Looking at a few GA parks, built 60's/70's a few gorillas in the room

[Curt Smith]

Hi folks, Having been through the neophyte to expert path a few times on various skills I know that me as a neophyte right now on buying / evaluating a MHP I might think something is a big deal but it really isn't and the worst situation is not realizing what the important issues are and finding that one out after you bought the farm (err park that is).

1960's/70's parks: set back, close pad spacing and short lots AND combined with per pad septic.

Reading in MHU's 30 day due diligence package, per pad septic go bad then you have to cannibalize the pad next to it for a new field. To me this goes hand in hand with narrow pad spacing and you can't buy 10-12' homes any more, least that's my view from driving local parks and not seeing any newish inventory. All about the same beat looking old and narrow homes.

My point is if old parks on close spaced pads, I would be expecting folks to be talking about making offers on parks, say 50 pads, all close spaced for 12' trailers on septic. That in a few years you might have only a 25 trailer park as you junk too beat homes to refirb and replace with 14" or so available homes cannibalizing half your pads. But I haven't seen this topic or concern?

What I'm missing is a tape measuring of the parks I walked to know the actual numbers. Maybe newish but wider trailers would fit the parks I'm looking at and this is a non-issue? Maybe the current past retirement age owner just didn';t want to fool with the financial calculator math to figure out if it made sense.

I do know that one park had master and sub meters and there was a 30% difference in water used at the master vs out at the sub meters. Sounds like leaking water pipes. There's no sign of park commons area watering or a park commons area at all for that mater. Unless the park manager doesn't bill his relatives for water living in the park and this is a possible sign of free loaders in the park who will disappear after purchase which I suppose would be a good thing.