Locating Off-Market Mobile Home Parks With Motivated Sellers

[Jerry Holt]

I am interested on learning more on mobile home park deals but I’m not interested in listed properties that the various websites provide. That market may be too crowded. I’ve been reading the threads on BP and it seems that locating contact information for MHP owners is a challenge for some. That isn’t an issue for me as I am able to locate the owners through public record research. So, now that I have the owner contact information what’s next? What circumstances would make the owner a potentially motivated seller?

My first thoughts were to do title searches on the MHP owners to determine if there are any encumbrances, such as liens, easements, judgments, taxes or any other issues. If the dollar amount of the encumbrance is not too high, but it remains unpaid, it would make me wonder why. Is the owner in a financial situation?

Looking into physically distressed MHP properties is also an option, depending on just how distressed they are.

Other than the above mentioned scenarios are there any other thoughts on what might turn a MHP owner into a motivated seller? Thanks BP folks!

[Howard Abell]

It seems to me that there are different meanings to the phrase "motivated seller and you need to define what you are looking for. Sellers can be motivated to sell for various reasons including, health, retirement, financial or estate planning, distressed property situation and many other reasons. I suspect what most people mean by motivated seller is will the seller sell at a big enough discount to perceived value to interest the buyer. Of course there is also another way to motivate a seller and that is to offer full value for the property. The only way to "turn" an owner into a seller of any kind is to talk to them to discover what the motivations might be.  

Good hunting.