After some down times, sales are perking up again in the upscale trailer parks above the Pacific. The views and access to the beach draw big prices.
The word is spreading about the $2 million — in cash — paid recently for a double-wide mobile home in Malibu, Calif.
Since AOL Real Estate reported the news last week, the story's been picked up by the San Francisco Chronicle and others. The home, as Malibu Real Estate Blog reports, has a great view from a bluff above the Pacific Ocean, two bedrooms, two baths and a two-car garage.
The rest of the story, so to speak, is that there's something of a trend.
As The Vancouver Sun reported earlier this month:
After some down times for Malibu mobile home sales in 2009, "there has been a rebound at these mobile home parks located in world-famous Malibu, home to numerous celebrities. Sale prices at Paradise Cove [one mobile home development] reached as high as $2.5 million in the past year, and at Point Dume [Club] a sale is pending on a two-bedroom home listed at $1.25 million."
These lines in the Sun's story particularly stand out:
"What is being sold in these gated communities is not so much the luxuriousness of the homes but the views and easy walk to the surf. The price does not even include the land — as is common at mobile home parks, the lot the structure sits on is rented.
" 'You are not buying land, you are buying air,' said Paradise Cove newcomer Gina Carlson, who moved into her 1,500-square-foot, $645,000 home in June."
At Paradise Cove, though, you are buying "access to a private beach, tennis courts, a children's playground and a clubhouse," as the Los Angeles Times wrote in 2008. And at Point Dume Club, there's "a pool, a large spa, saunas, tennis and basketball courts, a clubhouse and proximity to Point Dume State Beach."
(H/T NPR's Catherine Laidlaw)