The Blurring Lines Between Urban and Rural By Frank Rolf

It’s a fact that 80% of Americans live on 3% of the land mass, while the other 20% live on 97%. But some megatrends to the traditional population footprint are making the standard classifications of “urban” and “rural” harder to define. So here’s a primer on how things are rapidly changing and the impact on the mobile home park industry.

 In the beginning… In the old days there were only three terms to describe mobile home parks based on population: 1) urban 2) suburban and 3) rural. Your mobile home park was either in the gritty downtown, the close-in suburb, or nowheresville. Banks hated “rural” parks and most buyers shunned them as defective merchandise. And that went on for decades – certainly the norm when we got into the business in the 1990s.

The rise of “exurban” Although the term “exurban” was coined in 1955 regarding a remote suburb in New York, you didn’t really see the population pushing farther out until about 2008, when the Great Recession necessitated economically challenged consumers to push farther out from their urban job centers to find housing they could afford. And the results were so successful, that word rapidly spread among their friends and co-workers. It’s possible that the big news story on population trends in recent years is the growth of the ring of residential hubs that are located outside of traditional suburbia, and what was once considered to be “rural” by definition. 

The new “super-commuter” trend Just when you thought the push into formerly rural America was over, a new population trend started. This is called the “super-commuter” and it’s basically the exurban shopper on steroids. The typical “super-commuter” drives over an hour on their commute. But it’s worth it because they get an even lower housing cost than the “exurb” resident and even greater distance from crime and the ills of the big city. This new living option really picked up steam with the Covid crisis of 2020, when millions of employees were allowed to work remotely

Where all this is heading With each successive push farther out into formerly “rural” America, it further blurs the lines between the classic definition of where people live in large numbers and where they don’t. We don’t know the current stats, but it’s guaranteed that more than 20% of Americans now live in that 97% of the leftover land mass. How many more? We’ll probably know with the 2030 census. But all you have to do is drive away from any city center and you’ll see there’s a whole new world of rooftops going up pretty far out of town.

The impact on the mobile home park industry There are very few mobile home parks in the urban core of America. There’s not a single mobile home park in downtown St. Louis, only a few in downtown Dallas, and that’s petty much the case in all the other markets. Mobile home parks are traditionally found in suburbs and rural areas, where permits were able to be obtained and land was cheap to build on for that new concept called “trailer park”. As the population pushes out into rural areas in the form of exurbs and super commuter areas, one of the big beneficiaries of this movement are mobile home park owners. It will increase their base of potential customers and raise lot rents in tandem with overall housing prices. Additionally, it makes lenders more familiar and accepting in making loans farther out, beyond the old time boundaries of urban and rural.

Conclusion The U.S. population is getting smarter. They realize that a little extra commute time buys them a much higher quality of life. With U.S. house prices exceeding $400,000 and apartment rents exceeding $2,000 per month, the population shift into rural areas will only accelerate over time. And that’s great news for mobile home park owners nationwide. Frank Rolfe has been an active owner in the manufactured home community industry for nearly two decades. As part of the 5th largest community ownership group in the United States, he oversees more than 23,000 lots across 28 states, primarily in the Great Plains and Midwest. His books and educational programs on community acquisition and management are among the best-selling in the industry. To learn more about Frank’s insights and expertise, visit www.MobileHomeUniversity.com