Affordable Housing Institute : US

[Continued from yesterday’s Part 1.]

 

In 1937, as we saw yesterday, Briny Breezes began as a trailer park, and became a spontaneous community:

 

Briny Breezes incorporated as a town in 1963, and many of the original owners still live here.

 

Since Briny is its own town today, presumably any zoning it has can be overridden by the town’s owner — such as a developer.  And its location is prime for very high density, high value usage:

 

Jean Francois Roy, the founder of Ocean Land Investments in Boca Raton, wants to build a hotel and more mansion-like condos along the surf. He would bulldoze Briny to make room.

 

The location’s unbelievable:

 

 

A tiny town south of West Palm Beach, Briny Breezes includes 488 mobile homes stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal.

 

Between the developer and the deep blue sea: Briny Breezes from space

 

Whatever the developer is buying, it’s not the current structure:

 

Shuffleboard courts, a library and theater are among the many community buildings. A relic of old Florida, Briny is one of the last stretches of beach that average families can afford.

 

It’s the developmental potential:

 

Briny Breezes is located in a beautiful South Florida location just south of Palm Beach’s most beautiful waterfront homes and just steps from the Atlantic Ocean. There are mansions all along the water just north and just south of this community. With all Briny Breezes has to offer, it’s no wonder it has been so sought after by developers.  

 

The homes by themselves had minimal value. 

 

By themselves, idiosyncratic and distinct

 

Instead it’s the aggregation potential:

 

More valuable when you have all the pieces assembled

 

In the last 10 years buyers could purchase these trailers individually for under $50,000, but that has changed. With developers offering as much as $500 million for the 488 trailers, each could be worth up to and over $1 million depending on location.

 

A twenty-fold increase, all driven by reusing the land for higher-income, higher-density access to that beach and that sunshine:

 

Every morning, Nancy Boczon and Bill Tolford meet their neighbors at the Briny Breezes clubhouse to watch the sun climb out of the Atlantic. Most evenings, before happy hour, the couple returns to the beach to enjoy the evening breeze. Briny’s private 600-foot beach is the main reason a developer wants to buy the town.

 

Meanwhile, and unsurprisingly, the forward is creating immediate liquidity:

 

Recently Briny Breezes was offered $500 Million from a developer.  In doing so, the properties have grown increasingly more sought after.  If you are looking to purchase in the beautiful Briny Breezes community, this is a great investment opportunity.

 

Investment is not romantic.

 

Once upon a time, Nancy and I stayed for two nights in a Honolulu beachfront hotel called the Waikikian on the Beach.  Though it was an incredible bargain — the reason the Careful Shopper had found it — it was, the travel agent warned us after a cautious throat-clear, “primitive.“  Indeed, the Waikikian proved to be a row of ground-level units, with painted cinder-block walls, decor a la early Elvis, a shower that would not have been out-of-place in a county jail, and rickety wooden jalousie door that flexed when you turned your key, and air conditioners that if turned on rattled and wheezed like playing cards between a boy’s bicycle spokes.

 

Kicka pooka mok a wa wahini
Are the words I long to hear
Lay your coconut on my tiki
What the hecka mooka mooka dear

 

Invisible from the main street, the Waikikean was wedged like a mouse between the concrete redwoods of much more modern hotels, but when we wended our way through its tiki-lamped paths to its cheesy patio bar, there was that beautiful small stretch of pearl-white sand, and the blue Pacific beyond.

 

The Waikikian is gone now, replaced by a 35-story hotel, and I cannot say I regret its passing, for truth be told the accommodations were antediluvian.  Yet I can remember our nights there even as I have forgotten dozens of better hotel rooms in Honolulu and elsewhere on our travels.

 

In many ways, Briny Breezes (even the name is anachronistic!) reminds me of that vanished Waikikian.  Look at its statistics:

 

42 - acres the park covers, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway

488 - mobile homes in Briny Breezes

750 - seasonal residents

175 - permanent residents

 

Got that?  In summer, it’s less than one-quarter full.  And while the article doesn’t say, I suspect that it is the permanent residents who may be among the opposition:

 

BRINY BREEZES - The light in A-10 usually goes on first. That’s Mikey Rulli’s trailer. She’s the one who wore the “Vote No” hat to the meeting.

 

Every morning at 5:30, Mikey walks through the dark to her friend Barbara’s trailer, two doors down, and they stroll a block to the Intracoastal Waterway.  If you get there early enough, Mikey says, you can watch the moon set.  How can you put a price on that? she wants to know.

 

The price is $1,045,000 per current household. 

 

“Good morning, Mikey!” Barbara calls this morning.

 

Just before happy hour, Mikey Rulli sits on the steps of her trailer, wearing the “Vote No” hat she had made for Briny’s community meeting. Rulli, 59, discovered Briny Breezes 11 years ago and bought her trailer that same day.

 

I have a lot of sympathy for Ms. Rulli and those who wish to stay, but they are almost certain to be outvoted:

 

Will Mr. Rulli and others vote themselves off Briny?

 

“I used to be on the [shuffleboard] team here. Used to be good,” says Ruth Terrio, settling on the wooden bleachers. “But now that I have this,” she says, brandishing the tube that runs from her nose to the oxygen tank beside her, “I can only watch.”

 

She shades her eyes to better see the shufflers. She’s 80, from Massachusetts. “My aunt has been coming here for 40 years,” she says. “When my husband died, my aunt says, “You’ve got to come down here! It’s the place for widows.’ Then I spun out on black ice that winter and knew I had to move to Florida. They started a singles club here last year, one man and 11 women. The odds weren’t so good. You meet more men playing shuffleboard.”

 

In the end, you can put a price on paradise, and each individual household puts its own value on that paradise:

 

Ruth loves this place, she says. “But I don’t have 10 years left in me anyway. So I’m going to take the money and run.” She’ll probably look at senior housing in New Jersey or Maine, to be near her grandchildren.

 

What about the cold and snow? “With a million dollars,” she says, “I can pay someone to shovel my driveway.”

 

Spoken like a rational seller.

 

The likely future 

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