Auburn Hills Mobile Home Park in Ooltewah has a new owner.
The 116-lot mobile home park on Bill Reed Road was sold for $2.8 million last month to Auburnmost Property LLC, of Southfield, Mich.
That comes to $24,138 per site - though the new owner also got 38 mobile homes as part of the deal.
"It's not that high a price, $24,000 a site is an average to slightly below-average price," said an official from Auburnmost Property who didn't want to be identified. He said a park's value is based on the return on investment.
"We don't have any plans to change the character of the park, except to make it look nicer," the official said. "We own parks in about 14 states. We have 30 parks all the way up to Alaska. Our M.O. [modus operandi] is to buy, hold and improve."
The mobile home park went into foreclosure in 2011, according to Hamilton County records. Before the most recent sale, it was owned by Auburn Hills MHP LLC, which bought the park for $1,055,000, county records show. The park has existed at least since 1976, county records show.
Capstone Manufactured Housing, a subsidiary of Capstone Apartment Partners in Charlotte, N.C., issued a news release saying that it brokered the sale "after securing multiple offers at the asking price."
"The seller purchased the deal out of foreclosure and made significant investments to address deferred maintenance and stabilize operations," said Will Clark, of Capstone's Raleigh, N.C., office.
Clark cited the expansion of Chattanooga's Volkswagen assembly plant, which is a 10-minute drive from the mobile home park, as one of the reasons why Chattanooga is "one of the Southeast's most active markets."
Contact staff writer Tim Omarzu at tomarzu@timesfreepress.com or www.facebook.com/tim.omarzu or twitter.com/TimOmarzu or 423-757-6651.