SBA 7(a) Manufactured Housing Community Feasibility Study in California

Second among states, and larger loans

California stands 2 among states for SBA 7(a) loans to manufactured housing communities, with 29 approvals from FY2017 to FY2026 totaling $24.3 million. The median loan of $625,000 reaches 1.40x against the class elsewhere, and the central half spans $333,900 to $1.1 million. Yet the class holds only 29 of 39 among California asset types. No holder is listed for the cell.

Los Angeles and a few others

Los Angeles dominates the county list at 14 loans; Shasta trails at 3, Orange and San Diego sit at 2 each, and the rest are single loans in scattered counties. Franchise brands appear in 6.9%. The best year was FY2021, with 8 loans and $10.4 million, and activity has faded: one loan in FY2024 for $625,000, and none in FY2023, FY2025 or FY2026. Read that fade with care, because the code is shared with other real estate lessors.

What the code includes

Sites for manufactured homes share their code with other lessors, among them land lessors and trusts holding other property. A community operator is mixed with them. A mobile or small gas bar business in Iowa leaves no measurable outcome record in this file: both cancellation and charge-off are omitted, not zero.

What a California community study must test

The study should establish what the operator owns and what residents own. In a community the resident usually owns the home and pays site rent, so income depends on pad rent, occupancy and the legal limits on increases under local and state rules. California has rent regulation for some communities, and the study should state which applies, along with the pad count, the number occupied, utility costs that the operator pays, and deferred repairs to roads, water and sewer. If the loan buys an existing community, the lender will want a physical inspection and a utilities review, and the study should list them. Coverage must hold at current rents without assuming increases that regulation might limit. The appraisal will rely on income from pad rents, and a request near the $625,000 median should be tied to pad count and price per pad. The lender will also ask for the park's permit history, since a community operating under a long-standing permit can be hard to replace.