Mobile Home Park Mastery

There are around 44,000 mobile home parks in the U.S. yet only around 4,000 of these are owned by larger players – the most fragmented of any real estate sector. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the reasons why the “trailer park” industry has still not consolidated.

In virtually every sector of real estate, a big focus of due diligence is market occupancy – except for mobile home parks. Why is that? In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the unique reasons that the occupancy of other parks is not always an accurate indication of demand and, for most buyers, is mostly ignored.

Buying a used mobile home is supposed to be a positive step to fill a vacant lot. But sometimes it can rapidly spiral into a nightmare scenario. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review what can go wrong with a used home purchase as well as how to proactively guard against those issues.

Every park owner wants their residents to feel secure. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore options to enhance your park’s safety as well as concepts that have proven to be more of a disadvantage than a benefit.

Maybe you came into a windfall and want to invest a little more money than you budgeted. Or perhaps you want to test an extra enhancement to help your park break through to a new level. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review things you can do to get that extra edge – if you’re willing to pay for it – and some concepts that are always a waste of money.

Most mobile home parks have a powerful marketing tool that is rarely used but highly effective – and nearly free of cost. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore how to use your road frontage as a successful marketing opportunity on a number of fronts.

We used to have three different population classifications and now we have five. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore how and why America added two new types of population classifications and how you can use that to your advantage in finding good mobile home parks to buy.

In bringing old mobile home parks back to life, a common challenge is how to use the existing pieces to create reasonable aesthetics. But some parks don’t even have any pieces to work with. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore available methods to make even the ugliest of properties attractive again.

The demand for affordable housing is enormous, and most homes sell fast in today’s market. But if you’ve brought in a new or used home – and it’s not moving quickly enough – then there are some steps you can take to make it more desirable. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review some of the lessons we’ve learned to help get homes out the door.

Back in the late 1990s – a period in which few investors gave a second thought to mobile home parks – there occurred perhaps the industry’s greatest failure. Known as the “Great Chattel Collapse”, this horrific event resulted in a roughly 70% reduction in mobile home manufacturing and bankrupted many home lenders. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore what lead to this event and what the industry learned as a result.

Mobile home parks are often like villages in which residents rarely tread beyond their familiar territory – yet there are huge benefits for park owners in helping to make their connection to the community at large. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore how mobile home park owners can expand their residents’ support network.

Imagine a mobile home park as a chess board and every vacant lot as an opportunity to make the right move towards your goal of maximizing park income, value, and ease of operations. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the time-proven methods to optimize your move on each and every vacant lot.

Peace and tranquility is not often associated with lending, but the point is to always continue pressing forward towards that goal. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore methods to reduce stress and worry and mitigate the inherent risk of fickle lending markets.

"Amenities" are defined as a "desirable or useful feature of a building or place". In the never ending desire of mobile home park owners to provide the highest quality of life for residents, new concepts are constantly being introduced – and many of them are terrible. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the world of bad amenities: features that do not provide a desirable impact on the community.

In the cyclical nature of the American economy, even entire neighborhoods can recycle every so many years. And harnessing these shifts can be very profitable. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the conditions that create gentrification and how to monitor and spot them.

A bad mobile home park manager is often like a cancer that can infect other organs, and you have to know where else to look when it turns out that your manager must be replaced. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review what needs to be investigated and fixed upon a manager change over, as well as how to proactively minimize the damage.

The mobile home park industry is notorious for jargon that is either politically incorrect or meaningless. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore commonly used terms and what the correct versions of them should be.

Just because a mobile home park is under contract does not mean that you can’t still buy it – you just have to wait for the current buyer to drop the deal. And when that occurs you will have an advantage if you already have an active back-up contract. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how back-up contracts work as well as some basic strategies to do them properly.

Woody Allen has never owned a mobile home park, but his quote is as true to the affordable housing industry as it is in Hollywood. Yet many mobile home parks suffer greatly by the actions of managers who fail to show up. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the failings of many managers along with strategies to correct these problems.

There are some dangerous parallels between 1999 and current times. We all know that 1999 lead to the “Dot.Com Crash” but what may be developing currently could exceed that recession. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the similarities between 1999 and modern times, as well as predict what the impact on the mobile home park industry might be.

Besides founding the retail powerhouse Amazon, Jeff Bezos has recently been reflecting on some of his fundamental principles for success, of which the "Regret Minimization Model" is the most interesting. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review what this theory entails and apply that to the purchase of a mobile home park.

Many park owners are also their resident’s news source – at least for a couple minutes a day. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how to provide timely tips and content to your community on a recurring basis.

