Thunder Mountain wrote:
The wife and I were talking the other day about how changing demographics will affect the park model retirement communities. We are currently in the Apache Junction/Mesa area. Have no clue how many thousand park models are in the area, but it is significant. Where we are, most of the park model owners are well into their seventies and eighties. They are early baby boomers and parents of boomers. Numerous units are vacant and for sale as the residents are aging out. We're not seeing younger boomers in park models.
All that said, we see high end mixed RV/park model communities such as The Palms in Yuma and Canyon Vistas in Gold Canyon going like gang busters. To us, they appear to be niche markets for the wealthy. They have a $300,000 to $500,000 motor home sitting beside a $200,000+ casita. Many of the residents do appear to be a bit younger than the AJ/Mesa crowd.
We visited friends in one of the older park model communities where the units are from the 1970s and '80s. Units needing upgrading are available in the $10,000 range and even cheaper. The units are small and crammed in together.
We know that 10,000 boomers are turning 65 every day. What are they doing? We know the market for class C and smaller units is booming. We saw one they other day with four slides! Most of these people seem to want to see the USA moving from place to place rather than buying a park model in Arizona and other snowbirding states.
Appreciate your comments and observations.
Maybe you aren't looking at the right RV parks in Mesa. They sold over 100 park models in Val Vista last year, a mix of older ones and new ones. Sold about a dozen since the first of January. Old ones that don't resell get pulled out and they have a new lot for RVs until someone wants to put a park model on it. All of the parks have to maintain a certain number of RV lots in order to maintain their zoning status. And while they might be able to lower the age, if they want to maintain their "adult only" status, which might have some tax implications in certain areas, then they can't have children staying on a routine basis. At our park it is 2 weeks for grandkids.
We spent 9 years fulltiming and then decided we wanted to have a place to plop down on should something happen to either one of us. We spend the winter in Mesa and decided to get a park model and then use the motorhome for 6 months of summer adventures. Best of both worlds.
BTW - we don't consider 70s to be old.
