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Big Bay Area mobile home park with hundreds of units is bought

SAN JOSE — A big mobile home park in south San Jose with hundreds of spaces has been bought by a family based in an upper-crust Bay Area community in a deal that tops $40 million.

Rancho Santa Teresa Mobile Home Estates at 510 Saddle Brook Drive in San Jose has a new owner, the members of a family trust from Atherton, a wealthy San Mateo County town.

The buyers paid $40.7 million for the Rancho Santa Teresa mobile home complex, according to documents filed on Oct. 13 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.

Rancho Santa Teresa is a large mobile home park with 315 spaces in the Edenvale district of San Jose.

The new owners also obtained a loan of $30 million from First Foundation Bank at the time of their purchase of the mobile home park, county property records show.

An Atherton-based family trust headed up by John Worthing and Margaret Worthing is the buying group, according to public documents.

Investors — and in some cases, real estate developers — have been hungry in recent years for mobile home parks in the South Bay and elsewhere in the Bay Area.

In 2021, Pulte Homes paid $50 million for Winchester Ranch Mobile Home Park, a 110-unit complex in San Jose. The park has been bulldozed and is being replaced by 688 homes, consisting of 320 single-family homes and 368 apartments.

Other purchases appear to be investments that would keep the properties as mobile home parks. Among these deals:

— Plaza del Rey, an 800-unit mobile home community in Sunnyvale, was bought in 2019 for $237.4 million by Chicago-based Hometown America Communities.

— Sunshadow, a 121-unit mobile home community in San Jose, was bought in 2019 in a $12.3 million deal by a group headed up by legendary Chicago-based real estate executive Samuel Zell.

— Mary Manor Estates, a 116-space community in Sunnyvale, was bought in March 2022 for $39 million, also by Hometown America Communities.

In September of this year, a deal was struck to ensure that the vast Silicon Valley Village Mobile Home Park in San Jose, with about 1,600 residents, would remain a mobile home park. The deal ensured that the residents would not face wide-ranging evictions. A group headed up by Aptos-based real estate executive and robotics company chief executive officer Kenneth Miller has agreed to lease the land beneath the park and take over management of the complex.

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