Colorado, was listed this spring at $42.5 million. More than 80 percent of residents organized a cooperative, which is what the main national lender requires, but that lender's practical loan ceiling is around $15 million. County commissioners approved an $11.2 million letter of intent in September, conditional on residents finding the rest before a December deadline. *A right of first refusal is worth only what the residents can borrow, and a retiree community bidding against an investment fund for its own ground is being asked to match a buyer whose cost of capital is a fraction of theirs.* Census data show more than half of older adults in these homes own them free of any loan, which is why the equity is the asset here, not the monthly rent. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5b/93/5b931ca3-34c1-4bd0-ba9d-9cc78907a475/content/images/2026/10/evening-street-in-a-manufactured-home-community.jpg) *— John Stone*