Louisiana MHP w/ seller financing

[William Murden]

Looking at a 30 pad park around the Lafayette area of Louisiana, looking for this to be long term. How would I structure new homes coming in to park for lot rent. Would I buy 5 pr 6 at a time and do a lease to own? Should I meter water individually? And help and insight would be great.

[Dominic Mazzarella]

Quote from @William Murden:

@Dominic Mazzarella how would the VA work? I haven't used one before. Currently they have 1 person for on site management if anything happens with free rent.

I would not pay the premium price. Upside is there is more land to add roughly 30 more pads to total 60. Being out of state, I feel more comfortable with PM company. Open to ideas. Also, seller owns a mobile home dealership and will send business my way, but I am not putting much faith in that.

So the VA would perform most of the functions of a property manager. Sending out notices, calling/emailing tenants with various questions and concerns. Processing the rent money if you trust them to do that, etc. There is a LOT that a VA can do remotely, and what the VA can't do, that tenant who gets a discount should be able to do the rest. If not, I'd find someone else in the park to do it.

Having him be a dealer is good and bad. Honestly, it's a red flag for me. If he's a dealer, why hasn't he done the work to realize the upside and fill the park? It could be that the demand just isn't there and now he's trying to offload an asset that he doesn't want to deal with. Again, I don't know the specifics, but hearing that you're dealing with a dealer would make me very cautious going forward. Those guys can be sharks....

And I understand the desire to use a PM company as an out of state owner. I've had the same impulse and used them multiple times and was disappointed multiple times. They tend to charge a lot but not do a lot. They'll almost certainly tell you that since this is a small property, they're going to have to charge 9-10%+ of gross. Maybe you can find a really good one that is worth the cost though. Another option would be to hire the PM temporarily to stabilize the property, then fire them/find someone else when you're more focused on cost cutting.