BRINY BREEZES, Fla. — About 500 people live in look-alike manufactured homes what is now the town of Briny Breezes.
"It is beautiful," Mikee Rulli, who has lived in the oceanside mobile home park for 27 years, said. "The people are wonderful."
She finds the half-billion dollar offer to sell Briny Breezes to an unnamed developer unthinkable.
"And I'm not going to allow it," Rulli said.
Rulli's good friend Barb Orfe has lived in Briny Breezes for 28 years.
But with rising assessments and insurance costs, Orfe hopes the community takes the $500 million offer.
"And with the more things that need doing around here and that are wearing out, it's become unaffordable for people on a fixed income," Orfe said.
Home values in Briny Breezes are measured in shares.
Shares are determined by the amount of land the mobile home sits on and its proximity to water.
The average homeowner in Briny Breezes has about 32 shares.
When Contact 5 crunched the numbers, figures show the average homeowner would make $1.02 million if the sale were to go through.
"It's a horrible deal for the shareholders of Briny Breezes," Realtor James Arena, who lives in the community, said.
Arena said developers would have to pay a lot more for a fair deal and, he adds, most homeowners might receive a lot less than a million if a sale were to go through.
"There's a lot of terms and conditions like corporate income taxes, double taxation, the cost to dissolve the corporation, and that needs to be figured out before we vote," Arena said.
In 2006, 80% of the Briny Breezes shareholders voted in favor of a half-billion-dollar buyout of the mobile home community, but the funding fell through.
Seventeen years later, with land far more valuable, one member of the shareholder's board told Contact 5 the same half-billion dollar offer may not even come up for a vote.
That might leave homeowners like Orfe priced out of her aluminum-sided paradise.
"I can't afford it," Orfe said.
But if the developer's offer is rejected, Orfe's good friend Rulli won't have to worry about living elsewhere.
"This is where I want to die," Rulli said.