Mobile Home Park Mastery

There are around 44,000 mobile home parks in the U.S., and not all of them are following the same business model. While the vast majority of park buyers and lenders are focused on the “renting land” model, there are some who engage in the “detached apartment” concept. But does that concept work? In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast, we’re going to examine this business model and give its strengths and weaknesses, as well as moments in which it might work and settings in which it would fail.  Warning: this knowledge may change your perception.

The slang term “skin in the game” is defined by Wikipedia as “one having an incurred risk (monetary or otherwise) by being involved in achieving a goal”. It was made popular by Warren Buffett, who prefers that high level officers in a company have direct money in the venture to ensure their alignment of priorities with investors. So who really has “skin in the game” regarding mobile home park investing, and who is lacking that alignment of interests with you when you write that earnest money check? In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore this topic in detail, and define who is really on your team vs. those who could care less after the closing has occurred.

“Cash out” refinancing is extremely attractive to all investors, as it allows you to “recycle” your capital over and over to build a portfolio of properties. Or it also allows you to remove all risk from any certain deal and gives you cash to build a financial safety net. Whatever the goals may be, obtaining “cash out” is somewhat of an art form, and there are certain strategies required to achieve it. In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to discuss this game plan regarding “cash out” and what the deals look like that carry that potential.

You may call your mother weekly, but that’s not the appropriate way to check in with the residents of your mobile home park. Instead, there are systems that have been developed to keep in touch but in a structured way that it best for the owner and residents alike. So what are the correct and incorrect way to stay in touch? In this episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how smart owners stay on top of resident contact.

To get a mobile home from Point A to Point B you have to haul it – and you need a hitch to make that possible. But what about after it arrives? In this episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery pocast, we’re going to dig deep into the facts about these “hitches” and the best policies regarding them going forward. Until mobile homes come with engines and drivetrain, then hitches will be a fact of life for all mobile home park owners, so it’s time to discuss the topic.

When buying a mobile home park, the most important moment is the transition of the property from the old owner to you, which typically happens at the title company upon signing of a pile of documents. So what can you do to make this transition more smooth and successful. In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the key items to do before and after closing to make for a happier and less stressful community ownership change.

We all associate age with wisdom, and rightfully so. Nobody knows more about any subject than those that have experienced it – particularly through many cycles. And I am forever indebted to those older mobile home park community owners who gave me words of wisdom in my early career, and still do so for new investors on a regular basis. So what is some of this old-timer wisdom? In this episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review some of the best thoughts of experienced owners and how they relate to today’s mobile home park industry.

Back when I was an economics student at Stanford in the 1980s, the most important theory that would help on any essay was the law of supply and demand. It’s a simple concept: if you have greater supply than demand then prices go down, and greater demand than supply makes prices go up. Never in American history has this economic treatise had more meaning or more unhappy endings. In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to discuss how supply and demand are shaping all sectors of U.S. real estate and mobile home parks in particular.

President Teddy Roosevelt was a supporter of “Big Stick” diplomacy, which he defined as having five traits. In this week’s episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review Roosevelt’s premise and apply its wisdom to your mobile home park. Although Roosevelt died in 1919 –a decade before the first “trailer” rolled off the manufacturing line – his thoughts are as true today as they were in the early 20th century.

Risk vs. Reward is a huge topic with successful mobile home park owners. In this episode we are going to review what the concept of Risk vs. Reward is, and then go over in granular detail many of the top risks to be concerned about, and what your percent of success or failure might be with that trait. While Vegas offers you riches, it rarely delivers, and mobile home parks are more of a game of skill that always rewards those that used good planning and diligence and have done their best to mitigate chance.