Thank you, Gracie. That was sugar in my morning coffee.

Well, the home at 440 Tarrson isn't going to be relocated anywhere. It was flattened. I watched it happen. It does appear that the Parker Place house was being moved.

There is a lot of activity over here and some of it might just be coincidental. 440 Tarrson was demolished and the house on the corner of Lauren and Schwartz is being replace with a new manufactured home. These might not have anything to do with the developer. It could be the owners themselves upgrading.

Both will happen. Conventional wisdom has always been that, from a strictly financial perspective, you are much better off owning the least expensive house on you street than the most expensive. The value of the most expensive will be brought down a bit because of the surrounding homes and the opposite will be true for the least expensive.

It also depends on how many homes of differing values there are in a area. If you built a million dollar home in the middle of the historic district, it would not be worth as much as the same home in the most expensive neighborhoods. However if you put twenty of those homes on a small street they would begin to make the area more desirable and the surrounding homes more valuable.

The opposite would also be true. If you put a $100,000 manufactured homes in the middle of a neighborhood of million dollar homes, the value of those more expensive home would begin to come down.

Here is what I think will happen, and I don't have a crystal ball. I am guessing that they will build ranches with some lovely landscaping and sell them for $150k up. They are very good at assessing what is the best fit and what the market will handle. They have had a few mistakes; they overpriced the cottages on Lake Sumter initially. Sometimes what people will pay for things is surprising, but the grown up people who are the potential buyers, this isn't their first rodeo. Most of us have bought and sold several homes on our way here.

But I think it is a win-win situation. It is one of the things I like about living here, watching it all work out far better than anyone could think.

I know. I know. Shoot me.

He pays $100,000 for a house, removes house, builds new house and sells it for $150K.
That would be $50,000 for house, landscaping, profit and commission to TV sales office.

It just does not add up for me. I look forward to the day when it is finished and I can say, I get it, good idea. That day will come.

He didn't pay $100k for ALL of them. Some were in the $60- $70k range, correct me if I am wrong. The developer has his business plan and his margins. We will wait and see. I don't expect him to build homes there and try to market them for over 300K. At least right now. It may come. That wouldn't be bad. Just sad for those who waited too long.


BUT, now that I think about it, Patio Villa's are selling for right around $185K, they have gone up from around $140K in the last year. So the starting price for homes in the historic section that the developer is building may be more.

There are already homes here in the historic section selling for 180K plus this year. Didn't seem to be that way last year, but they are selling and selling quite fast. They seem to be primarily golf course or waterfront homes.

Doc - Why do you stereotype the folks as POOR? My husband's family and their friends ALL had trailers in a Florida trailer park in Riviera Beach for their SECOND HOME! They drove back and forth to Florida in their cadillacs and brought home those nasty plastic pink flamingos [which I think were wood back then] and put them in their front yard as an indication that they had "arrived" as far as their status in life was concerned! Those collecting sap might have been a good degree poorer - but they had jobs and were very proud of that!

Sheesh!

When you have more money than you really need----to me you are rich. I would argue most of us fall into that category.

A couple of years ago I met a man in TV who told me he owned 2O rentals---most of which he said was on the historical side of TV. I bet he is happy (assuming he still owns them) and I'm happy to see what the Developer is doing on the Historical side of TV.

The Developer has many revenue streams, of which, real estate is only one. It's not always important that every stream be profitable at all times. There are strategic reasons to actually loose profitability on a stream at one point or another.

I can think of several strategic reasons the Developer might decide to update the historic villages, even at a seemingly loss of profitability.

It's quiet common for large corporation to loose money on certain products for strategic reasons.

I'll be interested to see what transpires in the coming months/years...

Excellent, and accurate, points.

Really? This is what you want to pick on from that post? I have no doubt that there might have been some people that had trailers that they may have left in trailer parks year round to use a second home, but I think that the majority of people who were living in trailers were poor.

I don't know why anyone would do what you say, but if you say your relatives did it, I believe you. Instead of pulling their trailer down here and renting space in a trailer park for three or four months, they left their trailers here and paid the park rent year round.

The purpose of my post was to explain the difference between a trailer and a manufactured home but some people do not want to let go of their preconceived notions.

I'll say it again. A trailer is something that is meant to be pulled behind a car or pickup truck. They are designed to be easily moved for for travel. Although they may have been used as permanent housing by some people or even as winter homes by some people, that is not the purpose for which they are built.

A manufactured home is delivered to a site on wheels. The wheels are removed and the house is more or less permanently set up on a piece of property. They are usually set on stacks of concrete blocks and have an extensive tie down system. It is usually not practical to move a manufactured home. They are not trailers.

Some people live in their car. That does not mean that cars are houses.

There are plenty of trailer parks around. Some are called campgrounds. some of these parks have both permanently placed manufactured homes and trailers on the same site.

I didn't mean it that way. I had always thought that manufactured homes were a danger during strong winds, but Jim, Dr. Boogie, pointed out to me that was not so, they are securely strapped down. My point was that renovating and refurbishing and building new homes in a community usually brings up property values and that is a plus to the people who live ANYWHERE.

Good thinking.

In my experience trailers and mobile homes are classified as vehicles and require license plates mounted on them when they are transported down a public road. Although they come with axles and wheels these are usually removed and the trailer/mobile home supported on concrete blocks or by other means. At one time in one state with which I am familiar as long as the owner of the trailer/mobile home kept the license plate on the trailer/mobile home he did not have to pay real property taxes on it although he of course had to on the lot.

About 30 years ago a real estate broker friend of mine had a nice looking office on a major commercial street in the largest city in that state. One day he told me it was a trailer/mobile home and showed me the license tag on it. I never would have guessed that to be the case. He told me it was cheaper to keep it licensed as a trailer/mobile home than to pay real property taxes on it as an improvement.

I imagine a manufactured home would not be built with an axle and wheels. It would be transported on a flat bed trailer which carries a license plate. The manufactured home would never itself be licensed as a vehicle as would a trailer or mobile home. When it is positioned on a lot it would be designated as an improvement on its lot and taxed as such.