Sun Communities, Inc. SUI

The business

Sun owns and operates manufactured-housing (MH) communities and RV resorts across the US, Canada, and the UK, having exited the marina business in 2025. The engine is the MH portfolio: residents own the home and pay rent on the land, turnover is low, maintenance capital is light, and lot rents have climbed mid-single-digits for years. The slice doing most of the work is manufactured housing, the largest and most stable share of property NOI and the source of the durable rent growth; RV resorts are the second leg, more seasonal and transient-exposed, and the UK holiday-park business is smallest and most cyclical. Combined same-property NOI grew about 5.5% in 2025, which is the quiet point: the assets compound.

The fact the financials do not show, and the one the thesis turns on, is the capital-allocation reset. Under long-tenured prior leadership Sun ran a debt-funded global acquisition spree, buying Safe Harbor Marinas and UK holiday parks, that bloated the balance sheet and drew activist pressure from Land and Buildings. In 2025 the company reversed: it sold Safe Harbor for $5.65 billion at roughly 21 times FFO, repaid about $3.6 billion of debt, repurchased $539 million of stock, refreshed the board, and ran its first full year under CEO Charles Young. What changed concretely is on the balance sheet: total debt fell to about $1.8 billion and net debt to roughly $1.2 billion at year-end 2025, from a balance sheet carrying more than $7 billion of debt a year earlier. The moat is the land itself, since new MH communities are almost never permitted; whether that moat finally shows up in per-share numbers is the open question, not whether it exists.