Mobile-home park falls victim to dubious deals
99-year lease broken at struggling facility in northwest Arizona
LITTLEFIELD - When Nicole and Mike Tabor left San Diego to seek serenity in their later years, they found just what they wanted in a place nestled between Interstate 15 and the Beaver Dam Mountains.
A small, out-of-the-way mobile-home park called Anasazi Palms in the northwest Arizona community of Littlefield was what they described as the “perfect deal.”
“And, now, it’s less than a year later and we’re destroyed,” Nicole said.
The mobile-home park is scheduled for permanent closure May 31, the result of dubious deals, poor oversight and a lack of planning over the past decade, according to residents and the current owner. The residents, by that time, will have had to make arrangements to relocate their mobile homes to another park or otherwise abandon them — leave the home as is, the park owner’s problem — and take a check for a few thousand dollars, at most, from the state of Arizona that might help pay for a temporary housing solution.
“This park would have closed sooner or later because it was not sustainable,” park owner Peggy Owen said, adding that “when the business is broke, it’s broke.”
That’s the pill those living in Anasazi Palms, whose 180-day clock to move out began ticking on Dec. 1, are finding increasingly difficult to swallow.
Anasazi Palms opened in 1999 as Canyon View Estates. Residents paid a sum of $25,000 and, in return, received a share of company as well as a place to live.
The owners of the park, in theory, were offering a sense of security to the residents, but the stock certificates were useless if the company went defunct. So, on Feb. 27, 2009, the lawyer of then-park owner David Fenn advised his client to transform the $25,000 holdings into 99year leases.
After explaining that the stock certificates were less valuable than an actual interest in the land, Fenn’s lawyer Michael Welker wrote in a letter: “A longterm lease, on the other hand, is a vested, recordable interest in the land itself. Once recorded, it will show up on all title reports and title searches as a vested interest in the land. Although a 99-year lease is not the equivalent of outright fee simple ownership of the property, it carries with it most vestiges of ownership.”
Welker went on to explain that 99year leases were common in real estate and were transferable.
“A 99-year lease has real value and real attachment to the land itself, unlike a stock certificate,” he wrote.
It sounded nice enough that all of the residents, except Bob Kupfer, gladly agreed.
Peggy Owen retired financially comfortable in 2007 and, in 2014, came across the opportunity to purchase Canyon View Estates. She said she met a man in September 2014 and, months later, the two had partnered to acquire the park and rename it. The Spectrum & Daily
News was unable to obtain contact information for the man and thus is not naming him.
Owen never bought the park to become its day-to-day keeper, she said. The move, instead, was an investment — $500,000 coming from a self-directed IRA to buy the land — that was to be tended by the man. Despite knowing the man for only a few months, Owen said she trusted him to work with her to further develop the park.
“I didn’t ask the right questions,” Owen said about the sale. “Everybody who bought into this park, including me, we are all guilty of not doing our due diligence.”
Owen said she first saw the escrow documents associated with the sale after it was finalized. When asked if she would have purchased the park knowing the properties had 99-year leases tied to them, she answered, “No.”
By her own admission, Owen didn’t properly review details of the sale. She also failed to vet her business partner, entrusting the man with a $500,000 investment. Soon after the park was sold, Owen said the man was out of the picture and it was Owen’s task to develop the park.
The only option left, Owen said, is to close the park. She said she simply can’t afford to keep it open.
When Mohave County granted a special use permit for Canyon View Estates in 1999, 152 total lots were approved. Only 25 were actually developed, and there are currently only seven homes in the park today — two of which belong to Owen.
The Tabors bought their home in 2016 from the previous owner, an 85-year old widow, under the impression they were also purchasing the 99-year lease associated with the land.
“Our understanding when we came into this situation was that the lease was a solid gold lease and, honestly, we didn’t need park approval or anything of that nature because these leases were transferable legal instruments. We never had any contact with her, she never inserted herself in our transaction, nothing,” Tabor said.
Since Owen does collect revenue from the 99-year lease agreements, she said she could sustain the park only through new residents. Her attempts, which she described as extensive, have
failed over the past two years.
“Six people would’ve changed the park entirely,” Owen said. She mentioned six specifically because that’s how many people she said were close to moving in. Two of them had even picked out lots and were searching for a home to put on it.
Instead, Owen claimed she lost four potential residents because they saw a tattooed man who lives in the park with his mother walking around without a shirt and wearing low-hanging pants. Two more, she said, backed out after reviewing the park’s finances.
Without any income, Owen said she’s been paying out of her pocket, covering the cost of water, electricity, septic chemicals, payroll, salary for the park manager, taxes, and insurance totaling some $1,600 monthly. She estimated with utility fees and other small fees, she brings in about $600 each month.
That’s why Owen has decided to cut her losses and close the park. She plans to sell it, and said she has three potential buyers.
