With single-family home and condo prices rising in the San Francisco Bay area, along with rents, Marin real estate agent Laura Watts calls manufactured homes (MH) “the new condos,”according to marinij.com. For the first six months of this year compared to 2013 the median price of a manufactured home has risen 44 percent, to $135,000. Laura Cobb jumped at the opportunity to buy one for $200,000 overlooking a lagoon in San Rafael. The reasons for the increase, MHProNews has learned from Blaine Morris, the head of the Marin Association of Realtors, are firstly, prices were unnaturally low due to the 14-year litigation over rent control between Equity LifeStyle Properties and the city of San Rafael that lent uncertainty to MH values.

Secondly, the overall rise in prices in the Bay Area have been on a tear as housing began recovering, and with fewer and fewer affordable housing options, MH began rising also. Ms. Cobb’s home is in 396-homesite Contempo Marin, a community so big that sales there comprise 42 percent of all homes in Marin, says Watts. The highest price a home sold for there this year $310,000. ##

(Photo credit: Alan Dep/marinindependentjournal.com–Contempo Marin MHC in San Rafael, Calif.)