Mobile Home Park Development

[Charles Chester]

I have been considering getting into the development of mobile home parks.  A piece of property came up for sale in town that has the right shape for it I think.  I have attached a PDF I did earlier today for review.  

I have questions on the utilities if someone has been down this road before.

I wanted to do a phased approach to minimize capital and expand as needed.  Is this the right thinking?  Would it be better to install all utilities in Phase I and the pads as needed?

What could be added to separate this from others in the area?  I was thinking playground equipment, basketball goal, stocked pond.

What are things that you overlooked during your development that I should be looking for?

Charles

[Frank Rolfe]

If the city has no zoning requirement, what would stop someone from building a park next to yours, and then across the street? What makes mobile home parks valuable is the "moat" of hostile zoning that fends off competition. You will make much more money if you buy an established park with solid existing cash flows at a decent price -- and that type of deal has much lower risk and easy-to-obtain financing.

I've not seen your deal or the location, but I know very few people over the past 25 years who actually made money building parks from scratch (not counting expansions of existing parks). It's very risky, hard to finance, and filling the lots is extremely capital intensive. Just trying to keep you out of trouble potentially.