My parents have retired to a “trailer park.” Their trailer is the equivalent of a large 3 bedroom house, including a fireplace, enclosed deck and sunken bathtub. All the units are on small, but breathtakingly manicured plots of land. The park includes a clubhouse (where they can go to get professional massages and physical therapy, among other amenities), swimming pool, and tournament lawnbowling court. There is a guard at the gate and a security team that patrols the place. It has its own internal TV channel for social announcements and local advertising. You have to be at least 55 to live there. It’s my personal nightmare, but they seem to like it. My parents aren’t particularly wealthy, but I wouldn’t be the least surprised if many of their neighbors were millionaires.
Actually, I think there is a distinction between a “trailer park” and a “mobile home park”. If you can hitch it up to a truck, it is a trailer. If moving it is a lot more complex and consists of breaking it down into sections and lifting it onto a truck, then it is a mobile home.
In Silicon Valley, for example, there are a couple of mobile home parks. Since you can’t buy a home for less than $500K here, mobile homes are slightly more affordable. I say slightly because interest rates are about 5% higher than normal homes, and you need to pay a non-tax deductable rental fee to the park owner.
Just to give you an idea, a friend just took me to a mobile home in a mobile home park here that was being sold for $288K. The layout is shown here: http://www.palmharbor.com/our_homes/gallery_of_homes/ipix.asp?model=65A4
By my math, I figured the monthly outlay would be about the same as a $500k regular house. Of course, for $500K, you would be lucky to get a house half the size as that mobile home.
It is not difficult to imagine a few mobile home owners being millionares.