Know your park owners...

Jeffrey A. Kaplan
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The following excerpts are from a 1996 L.A. Times article:

After studying accounting at USC and earning a law degree at UC Berkeley, Kaplan went to work in Los Angeles as a real estate lawyer in the early 1970s. But soon, after getting acquainted with the mobile home business, he and Tatum began acquiring parks in Southern California and Santa Clara County.

Some park owners have learned the art of defusing tensions by dealing diplomatically with tenants and charging moderate rent increases. But by all accounts, Kaplan--short, wiry and engaging yet hot-tempered--has never taken that tack.

No matter how well business was going, however, Kaplan never was willing to stand pat. Impatient with the political moderates within the dominant lobbying group for California park owners--the Western Mobilehome Parkowners Assn.--Kaplan founded a hard-line breakaway group, the California Mobilehome Parkowners' Alliance, in 1988.

Kaplan is disliked even by some park landlords who support Prop. 199; they privately blame Kaplan's tactics for inspiring many communities to adopt profit-shrinking rent-control ordinances in the first place.

"In this industry, there's room to gouge," said a Prop. 199 supporter who asked not to be identified. "People can't take their house and walk away. Jeff pushed the limit in his parks, more than most of us think is right."

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As of 2005....

Jeffrey Kaplan and Thomas T.Tatum, the sponsors, have a

combined 50-plus years of real estate experience.

They currently own 20 manufactured housing communities

throughout California totaling 4,846 pads.

PROPERTY MANAGEMENT. The property manager of the Casa
Del Lago Mobile Home Park is Mobile Community Management,
a subsidiary of Tatum-Kaplan Financial Group and
an affiliate of the borrower.



More to come.