Mobile Home Park Mastery

Despite providing a terrific housing product to thousands of Americans, we continue to hear from the media that mobile home parks are a “predatory” business model. But is this true? In this episode of the Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast, we’re going to try to put this issue to bed once and for all, breaking down what “predatory” means and then applying those definitions to the actual methodology of mobile home park ownership and management. Here’s a spoiler: the media is horrendously off-base, based on sheer ignorance, and nobody ever calls them out on it. In this podcast we will.

The television show COPS would suggest that all mobile home parks are community crime centers. The movie 8-Mile, starring Eminem, makes it look like trailer parks are the “go-to” spot for drugs, violence and petty crime of all varieties. But is that stereotype true? The U.S. government answered that question in 2010 with the release of “Trailers and Trouble? An Examination of Crime in Mobile Home Communities” written by Professor William P. McCarty of the University of Illinois, which was part of HUD’s formal “Cityscape: a Journal of Policy Development and Research”. So what did HUD’s research show? Let’s just say that the trailer park crime narrative was more than just a little off-base.

Both Dave and I got into the mobile home park business with smaller properties, and many of our early purchases were tiny communities. Even in recent times we have no issue with buying a great deal with a smaller lot count. However, there are many things about small parks that we have learned over the decades and wanted to share those with you to help you craft the right buying decision. As you’ll see, there are some important tips for buying smaller parks that will make your plan more successful and your experience in ownership more enjoyable.

There’s an old saying that “when the tide goes out you see who was swimming naked”. In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to analyze what real estate sectors were swimming naked in light of the Covid-19 pandemic – and future such events – and which sectors had their swimsuits safely on the whole time. The world may never be the same after the national quarantine and it’s important to evaluate real estate investing going forward based on the new reality.

What were the hot topics a decade ago? Has anything changed over the past ten years? We’re going to review the headlines and articles of mobile home park industry magazines from 2010 to see if there have been any substantial changes to the “trailer park” business model, and use this analysis to make projections for the decade ahead. They say that history repeats itself, but in the case of mobile home parks, is it more like Bill Murray’s “Groundhog Day? That’s the focus of this discussion.

No mobile home park in history has generated as much undeserved negative publicity as North Lamar in Austin, Texas.  Nothing we did was good enough for the Austin media. We saved the park from the wrecking ball. We brought the park back to life with new streets, entrance and lot-by-lot TLC. We made its ongoing operation possible by raising rents and fixing resident abuse of water and sewer. Finally, we allowed the residents to buy the park from us and gave them a huge amount of time to put the deal together with the non-profit group ROC. But even after selling it we are still hounded by the Austin media who can’t get over the fact that a capitalist approach succeeded where the city failed and that our business model was so well structured that they could not mess it up despite their endless efforts.

What’s the highest hurdle you can jump over? Can you clear 4’ or more? In this second part of our Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast two-part series on the “Top 7 Deal Killing Hurdles” we’re going to review the three highest hurdles that any park buyer must face and why they are so difficult. We’re also going to discuss the limited options to scale them and the enormity of the risks involved. If you want to clear these last three you better get out to the track and start working out, as they have destroyed many a park buyers who didn’t know what they were or how to address them.

Webster’s Dictionary defines a “hurdle” as “an obstacle or difficulty”. We’ve all seen runners in races going over hurdles of various heights – some successfully and others not. So what are the “Top 7 Deal Killing Hurdles” that mobile home park buyers have to navigate to successfully invest in affordable housing? In this week’s Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast we’re beginning a two-part series to review each hurdle, why it is so significant, and some ideas to get over it as a buyer and operator. Since the Summer Olympics was cancelled, this may be as close as you’ll get to a show about hurdles this summer!

The mobile home park industry is filled with a number of time-proven mantras. It has benefitted from various high-profile players that are often quoted in the media, as well as affiliated stories from other sectors of real estate that have remarkable overlap. The sum of this body of work is the collective wisdom of many who have gone before, as well as those who are still an active part of the industry. In this episode of Mobile Home Park Mastery, we’re going to review many of these items and what they mean to all park owners and operators.

In 2014 the New York Times brought out a huge story about Frank & Dave and their success in building one of the largest mobile home park portfolios in the U.S. They even declared that Frank & Dave are the “best thing going in affordable housing when the nation’s need for low-cost places to live has never been greater”. But what else did the writer, Gary Rivlin, find in his research about the industry. In this episode we’re going to review the discussion we had with Gary after the article came out, and share some quotes of his opinions on what we do and how we do it. Since the New York Times is known to not typically be pro-business, there are certain strengths to the mobile home park industry that converted even a self-professed antagonist to be a big fan of “trailer parks”.