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| Shadow on Grover Beach |
Bolsa Chica is a nice, over-55 park with 65 units, a pool and a clubhouse. The residents bought the park 18 years ago for about $1.5 million so each resident owns a share of the park. They do not have land deeds as is proposed for Mesa Dunes. The HOA fee is $148 per month.
There are four units for sale in the park and most are in the mid-$250K range. I asked Gloria, the manager, whether the inability to get mortgages was causing any sales difficulty and she said no … that most buyers were paying cash from previous home sales. We were parked in front of a unit with an "in escrow" sign on it and she told me it sold for $200,500 and was a 1977 unit that was basically a pull out that would be replaced with a new unit.
While Gloria and I were talking, a guy drove up to talk to her and, when I found out that he was a manufactured home professional, I asked him if he were familiar with Mesa Dunes and he was. I asked him what he thought about the conversion and he said he thought it was the best possible thing that could happen to the park because the space rents are so high here. He said that the rents are so high here that a lot of people could get mortgages for about the same rate as their space rents.
This confirmed my findings, so I decided to use an online mortgage calculator to see what the mortgage would be for a range of lot prices … keep in mind that you would need to add tax on the land and the HOA fee (estimated at $150 - $200/per month) to this amount.
I asked the manufactured home professional what he thought the lot prices would be and, on the agreement that I wouldn't use his name (for legal reasons since he's also a broker), he said between $200K - $225K. This is not an official appraisal, of course, but it is another marker for guessing that the lot price will be somewhere around $200K.
I recently ran a future value calculation based on my space rent to see what it would be in 20 years, assuming that it might increase by 3% a year. I was horrified, so I thought you might be interested in looking at your own rent. Here's a table with a link below it if your rent isn't shown.
OPINION: I love this park. However, the broker I talked to this morning reminded me that there are other parks in the area with cheaper space rents. He told me about a newer one in Nipomo with really cheap rents.
I don't want to move. However, if I thought for a minute that this conversion would NOT happen ... or that lot prices would be more than $200K, I'd start looking for a more affordable place to live. I do think the conversion will happen and I think the lot prices will be less than $200K ... at least for those of us who opt to purchase within the first 90 days to get the 10% discount offered by the owner.
ALSO, I think there are possibilities for negotiating better options for those who cannot purchase their units or for those residents who want to just keep renting. Negotiation is much more powerful and satisfactory than litigation.
