TY - JOUR
T1 - Real Property Supremacy
T2 - Manufactured Housing and the Limits of Inclusion through Finance
AU - Kear, Mark
AU - Meyer, Dugan
AU - Wilder, Margaret O.
N1 - Funding Information:
Credit is most scarce for homes that are worth relatively little. This means, in general, that the lower the price of a home, the more expensive it is to buy it with borrowed money. There is no home market more affected by this paradox than MH, which in 2020 represented 90 percent of all new homes sold in the United States under $150,000 (U.S. Census, as cited in Cavco Industries ). Although efforts have been made to incorporate MH into the financial and legal infrastructure of market inclusion, this has been limited and selective, and has operated through the support of mortgages for MH rather than through the support of chattel lending. Chattel loans, also referred to as personal property loans, lack the standard protections of a mortgage (e.g., disclosures about loan costs, appraisals, and a required process preceding foreclosure and eviction; Bourke and Siegel ). Chattel borrowers were also left out of the forbearance provisions and eviction protections of the CARES Act (Schneider et al. ), and ignored in the bailout, stimulus, and aid programs (e.g., Making Home Affordable Program [], HOPE for Homeowners Act [], Helping Families Save Their Homes Act []) that followed the 2008 financial crisis (see Burkhart ). Chattel loans carry higher interest rates and are mostly available for newer homes. Those borrowing to purchase existing homes often must pursue alternative financial arrangements with sellers willing to lend, or with small brokers, park owners, and other third parties. Typically, they buy “on contract,” entering into loan agreements, similar to those offered to households in redlined neighborhoods, that combine “all the responsibilities of homeownership with all the disadvantages of renting” (Coates ).
Funding Information:
Markets are not binary. The edges of housing and credit markets are borderscapes (Mezzadra and Neilson ) where risks and uncertainties are managed through improvised repertoires of practices that map poorly onto traditional binaries of “mainstream” and “fringe,” “formal” and “informal,” “public” and “private,” or even “homeless” and “housed.” The “market” for “severely inadequate” housing exemplifies this fuzziness well. It is a market that does not meet health or building codes—it is not supposed to exist, but does, neither completely licit nor illicit. It is a market that, although small as a percentage of all households, is in aggregate significant, with pockets of high concentration (Deitz and Meehan ; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD] ; Meehan et al. )—although little research has been done on its geographies, and definitions of “adequacy” are contested (Leopold et al. ). In the case of MH, the market for “substandard” housing is supported and made possible by two key legal and financial technologies: personal property and the rent-to-own contract. Together, these technologies sustain a brutally unequal, but nonetheless mutualistic, relationship between tenants and landlords.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 by American Association of Geographers.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Manufactured housing (MH) communities have emerged as a high-profile and lucrative asset class. Despite this, it is costly or impossible to get loans to buy homes in most mobile home parks. This article explores this ostensible contradiction—that whereas MH parks are desirable and liquid assets, the individual homes that compose them are not. We explore the implications of this contradiction for housing justice as well as financial and environmental vulnerability. We argue that the marginality of MH in U.S. housing markets is rooted in the privileging of real property above personal property. We describe the origins and impacts of this “real property supremacy” in two parts. In the first, we outline the macro-historical context of real property supremacy using a variety of sources, including interviews with federal officials and industry experts as well as document analysis. In the second, we connect this macro context to its micro consequences, drawing on interviews with MH residents, nonprofit and social-service practitioners, and park managers and owners in Tucson, Arizona. We conclude that state-supported property hierarchies create conditions where constrained housing options, semiformal financial practices, and unique tenure forms combine to (re)produce unique and intersecting forms of vulnerability in MH communities.
AB - Manufactured housing (MH) communities have emerged as a high-profile and lucrative asset class. Despite this, it is costly or impossible to get loans to buy homes in most mobile home parks. This article explores this ostensible contradiction—that whereas MH parks are desirable and liquid assets, the individual homes that compose them are not. We explore the implications of this contradiction for housing justice as well as financial and environmental vulnerability. We argue that the marginality of MH in U.S. housing markets is rooted in the privileging of real property above personal property. We describe the origins and impacts of this “real property supremacy” in two parts. In the first, we outline the macro-historical context of real property supremacy using a variety of sources, including interviews with federal officials and industry experts as well as document analysis. In the second, we connect this macro context to its micro consequences, drawing on interviews with MH residents, nonprofit and social-service practitioners, and park managers and owners in Tucson, Arizona. We conclude that state-supported property hierarchies create conditions where constrained housing options, semiformal financial practices, and unique tenure forms combine to (re)produce unique and intersecting forms of vulnerability in MH communities.
KW - financial geography
KW - home lending
KW - housing
KW - manufactured housing
KW - property
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85159627936&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85159627936&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/24694452.2023.2200507
DO - 10.1080/24694452.2023.2200507
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85159627936
SN - 2469-4452
VL - 113
SP - 1900
EP - 1917
JO - Annals of the American Association of Geographers
JF - Annals of the American Association of Geographers
IS - 8
ER -