American firm Sun Communities has announced the closing of its acquisition of Park Holidays UK which has sites in Kent including Birchington Vale.
The company has bought 40 owned and two managed communities in seaside locations in the south of England after completing a deal first announced last November.
The purchase price was £950 million.
Company President and Chief Operating Officer John McLaren said: “We are excited to welcome the Park Holidays properties, team members, holiday homeowners and guests to the Sun family, marking another important milestone in our growth and evolution.
“The Park Holidays’ business model is similar to and complementary with Sun’s Manufactured Housing platform.
“Combining the strengths of our team alongside the skilled and experienced Park Holidays team, this acquisition provides us with the opportunity to establish a strong presence within the highly fragmented UK market.
“We look forward to executing on Sun’s proven acquisition, expansion and development strategies in the UK through Park Holidays, further expanding our best-in-class portfolio and accelerating our growth.”
Jeff Sills, Park Holidays CEO, added: “Park Holidays is thrilled to be joining the Sun Communities team. The similarities in our product offerings, operations, and culture will help us enhance our best-in-class holiday park experience for homeowners and guests. By joining the Sun platform, we can continue to scale and optimize the UK holiday park opportunity for all stakeholders.”
My goodness how that has changed. We first camped on “Five Acres” when Miss Samuels owned it and also had the kennels on site. When Pam and Des Kelly bought it and installed toilets and showers etc we loved keeping our little caravan there and enjoying holidays. It passed to new owners who renamed it “Two chimneys” and they expanded and eventually the site became so much bigger we took the caravan over to Quex. Looking now at Birchington Vale we can just about see where our camping field used to be and “Long acre” alongside with the narrow access road now blocked off. Who could have envisaged how this site would develop over the years? Now from our home nearby we see yet more new owners of this huge site.
Sorry to be negative. Wait to see how much ground rents etc increase. If this company follow the same pattern as in America. Because many people have these as their main residence it being the most economical form of accommodation i.e residents are a captive audience. In America this has become a very lucrative business and potentially you have less security.
Wouldnt touch the place with a barge pole
Explain?
Peter
Look on line
Plenty of stories as to why even this site has covered stories from birchington vale. Plus a few tv programmes about what these companies get up to.
When the site was taken over by the birchington vale group they kicked of lots of people who had been there for years. They take 10% of the sale of your home or buy it at a knock of price so they can resell. They decided who you can sell to.
It’s all about selling new mobile homes so they need to get everyone of who wont buy new from them.
Think of the worst second car dealer you can think of than think a hundred times worst. Lots of elder people were forced of. The land rent is expanse. You have to buy your gas through them so they can charge what they want.
The thing is with these sites they charge a fortune for the park homes ( officially called holiday park homes for 11 1/2 months per year) but the land the holiday home stands on is always rented off the park owners, the holiday park owners
can put the site rents up as often as they like as high as they like. £550 / £650 /£750 per month, whilst at the same time the value of the park homes depreciate year after year. Many holiday park overs have sold their bricks and mortar home to clear their debts buy a park home and live happily ever after however they soon realise their have replaced one burden with another.
I have to agree with Bill. My father was the secretary of the mobile homes association for the UK. He was very fortunate in that he owned the plot of land his mobile was on. However, on his demise his wife had to get approval from the site owners for prospective owners of his mobile. The site owners objected to every prospective purchaser. In the end the site owners purchased the mobile for half its true value. Now a mobile after 5-10 years I believe it has to be replaced. A very lucrative business for the site owners.
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In America the owners of mobile home sites are increases fee’s so much that the site becomes empty. The owners has apply for planning permission to build homes. A similar situation to owners of Golf Course sites. Sell without planning permission. Developer purchases and builds shacks.
In the not so distant future, this area of land will be in the middle of a built/ being built/ planned housing expansion of thanet. At some point the owners will say something along the lines of “ unfortunately the facility no longer offers its residents the lifestyle they once had and its now time to move forward” and so the planning application is submitted. It’ll slowly happen at the other sites as and when convenient/ worthwhile.
Yep! If anyone is foolish enough to buy one of these homes, remember its a diminishing asset, and can only lose its value over time!