Story: Mayor is Seller and Asks Tenants to Vacate - We Save the Day by 4x Lot Rent

I have a story to share.

We are 1 day away from closing on a small park in Hildebran, NC. The community has 6 TOH, 2 POH, 4 Vacant Lots. $191,000 and 15 acres. It’s a land play with income.

June 15th - I submitted my offer
June 17th - Sellers realtor told me the town is taking away MHP zoning making it impossible to infill the 4 vacant lots.
June 20th - I found out seller is the mayor of the town.
June 25th -
July 15th - Visited the tenants to see if they would accept a rent raise from $110/mo to $350-$450/mo. In the process, they all said, “YES!” since they were about to become HOMELESS. (Thank you mayor Hildebrand) The 2 POHs were vacated and the seller took one of the tenants for another rental that he has. A-hole move, but he did me a favor. He was renting the home for $400 and I can rent it for $800.
July 25th - Finally helped everyone to apply to stay in the community. Everyone had decent backgrounds.
Aug. 1st - Wired payment
Aug. 2th - The seller signed the closing documents
I’ll sign the closing documents soon after I submit the land trust.
Aug 10th - I’ll petition the town to put the Mobile Home overlay back on. The city planner said that it could be put back on later. I hope they allow it. Any advice other than explaining that I have a list of 300 families in terrible housing situations that are looking for housing?

It seems that the seller was trying to attract a developer by taking away the MH overlay which allowed mobile homes, but I’m not sure what the exact motive was for the rush to remove the MH overlay. They accepted my offer and I was clear that I wanted to operate the property as a MHP.

I’m so pissed off at the town and the mayor for throwing the people in their community under the bus and causing undue stress.

One of the tenants was going to move her home and wipe out half of her savings to move her home to a place that had lot rent of $235/month. She is staying and paying $350. It is a really nice home. I freaked out when I hear that and thought fast how I could convince her not to move her 1400 square foot home.

They cannot take away your right to operate as a MHP. It may take some conversations to have them understand that, which could could boil into legal discussions, but in the end you would prevail.

They can’t close the park by changing the zoning overlay. You can fight that and will win.

Here’s the catch. You will end up spending +$100K in legal fees and your time and energy. If you have not closed on the park yet, I would seriously consider spitting the hook for greener and more welcoming pastures.

I am in the middle of a similar situation. It’s been 2 years of delays and legal fees. My original plan was to rehab the Park and fill it up. It’s taken so long I have bought 3 more parks since then. Each park is cash flowing nicely, while the one I want to rehab is barely chugging along. I’ve got a ton of time and energy into it now and I would be hard-pressed to stop. I figure I have another 1-2 years of battling before I am able to break ground and rehab the park. Then I need to fill up the empty spots.

My legal bill for last month was $20K. Just for one month. I am in it over $100K and am looking at another $+100K to see it through. Well, $200K is the downpayment on a small park. The only reason I am willing to push through this is that once the park is rehabbed and filled it will be worth over $+4MM. So it’s a pretty easy calculation.

Can you recover legal cost from the local government?

Yes.
I’ll have to sue them to recover my legal costs and lost income.

I estimate I am losing $1100/day plus legal fees.