Kaylynn Sanchez-Miguel stands in the hallway of the trailer she shares with her husband David in the Blue Ridge Estates trailer park in Rossville, Ga. Sanchez-Miguel lives in the trailer under a lease with option to purchase agreement where residents are responsible for repairing and maintaining the trailer they are leasing, but she says numerous serious problems with the trailer's structure and electrical functions existed when they moved in.

Thanks to predatory lending practices and lax regulation of the manufactured home market, residents like Sanchez-Miguel can end up paying tens of thousands of dollars more in lease-to-own agreements than the appraised value of their trailers.