Forced to give up their dreams of a “real house,” first time home-buyers set their sights lower, and ex-homeowners muscled out of the market by Covid-19-related job losses have to do the same. The need is great enough that these once-derided mobile homes are now achieving mainstream respectability, according to USA Today – but profit-hungry private equity firms have been buying up stakes in the companies that own these trailer parks for years, going long on the collapse of the American dream.
‘Manufactured homes’ house some 22 million Americans, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute. With prices running about half that of “normal” homes, and the average American family’s net worth either stagnating or declining as inflation soars and the stock market increasingly decouples from reality, the stigma long associated with living in these structures has, supposedly, begun to dissolve. Beggars, after all, can’t be choosers.
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