“Nobody wants to keep it as a manufactured home park,” Owen said.
Those who call Anasazi Palms home are very much interested in keeping it a manufactured home park. Kupfer has lived there with his wife, Gerlinda, since 2006. Residents claim the 99-year leases are bound to the land the homes rest on and forcing them off means Owen would be breaking the terms of the lease agreements she inherited when she bought the park.
Owen provided residents with the legally required 180-day written notice when she announced the closure on Dec. 1. By May 31, the lots must be vacated. There’s also the option to abandon the home and receive $1,250 for a single wide and $2,500 for a double wide.
Additionally, the state of Arizona provides a relocation fee for residents of a mobile-home park who are forced to relocate due to “change in use” of the land. The relocation fund pays homeowners $5,000 to relocate a single wide and $10,000 to relocate a double wide.
What that doesn’t cover, Tabor, Kupfer, and other residents said, is the inconvenience, especially for the park’s older population.
Marilyn Redelf, 70, wasn’t prepared to look for a new home after recently suffering health problems.
“We’re already trying to find properties to buy,” she said. “I’m 70. I had no intentions of going out and buying more property, and we have to move our home. Once I move, it isn’t going to be in near the shape it was because it’s older.”
Kupfer, a Korean War veteran, is battling cancer and said the unexpected stress of searching for a new home is physically and mentally exhausting.
“It is affecting me,” he said. “It’s a lot of mental strain, we just don’t know where we’re going. Nothing to look forward to. We’ve thought about just waiting it out and just sitting there.”
Owen, too, sounded like she’s had enough of it all.
“I came out here to be retired with a purpose,” she said. “My history shows I am a person who helps people.”
“All these people are stressed out every day,” Redelf ’s daughter, Kristy Lock, said. “Their health isn’t getting better; it’s getting worse. I want to stay to the end and take it in front of a judge ... make (Owen) evict us and take it to court and
getting it in front of a judge with the leases and let it go that way possibly.”
Nicole Tabor has spoken with real-estate attorneys who were cautiously optimistic they might have a case, but she added the legal fees associated with a possible trial could cost more than buying a new home on a different lot. She contests there should be legal recognition of the 99-year lease agreements.
“There was good faith, intent, and follow-through on the parts of the owners,” she said.
Good intentions aside, there is very little protection from the type of closure facing Anasazi Palms residents. Park owners are within their rights to close any park they own.
“That lease is only with the understanding that it’s going to stay a mobilehome park,” said Kelly Yielding, legislative director for Arizona Association of Manufactured Homes and RV Owners. “Anybody can break the lease.”
Debra Blake, deputy director of Manufactured Housing for the Arizona Department of Housing, echoed Yielding.
“When you’re entering into a lease with a landlord, you really have no guarantees except that you’re going to rent it until something changes and the owner gives you notice of it,” Blake said.
A letter sent from the Department of Housing to Tabor last month explained that, “The Department has administrative responsibilities to oversee complaints from tenant/homeowners and owners of mobile and manufactures homes parks, and to process applications from tenants requesting relocation assistance ...”
There is no state agency in Arizona that regulates mobile-home parks. The Department of Housing accepts notifications of “change in use” from land owners, but doesn’t verify “change in use” on a case-by-case basis.
“There is a body of laws that regulates how you operate (mobile-home parks), but there is nothing like that in state law that verifies that what the land owner is saying, is what’s going to happen, no,” Blake said.
Mohave County officials said the matter fell outside their authority.
Without a guarantee that the land they’re living on will be open in six months, the only safeguard in place for residents is $8 million the state has tucked away in the relocation fund.
A bill is quickly passing through the Arizona State Legislature this year that would increase the relocation fees to $10,000, for a single wide, and $12,500, for a double wide.
The Department of Housing oversees the relocation fund with the goal of providing applicants “access to the relocation fund so they have no funds directly out of their pocket to move,” Blake said.
Yielding said increasing the amount paid to mobile-home owners is necessary, because the cost to relocate can exceed the allocated amount. She said she was recently the “victim of a relocation” because she was given $12,500 to move her double wide, ground-set mobile home and the total cost was $16,000.
That money, Tabor said, doesn’t account for intangible losses, such as surrendering her view of the Beaver Dam Mountains. She contests that, with more effort from Owen, none of the park’s residents would be in this situation.
“These lots are filthy, full of weeds. She has never applied herself to bring in more people to this park,” Tabor said. “If she would have come to all the residents and said, ‘Let’s make this a community, let’s get some more people in here. You guys are doing a great job maintaining your spaces, your homes are beautiful, let’s make it happen,’ I think everyone here would have been happy to do that.”
Owen said she would have liked to see her investment succeed, but its failure has left her with no choice but to sell it.
“If I help this by making that park into something usable, I’d have done good,” she said.