Discussions abound regarding the rumored $10 billion sale of YES communities to Brookfield, a Canadian REIT. While we don’t really know all the facts at this point, there are some certainties that this deal represents, and we’re going to explore what those items are in depth.

There’s a new type of deal construction out there called the “stack”. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore this type of structure and identify its strengths and weaknesses. With “creative dealmaking” the key to buying some communities, this might be an option for your next acquisition.

With every mobile home park acquisition comes a survey. And with those surveys there are often issues to address. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the most common survey problems and what the typical methods are to fix them.

Mobile home parks have the lowest default rate of any real estate sector, but when they do fail it always seems to be due to the same factors. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the reasons why parks are sometimes unsuccessful and how to mitigate those risks.

Do you have good luck or bad luck? Regardless of your answer, you’re probably wrong. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how buyers put way too much emphasis on “luck” without truly understanding its role in making money with mobile home parks.

There are many styles of turn-arounds, but one of the riskiest and most complex is buying a property that has extremely low occupancy. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the key elements to the successful purchase and turn-around of mobile home parks with high levels of vacancy.

If you’re buying a mobile home to fill a vacant lot – new or used – there are a few things you have to double-check because if you make the wrong decision the damage can be in the tens of thousands of dollars. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review those items and explore how to get them right.

Most mobile home park owners are good-natured people who like to be helpful. But most park manager requests for “favors” need to be avoided at all costs. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the typical manager requests, why they rarely work out well, and how to fend them off.

The Trump administration is proposing to take Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac public, as well as to merge them into one entity in the process. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review why this would be a good thing for commercial real estate in general, and the mobile home park industry in particular.

If you are looking to fill vacant lots in your mobile home park with used homes, one option that is rarely mentioned is “tax sales” stemming from unpaid property tax. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore how this process works in the real world and things to watch out for.

Most Americans are only familiar with owning property with a single-family home on it. But mobile home parks are much larger and complex. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the unique nature of mobile home parks to bend the rigid rules of traditional private property law.

This podcast marks the 400th installment of the #1 Mobile Home Park discussion in the U.S. With 399 episodes under our belt we’ve covered a wide range of topics over the years, but this week we’re going to revisit our fist ten titles and explore how they may have changed over the nearly eight years since they were first reviewed.

Most mobile home park office hours tend to be Monday through Friday from 9AM to 5 PM – which just happens to be about the worst schedule if you’re trying to sell homes. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how your office days and hours need to reflect the job at hand.

The successful mobile home park business model has always been simply to rent land. But sometimes the simple path is not enough for some owners, who venture out with additional ideas to boost net income. Sadly, most of these ideas fail to be profitable. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the many different side-hustles that park owners have tried that have failed to actually make money.

How you fill your lots is somewhat like a game of chess, with certain pieces more important than others, and every move filled with the potential for benefit or damage. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the strategic considerations required to maximize your park’s value.

“Lonnie Dealers” are investors who buy and sell or buy and rent mobile homes inside mobile home parks, labeled after an early advocate of this concept named Lonnie Scruggs. And although this investment program had a lot of interest in the 1990s, the number of individuals engaged in this sector has been continually dwindling. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the “Lonnie Deal”, its waning popularity, and the resulting impact on the mobile home park industry.

Some mobile home park deals are built around filling a huge number of vacant lots, while others are built on raising rents and cutting costs and increasing occupancy is a tiny part of the turn-around program. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the plan of attack if you have only a handful of vacancies to fill.

Any time that you pay more for a mobile home park than it is currently worth, based on existing net income, you are engaged in “stretching” to rationalize paying the higher amount. But the types of “stretching” required to bridge the gap typically vary from acceptable to too risky. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the fundamentals of “stretching” and determine their quotient of risk.

Millennials have some fresh ideas about housing, and one of their desires is to have “social amenities”. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the concept of “social amenities” and offer some recommendations on how to bring this concept to your community.

We all know that celebrities use plastic surgery to augment or alter their appearance. But how can a mobile home park share in this ability to improve the looks of the property using man-made products? In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review some of the methods that allow you to increase your community’s beauty quickly and at a relatively low cost.

A “lever” is defined as “a rigid bar used to move a heavy load when pressure is applied to one end”. But in the mobile home park business, sometimes the strongest “lever” is made of paper and roughly 6” long. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the different ways in which a little cash can get the desired results if you know where to apply the “lever”.

It’s that time of year when mobile home park owner attention turns to property condition, which always includes thoughts on the roads. Paving companies are more than happy to suggest hugely expensive road upgrades. But how can you improve your roads with as little capital as possible? In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore various options to get better roads at a low cost.