Adding options for home financing to Mobile Home Brokerage by creating of notes.

[David Walley]

I'll start by telling you I live in Florida, the capital of mobile home parks. I'm considering starting a mobile home brokerage and including a platform where sellers can offer to hold notes on the purchase but have note buyers in position to purchase the note at a discount shortly after closing. In Florida many of the homes are on leased land therefore financing options are limited, especially on older homes even though the homes are in very good condition, even those manufactured as early as the 60's. This isn't to say, that opportunities will not exist on sales of "Land Owned homes as well. 

Many of the buyers are pretty solid buyers but they don't have an acceptable road to financing their purchase. I would suggest to the seller to have a loan agreement drawn up by an attorney and offer terms that will be attractive to a note buyer, ie. Interest rate, healthy down payment, etc, and including preparing for a discounted purchase of the note balance. All notes would be recorded and serviced by a local bank. I understand that non-performing notes are less attractive, thus the recommendation of designing the note so that a discounted purchase of it would still net the seller an acceptable dollar amount. 

So, my questions for those of you who are more experienced are:

1. Am I missing something here that would make this idea nonfunctional, and if not, what suggestions would you give?

2. Are there note buyers that I could have in a pool who would be waiting to buy these notes? 

3. It's my understanding that as the licensed broker, I have to be at arm's length from the financing portion of the transaction, so I'm not clear as to how to go about this part of the transaction. Any suggestions? Could the pool of note buyers look at the purchase as if they were a loan officer and design the note the way they would buy it?

Yes, I am an "Out of the Box thinker"!  I suppose answers to these questions will get me to square 2 of 50. Thanks, folks! I appreciate any advice you might be able to provide!