Mobile home park co-ops are popular in many retirement areas, and also provide an affordable homeownership opportunity in areas subject to growth pressures. Unfortunately, members of mobile home park co-ops cannot take a personal income tax deduction for the mortgage interest and real estate taxes paid by the co-op because Section 216 defines co-ops as entities that hold land on which houses or apartments sit.
In a manufactured housing park co-op, the co-op owns only the land, not the home. Section 216 should be amended to extend the same tax benefits of cooperative apartment ownership to ownership in a cooperatively-owned mobile home park. We believe that reference to the existing statutory definition of a manufactured home regulated by HUD would keep drafting simple.
There are over 500 such parks in Florida. Other states with significant number of co-op mobile home parks include California, Oregon, and New Hampshire.