Industry
Manufactured home community property tax consulting
A manufactured home community is assessed on the ground it rents, not the homes sitting on it. That distinction is where the errors start. Assessors capture income from community-owned rental homes and home sales, both of which are personal property activity in most states, and they apply stabilized occupancy to communities that are still filling vacant sites. CPT separates site rent from everything else.
Site rent is the real estate income
A manufactured home community rents developed sites. The real property is land, streets, utility infrastructure, and common facilities. The homes belong to the residents and, in most states, are titled and taxed separately from the site.
The line blurs when the community owns homes. Rental home income, home sale proceeds, and finance income are earnings from personal property and from a sales operation — a different business with different costs and different risk. Folded into the income an assessor capitalizes, they push a business the land does not produce into the real property value. Separating the site rent stream from everything else is the first step in any community appeal.
Occupancy, absorption, and the infrastructure underneath
Communities with vacant sites are routinely assessed at stabilized occupancy. Filling a site is slow work — it requires a home, a buyer or renter, and often a substantial capital contribution from the community — and a buyer underwrites the absorption period and that cost, not a stabilized projection.
Infrastructure is the other half. Many communities operate private roads, private water and wastewater systems, wells, lagoons, and utility distribution installed decades ago. Those assets carry replacement cost, regulatory exposure, and ongoing expense, all of which reduce what a purchaser will pay. An income model applying a generic expense ratio does not reflect a community that runs its own treatment plant.
Comparable sales that include more than the dirt
Community transactions are often reported as a price per site drawn from portfolio deals. Those prices can include community-owned homes, notes receivable, an operating platform, and management infrastructure, and they are frequently financed on terms not available to a single-asset buyer.
Applied without adjustment, a portfolio price per site overstates the value of a stand-alone community — particularly one with lower occupancy, older infrastructure, or a rural location. The verification work is unglamorous and decisive: what was actually conveyed, at what allocation, on what terms.
Services that apply here
Real Estate Assessment Review & Appeal
Annual review of every assessment you carry, and appeals pursued wherever the assessor’s value exceeds fair market value.
Read more →Business Personal Property Tax Consulting & Audit Defense
A review of returns already filed to recover overpayments, plus representation when an assessor or contract auditor comes calling.
Read more →Common questions
Are the homes taxed as part of the community?
Generally not, though the mechanics differ by state. Resident-owned homes are usually titled like vehicles and taxed separately, sometimes through a specific fee rather than through the property tax roll. A home permanently affixed with its title surrendered may be converted to real property and assessed with the site. The exposure to watch is a home taxed twice — once to the resident and again inside the community’s assessment — which happens when the assessor’s income model captures rental home revenue without excluding it.
Our community is only partly occupied. Why does the assessment assume it is full?
Because mass appraisal models assume stabilization. Filling vacant sites is capital-intensive and slow: it takes a home delivered and set, a resident willing to move in, and frequently a contribution from the community to make the economics work. A buyer discounts the stabilized value back over the absorption period and adds risk for the possibility that absorption does not happen. Actual occupancy history, move-in pace, and the cost of filling a site are the evidence that replaces the assumption.
Should income from community-owned rental homes be in the real estate value?
No. Renting homes is a separate business built on personal property, with its own capital requirements, maintenance obligations, turnover cost, and collection risk. The real estate produces site rent. When rental home revenue is capitalized alongside site rent at a single rate, the assessment converts a personal property business into real property value — and in states that tax those homes separately, the same income is reached twice. The correction is to segregate the revenue and the expenses and capitalize only what the sites produce.
Tell us about your manufactured home communities portfolio.
Send the parcel numbers or the most recent assessment notices. We will tell you whether the value is defensible.