Home sweet affordable home

What if for only about $85,000, you could buy a 6-year-old, five-room home with two bedrooms, an eat-in-kitchen, carpeting, a full bath, a stove, a refrigerator, a washer and a dryer? Even a skylight?

Not on Long Island, right? Wrong. Tony Keating's home is up for sale. And the 78-year-old Calverton resident - who worked in research and development at Lever Bros. in Edgewater, N.J., before his retirement - has not lost his mind in a fit of euphoric generosity; $84,999 is the asking price for his mobile home in Thurm's Estates, which in another era would have been called a trailer park.

Keating is one of a handful of people who found a very affordable way to stay on Long Island even as the mainstream housing market moved beyond the means of many. Mobile homes and the "parks" in which they are located represent a tiny fraction of the real estate market - a segment that has its own quirks, requirements, advantages and disadvantages. It is a market that doesn't quite behave like real estate as most people know it.

Keating's agent, Joan Traynor of Help U Sell Ridge Country Realty, addresses the "trailer park" image up front: "It's not like the old days - the phrase 'trailer park trash' and all that goes with that kind of image." But attitudes that accompany the term "trailer park" still show up in degrading comments and jokes, even as mobile home lifestyles have moved beyond stereotypes. WBLI-FM DJ Randy Spears was suspended when he initially refused to apologize for a string of jokes and comments about trailer parks directed at a caller from Mastic.

Suffolk median: $57,750

Thurm's Estates, Traynor says, is "a beautiful community" for the 55-plus population. She ought to know. Traynor has specialized in selling mobile homes in Thurm's, where she herself has lived for 10 years.

Keating's home is far from the most expensive that Traynor has listed. Some in Thurm's Estates are priced at more than twice as much. Even so, the Keating home is more expensive than most mobile homes (or manufactured homes, as some call them) on Long Island.

According to the Multiple Listing Service of Long Island, 44 mobile homes have been sold in the past year, all in Suffolk County, with a median price of $57,750. Since a number of sales may not show up on Multiple Listing - many are sold through a park's management office - the actual number of sales is thought to be significantly more.

The highest selling price Multiple Listing recorded in the past year was $228,000, and the lowest was $10,000.

Long Island prices in most places tend to reflect the value of the actual dwelling, since all mobile homes here are on rented land. But location appears to have some influence on value - in particular, homes in parks restricted to people 55 and older tend to be more valuable. In Bohemia, values of mobile homes have risen apparently in part because that park is considered a desirable location for retirees and most homes are fairly new.

In Nassau County, the last location available to mobile home owners was sold last year to a developer, who has sent the residents packing. And therein may be the greatest problem for local mobile homeresidents: They may own the home, but almost invariably on Long Island they're renting the land on which the home sits. (Keating, like nearly all local mobile home owners, rents too. For $472 a month, he gets water, garbage pick-up and snow removal.)

And when the landlord succumbs to the temptation to develop the space - the new owner of a Syosset park, STP, has asked the town of Oyster Bay for permission to build attached homes and retail stores - mobile home owners may find themselves in the kind of bind that leaves few or no viable choices.

Surprise in Syosset

When Syosset Mobile Home Park announced last spring it had been sold and would be closing, the new owner offered the residents group $500,000 to leave, says Elliot Schlissel, their Lynbrook-based attorney. The homeowners in the park - just south of Jericho Turnpike, west of Oak Drive - declined the cash offer.

What the Syosset residents found is that it can cost from $6,000 to $10,000 just to move each home, says Edward "Cookie" Jarvis, a real estate agent with Re/Max Best of West Babylon (and a 6-foot-6, 409-pound self-professed speed-eater) who has handled a number of mobile home sales. Unfortunately, many of the parks in Suffolk will accept only new mobile homes.

Many Suffolk owners are not troubled by what has been happening in Syosset. They point out that most of the remaining dozen or so parks are owned by firms such as Riverhead-based MacLeod Communities, Inc., which owns several in Suffolk and exists as a company to collect rental revenue in the mobile-home market.

Doreen Miner of Kennedy Realty in Lindenhurst says she sensed potential in mobile homes as the mainstream market slowed within the past year. She currently lists mobile homes for sale in Bay Shore, Islip and Amityville.Her boss, Anthony Kennedy, says, "This was not something we really went after, and it still represents less than 10 percent of our business." But Miner says that as her firm has handled more sales of mobile homes, other agents have called to ask about how the transactions are handled.

Agents usually charge the same rate on mobile home sales that they do on conventional homes. But because mobile homes are less expensive, the commission most agents make on a mobile-home sale is closer to what they make on a rental. And unlike traditional homes, the loan is often not a conventional mortgage but more like a car loan or a consumer loan.

Laura Cirella, 45, a jewelry maker who lives in the Bay Shore Mobile Home Park on Sunrise Highway, is one of Miner's clients. Cirella has put her mobile home on the market for $30,000 as she plans to move to Florida. The home was built in 1970 and is a one-bedroom "single-wide" in the parlance of mobile homes. Cirella says she has been very happy with the home and location, even though she has lived there only a year. Before that she rented from family. "It's a nice community," she says. "When the weather is warm we're near the water and everybody is outside."

'Very, very happy'

In 2000, Anna Petrosino and husband, Gerry, who raised a family in Elmont, bought a six-room (two-bedroom, two-bath) home in one of Riverhead's 55-and-over mobile home communities. Gerry Petrosino became ill shortly afterward and died, but Anna Petrosino remained active and made friends in the Glennwood Village cul-de-sac, which overlooks a horse farm. She died last year at 83.

Her daughter and son-in-law, Lucille, 62, and Ken Mann, 67, of Shoreham have the home for sale at $199,000 through Patricia Pidgeon of Little Bay Realty based in Wading River. There is a formal dining room and a deck, as well as in-ground sprinklers. Base rent is $408 a month; $698 a month includes utilities, maintenance and cable TV. With her daughter and grandchildren nearby, Anna Petrosino "was very, very happy there," says her daughter.

Andrzej Sliwoski, 52, has been with Century 21 AA Realty in Lindenhurst for six years. Fluent in Polish, Sliwoski translates for his client, Czeslaw Piluk, 68, who lived on Long Island for 19 years, the last seven in Amityville. Piluk and his wife rented apartments for 12 years while they raised a son and a daughter and ran a cleaning service. When Piluk was able to buy his mobile home in Amityville, he found the adjustment to mobile home living minimal - a lifestyle he calls "pretty comfortable" and "definitely much better than renting." Piluk's home has one bedroom. He has put it on the market for $27,000 and has relocated with his wife to New Port Richey, Fla.

Tony Keating is heading south, too: "A mobile home in south Jersey. I found a place there where the rent is $167 a month."