As Housing Prices Rise, Mobile Home Communities Are Thriving

The need for affordable housing has fueled demand for mobile homes, according to commercial real estate firm Marcus and Millichap.

In the region encompassing Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona and Louisiana, vacancy rates in mobile home parks has fallen to 4 percent, down from 24 percent in 2007. In the Houston region, average monthly rent for spots rate in mobile home communities is $393, plus the cost of the trailer. The average rent for an apartment is pegged by HotPads at $1,605.

Marcus and Millichap predicted demand for mobile homes will only grow.

"As the need for workforce housing proliferates across the U.S., this trend should continue in the quarters ahead," it wrote in a report.

While vacancies are low in the Texas region, the demand for mobile homes is even more acute in housing-strapped metros like Denver, Long Island, N.Y., and several California cities, where vacancies are below 1 percent and rents are rapidly rising. In the Denver area, less than 1 percent of spaces in mobile home parks are vacant. The average price to live in one, before the cost of the trailer, is $736, up 5.3 percent from the year before.

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