A luxurious trailer park may seem like a contradiction but one community has been making it work for years.
The Montauk Shores Condominium, a trailer-park condo association on the eastern shore of New York’s Long Island in the Hamptons, boasts mobile homes that cost in excess of $1 million and boast pristine ocean views.
Dubbed “Montauk’s best-kept secret,” the 20-acre mobile home site has been around in different forms since the 1940s. The slice of beachfront land, which Business Insider wrote about earlier this week, was originally designed as a campsite. After its owners filed for bankruptcy in 1976, a group of families bought out the land and sold the sites to individual families.
The units range from studio-style to several rooms and from 200 square feet to 1,400 square feet.
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Over the years, the Hamptons became synonymous with billionaires and the East Coast élite. Beyoncé and Jay Z, Anderson Cooper and Robert Downey Jr. all own property in the area. As property values in townships including Southampton and Sag Harbor soared to new heights, so did the cost of a unit at the more remote Montauk Shores Condominium.
Although the mobile homes and beachside units parked at the Montauk Shores Condominium are low key compared to the mansions nearby, many command between $699,000 and $1.5 million on Zillow. The community currently boasts 152 owned and 47 leased sites, although most of the owners only use the properties during the summer. The lot also has playgrounds, rest areas and several pools.
Peter Moore, a Corcoran real estate agent who sells units in the area, told Business Insider that some working-class owners have been able to hold on to their properties and retire there over the years. But for the most part, a mobile home in Montauk Shores is snapped up quickly and for a lot of money — by those who enjoy the area’s laid-back vibe and investors interested in tapping into the rental and resale potential of real estate in the Hamptons.
