How much to pay for the Mobile Home your buying...

Question

This is a question I get all the time when dealing with people entering the mobile home market... and there are a whole bunch of answers. Lets start with one thing in mind, the less you pay- the quicker you recover your investment.
So with that said, lets break it down:
First you need to understand your own market- what will someone pay monthly for a home payment. A good place to look are the local apartment rentals. If a 3/2 apartment rents for $800 per month, that is a good place to start. Next we look at space rent. in my area it varies from $450 to $520 per month. That said, for the most part a payment on a 3/2 would come out to about $350 per month. That number will be higher if the home is a double wide, and less if it is old and junk.
I want you to notice, we have not talked about the type of home, age or anything yet. I set my purchase price on what I will get back, not on what I am buying. This is a very important part of the equation because it takes emotion out of the process.
So for everyone here, think about how quickly you want to RECOVER your investment. For me, the number is 12 months, 18 if the home is newer and nicer.
So lets back these numbers out and see what we have. My payment of $350 consists of what? $30 of it is insurance and the rest is payment. I have my owners pay their own taxes. So I am working with $320. Lets say this is an older home- so top $ is $3840. That is total money out- after every fee, tax and park manager is paid. It must also include fix up costs and space rent for however long it will sit. So our home needs taxes paid of $200, Title fees of $25, space rent for 45 days- say $600, and lets say the park manager found and sold the home for me, so add another $500. I pay the managers $250 per side, buy and sell on my deals. So I am at $3115 before cleaning a carpet or replacing a light bulb. Lets say this deal need some fix up. For the sake of argument lets say it has a couple of broken windows and needs carpet and deep cleaning. Lets value that at $1300. Now my top dollar is at $1815.
On a deal like this I would offer to take the home off their hands. If they did not take that I would probably pay $1750 tops as is. I would add they have to leave all of the appliances in working order.

Lets look at the selling options-

Lets say I sell it as a fix-up home. Say as is I would sell it for $7,000, no money down and payments of $200 per month. On a fix up I would escrow $25 for insurance leaving $175 of payments- or $2100 per year. After 56 payments i would have collected $9,800. I also charge $15 per month to service the note, so add $840. Grand total- $10,640. People love fix up homes, and my return looks good!

OK- lets fix this baby up and sell it for top $. Lets say we pump all of our money into the home and in the end we have $3800 in it. We sell it on payments of $350 for $15,500. So after 12 payments of $350 minus $30= $320 I have $3840. After the 75 payments I have collected $24,000 plus the $15/month $1,125 so $25,125. So that works out to about a 100% return yearly for 6.24 years.

The bottom line- how fast do you want your money back out of these deals. If your borrowing money to run this business you might not need the money out so quick. I am self funded so at this point I only spend what the business makes. Next- we can look at a higher price home that sells for more money on a long term, the numbers will excite you!

Last week I stopped into a local park and inquired about the homes that have been abandoned that the park did not have title to. In other posts I have mentioned about how this is a great way to get homes by bonding for title. in the conversation they gave me a lead on a home where they evicted the owner for non payment and the bank was just sitting on the home. Mobile homes receive their financing from several sources and local banks ore one of them. For the most part, a local bank has no clue what to do with a home after it goes bad. This is where you can step in and solve many problems all at once.
I looked at the home and much to mu surprise, it was a very nice looking double wide. I contacted the bank and they said I would have a call back soon with a price. They came back saying they were owed $15,000 but would take $3,000. At this time I had no access to the home so I called back and they told me I was free to enter. I called my contractor and he was inside within the hour. The bid to fix the home up was under $600, just some paint and kitchen flooring. I asked the bank what they had negotiated with the park concerning space rent, they had no contact with the park concerning space rent. So I offered to talk to the park and see what I could work out. I told the park I could buy the home but I needed to know what the past space rent due was. I was sure to let them know I was leaving the home in the park, and would work closely with them to find a good buyer. I should note, I have two other homes in this park and the transactions have gone well. The park liked my pitch and forgave all the back space rent, and gave me 45 days of free time to get the home fixed up and sold without a space rent payment. I sell 3 bedroom 2 bath double-wides for $25,000 on payments of $450/month. I will venture a guess this home will sell before the end of this month.

