Chattanooga area mobile home communities sell for $16 million | Chattanooga Times Free Press

A Chattanooga company that purchased four mobile home park communities in the area since 2019 has sold the properties for $16 million and doubled its initial investment, a company official said.

Lyons Group Capital bought the sites consisting of three communities in Hamilton County and one in Rhea County, Tennessee, in 2019 and 2020 for $8 million, said company owner-principal Marcus Lyons by phone.

He said the buyer of the 263 homesites is New York-based Homes of America.

The communities are Riverglen and Stone mobile home communities, both located in Chattanooga, along with Mountain Shade Mobile Home Community in Soddy-Daisy and Mountain Creek Mobile Home Community in Dayton, Lyons said in an email.

“We sold the rental pads, and the tenants own the mobile homes,” he said. “We rented out the lots.”

Lyons said his group was attracted by the resident affordability of mobile homes in the communities along with the locations.

Homes of America could not be reached for comment about what its plans are for the properties. Lyons said the group plans to update the locations.

Amid the nation’s affordable housing crisis, manufactured homes are garnering more interest, particularly among rural and low-income households, according to Fannie Mae, or the Federal National Mortgage Association.

A study by Fannie Mae, which purchases and guarantees mortgage loans made by lenders, shows that it costs significantly less and doesn’t take as much time to build such homes compared to a site-constructed residence.

“As a result, manufactured housing has the potential to be an important tool in adding new homes to housing supply,” the 2020 study said.

That part of the housing sector represents 6.3% of the nation’s housing stock but is a higher share in rural areas, the study said. While site-built single-family homes represent about 80% of housing stock in rural areas, manufactured housing represents about 14% with apartments making up the remainder, the study said.

An estimated 18 million Americans live in manufactured homes, and though most are owned, there are also 1.9 million units occupied by renters, according to Fannie Mae. The study showed that the median annual household income of manufactured home residents who own their homes is about $35,000, half of that of site-built homeowners.

The median monthly all-in housing cost is $925 for manufactured home owners, or $675 per month less than that paid by owners of site-built homes, Fannie Mae reported. The all-in cost was $350 per month less for renters of manufactured homes, it said.

Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly earlier this year proposed a $100 million affordable housing initiative over five years.

“In a very real way, Chattanooga faces a crossroads,” he said, noting that housing affordability is helping drive homelessness.

Contact Mike Pare at mpare@timesfreepress.com or 423–757–6318. Follow him on Twitter @MikePareTFP.

Originally published at https://www.timesfreepress.com on November 8, 2022.