Oakridge Mobile home park, Sylmar, who burnt to the ground mid November last year are now getting their insurance money and are out there, looking for another mobile home to purchase. Some where lucky and got their insurance money as early as mid-January, others are still fighting their insurance company.
What amazes me is that the site has not yet been cleaned up and we are now going on 4 months! Rumor has it that as many as 62-63 bids for clean-up, has been submitted. The latest I heard is that it is going to cost 2 million dollars to clean up Oakridge. Clean up does not mean searching for valuables such as gold and silver or other objects that might be salvagable. No, just scrape the whole thing and move on...
Ron, an older gentleman that I've met on several occasions, showing homes, lost his favorite piano valued at $25,000. He was way under-insured but there's nothing anyone can do about that. Another client, besides losing everything else, lost their art collection as well.
Tod and his wife lost their home in Sky Terrace, put an offer on a mobile home in Oakridge and before escrow closed, it burnt to the ground. Now, they are out looking too. Finding a mobile home for sale in San Fernando Valley is not easy. Most of the mobile homes for sale in the San Fernando Valley area are quite pricey, due to its commuter friendliness.
Santa Clarita Valley, however has many mobile homes for sale at an affordable price. There are currently 116 mobile homes for sale in Santa Clarita, Canyon Country, Saugus, Castaic and Newhall. Best of all, they are much more affordable.
For example:
Hasley Canyon Mobile Home Park, Castaic, 1998, 3 br, 2 bath, 1104 sq. ft $64,900, space rent $775
Lakehills Estates, Castaic, 1981, 2 br, 2 bath, 1440 sq. ft $30,000, needs paint & carpet, space rent $875
Parklane Estates, Canyon Country, 1978 2 br, 2 bath, 1248 sq. ft $49,900, nice, space rent $830
Greenbrier East, Canyon Country, 1993, Senior, 3 br, 2 ba, aprox. 1200 sq. ft excellent, space rent $743
Greenbrier West, Saugus, 1979, 2 br, 2 bath, 1540 sq. ft, could be 3 br, $79,000, space rent $743
Greenbrier West, bank repo, remodelled, 2 br, 2 ba, 2108 sq. ft, $85,900, space rent $743
Canyon Country Mobile Estates, Canyon Country, 1990, 3 br, 2 ba, 1344 sq. ft, $89,900, space rent $700
I could keep going but you get the picture. The Santa Clarita Valley is a great place to live with excellent school districts and a clean environment. The drawback is getting through the bottleneck of Interstate 405 merging with Interstate 5 and Interstate 210, all three at more or less the same time. Anybody going out to Palmdale and Lancaster on Interstate 14, has to pass through that bottleneck as well.
When will the new Oakridge Mobile Home Park be completed and what would it actually take to be able to afford to live there again? Nobody has an exact figure but taking a wild guess, my own personal guestimate would be somewhere, on the lower end, around $175,000.
Keep in mind, Oakridge originally said that only 2009 manufactured home models be allowed. Well, at the speed they are going (not), 2010 models seems more like it. The whole thing has to be built from the ground up. The infra structure is gone as well. They are going to need to build everything from scratch, including utility lines, streets, park amenities, club house, etc.
Since they have not even begun clean up, re-building in 2009 seems impossible. Something else. Lets say Oakridge will settle for a clean up company (hopefully soon). Once that is done, Re-builds the utilities, the streets and everything else. Now what? How many of the people that lived in Oakridge can actually afford to move back?
If your home was paid for, you got $75,000 from your insurance company and your new manufactured home is going to cost you a minimum of $175,000. You are now looking at a mortgage of $100,000. Will you qualify or put it another way, would you like to have payments for the next 20 years when all you had to pay before was your space rent of $850? I have not yet heard anything of what the new space rent will be but I am guessing it will go up, at least some.
When the fire struck Oakridge Mobile Home Park, everybody had alredy been evacuated, thank godness. I wish I had som photos to show you the devastation but nobody is allowed in and the only way you can see it is driving by on the Interstate 210, going 65 miles an hour. Let me tell you, it looks like ground zero.All my best for those who lost their homes in the Oakridge fire.
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