Local banks are a gold mine for finding deals. If you have a contact at your bank ask if they loan on mobile homes, and if the answer is no, ask if they ever have. Let the person in charge of delinquent accounts know if they ever have one go bad, you will be happy to look at the deal and make them an offer.

Be sure when talking to park managers to ask if there are homes that are vacant that the lenders are just sitting on. They will most of the time be willing to give you contact info for the bank so you can deal with them directly.

I should note I took what this bank wanted for the home without bartering with them. I knew how much I would have paid for this home and they were well inside of my number. Because the park was willing to remove the past space rent and give me 45 days free, the deal really made sense.

And to complete the story, the park gave me 5 additional homes with lien releases for me to bond for the titles. I have as much time as I need, again without space rent to renovate and sell these homes.

If your dreams do not keep you up at night, your not dreaming big enough.

Jim Johnson · Answer

I hope the answers help...

Jim Johnson · Answer

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? What do you mean that you're a cash-on-cash investor as opposed to a yield investor? Well, let see here. To be correct, a cash on cash return is the return you receive from the first year of the investment. So a $3,000 homes, that pays back $3,000 in the first year is a 100% cash on cash return. Lets say the note was 48 payments. Now the return is 300%. This is a cash purchase... Now lets say you borrowed the money to do the deal... so you borrowed the $3,000 from your home, lets say a equity line and that equity line had to be paid back. Maybe the line was to be paid back over 4 years, and you were borrowing it at 7%. Now your return look different, because you have underlying debt. To be very accurate, let say you paid $3000 for the home, and sold it for $10,000 on a note. And the borrower gave you $500 down. Really, in the first year you have a taxable event. The IRS will argue you owe taxes on the 'value' of the sale. So the value might be $10,000 less your $3,000 so a $7,0000 taxable event. That is income, not taxable gains. You might make the argument that a mobile home note is worth something less than the face value, because of default etc... matbe the value is what you can sell the note for to a note broker, or another investor that buys notes. Maybe the value is $6,500. So now you have a taxable event of $6,500 less the amount you have into the home, so minus $3000. So you have $3,500 plus the down payment of $500... a taxable event of $4,000. When payments come in you have income taxes owed on the interest, you have a part of the principle that passes tax free (the percent of each principal payment you paid your upfront taxes on) and then you have principal that is taxable. So your real return would have to figure in the taxes owed for the sale, and the taxes owed on interest, and the taxes owed on the remaining principal paid out of each payment. The point of this post, is if we are going to really talk about the real return, things are going to get a bit complicated... I am not sure how this will post, but it is a section of a program I use to calculate return. This is a $10,000 note, 48 payments at 12%. It shows the first 5 months of payments, and the return of the 4 years... Cash Method Estimated After-Tax Return = 51.64% Tax Bracket: 31.00% active Status Down Payment: $500.00 note Type of Sale Principal: $10,000.00 Interest Rate: 12.00% 65.00% FMV as a % of Face Value Term in Months: 48 $3,000.00 Total Capitalized Expenses Total Interest: $2,640.24 12 Months to Payback Total Payments: $12,640.24 1 2 3 4 5 Regular Payment $263.34 $263.34 $263.34 $263.34 $263.34 Interest $100.00 $98.37 $96.72 $95.05 $93.37 Principal $163.34 $164.97 $166.62 $168.29 $169.97 "Discounted" Principal $73.50 $74.24 $74.98 $75.73 $76.49 Income from Principal $89.84 $90.73 $91.64 $92.56 $93.48 Net Income $7,189.84 $189.10 $188.36 $187.61 $186.85 Tax on Gain $2,228.85 $58.62 $58.39 $58.16 $57.92 Investment $3,000.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 Net Cash Flow ($1,465.51) $204.72 $204.95 $205.18 $205.41 1 2 3 4 Annualized NCF ($3,000.00) $799.42 $2,506.07 $2,778.29 $3,099.25 ATIRR Note 51.64% Cash Return 0.00%

Jim Johnson · Answer

So your blending two things... one is bonding for title, the other is buying a repo home. Bonding for title on an abandoned home goes like this... maybe there is an old home in a park that was owned free and clear- the owner of the home just up and moved. So no owner in sight. You follow the process spelled out in the state your in for applying for a title to a abandoned mobile home. In short- you get the last know legal address from the state and mail a certified letter to the person stating your going to apply for title. You post a legal notice in the paper, saying your going to apply for a title to the home. You purchase a bond for am amount set by the state, so if the owner comes back... they are assured of some value if you blew the notices etc... turn all that into the state and they give you the title... not every state is the same... some require a public auction... or something else that is a variation of these steps... If there is a lien, you will need to get the lien released in most states. Hope that helps...

Hiethem B. · Answer

Hi Jim, I want to thank you for all the great information you post on this forum. I was re-reading this thread and you talked about asking the park managers for any abandoned homes that you could acquire by bonding for title. I seem to be unable to locate the previous post that you go into detail regarding bonding for title. I did some research and found that bond for title means: Property sales contract which is mutually binding on both parties, where the title remains with the seller until the purchase price is paid by the buyer. Contract to convey title once certain contract terms are satisfied. So, in the above scenario, the bank is holding the title and has an outstanding note for $15,000. The park has evicted the owner and placed a lein on the title for non-payment of lot rent. You negotiated with the park to release the lein on the title and forgive the past rent due. You then purchased the home from the bank (bond for title) for $3,000? Is that correct? I'm just trying to get my head wrapped around the process Again, your assistance is greatly appreciated

J Scott · Answer

Tremendously...thanks for taking the time to respond! One more question though...you wrote: Can you elaborate on this a bit more? What do you mean that you're a cash-on-cash investor as opposed to a yield investor? I guess I look at cash-on-cash return and yield as just two ways to measure a return on investment. Come to think of it, I can't quite get my head around what cash-on-cash return means when doing deals this way. Typically, I think in terms of cash-on-cash return when I have an amount of money invested, and am continually receiving a return on that investment, AND I still own the underlying initial investment. For example, I take $4000 and put it in the bank. I get 10% interest on the money for as long as I leave it there (therefore generating 10% cash-on-cash return), and I can pull my original $4000 investment (the principal) out anytime I want. Seller financing and holding the note seems a little different. In this case, you can invest $4000 in the mobile home, sell it for the same $4000 at 10% interest, generate a monthly return until the note is paid off, BUT because the principal is being paid back throughout the loan (instead of at the end like the above example), it messes up the cash-on-cash calculation. So, you can't really say that if you're making $250/month ($3000 per year) on your $4000 note, your cash-on-cash return is 75%, because part of that $3000 was your principal...not all of it was your return. Maybe I'm missing something here...or maybe I just need to think about this a bit more... Anyway, how do you calculate your cash-on-cash return for your MH investments?

J Scott · Answer

Jim - First, thank you for all the great information you've provided in this forum...it's truly appreciated! Hope you don't mind if I ask a couple questions... What specifically is the insurance cost for? Are you maintaining insurance on the property, even though you don't hold title? Or is this just escrow of the insurance for the buyer, to ensure that it gets paid? Assuming this is escrow for the buyer, is there a reason you don't do the same thing with taxes? I assume you're talking about property taxes? What happens if the owners don't pay their taxes? Does the county come after them? After you? Are you generally forced to pay the back taxes to retain control of the property? Do you hold any liability for paying taxes (or for anything else) by holding the note? Or is the worst thing that could happen is that the local taxing authority could take the home? In other words, can it come back and hit your credit, or put any of your other assets at risk, if for some reason the taxes never got paid? I'm confused how you got to $3115 here? You started with an investment of $3840 (12 x $320). From that you subtract your upfront costs of: - Taxes: $200 - Title Fees: $25 - Rent: $600 - Fee to Manager: $500 Total: $1325 So, you should be able to pay $2515 for the asset, right? Where are you getting $3115? How do you decide how many payments the buyer will make? Do you have an ROI target and work backwards? Do you set a sales price and a payment amount, and figure out the number of payments from that? Do you get a feel for how long the buyer is willing to pay? I imagine a typical buyer wouldn't care if they paid 56 monthly payment vs 100 monthly payments, assuming the payment was reasonable to them. So, how do you determine the right number? I guess the question is, do you market the property based on the sale price, or based on the monthly payments? Thanks again for all the great info...I have plenty more questions, but I'll stop there for now... :)