Starting a Mobile Home Park

[Bryan Knight]

Ok, so my sister has "put a bug in my ear" to consider starting my own mobile home park. She got the idea because she's actually living in a mobile home park temporarily while saving up a down payment for a home. The owner of the park just brought in 3 more used trailers and is fixing them up for rent. He has about 25 on the lot now. She says that they don't even have them ready but people have been stopping by all day to check on renting them out. She did the research and sent me about 12 different options of trailers that are currently available for sale in the area. Most under 15-20k.

I've never considered starting a park. Most of the talk on the site and podcasts that I've found have all centered around purchasing existing mobile home parks. It's hard to find any experiences of anyone starting a park from ground zero. Purchasing the land. Getting it zoned for a mobile home park. Getting the utilities set up (water, sewer, power, etc). Transporting the trailers and setting them up. And any pitfalls to lookout for during any of that process. 

She's done the research on her park and found out that the owner one large septic tank per every 2-3 trailers. Each trailer there is metered for separate water and each one has it's own power pole. Tenants pay for all utilities. She knows the company that moves trailers. My brother-in-law is good friends with the owner of the moving company and my brother-in-law is a handy man with connections to other contractors to do the repair work on any used trailers that I procure. 

I've never had to deal with changing zoning before so that's a worry for me. 

Over the next few months I could secure the land and within 6 months start with a couple of trailers and build from there. I'm just wondering why most people seek to purchase an existing park instead of starting from scratch. Is it that much more cost prohibitive to start from scratch? Does anyone have experience building from ground zero?

[Joshua Savage]

I spoke with my father in law and he gave me some more details.  By the time you are done, you will end up spending much more money than if you were to buy an existing park. He had access to construction equipment at the time and did a lot of the work himself (he worked for a construction company at the time). If you hired all that out, the cost would be astronomical. He said the headaches associated with getting all the permits and licenses, designing the sewer systems, running the water lines, etc is not worth it. Back then there weren't so many regulations and it was still tough. He also mentioned ACT 250 

One thing I forgot to mention - while building and owning the park has worked out for him, it was not easy and still to this day is about 1M in debt after all these years. The park is valued at around 4M, so he's fine - but still a lot to owe after all this time. He has refinanced a few times to do upgrades and repave streets or run new drainage, etc - it's a constant battle to keep up with the infrastructure. 

If you have any questions you would like me to ask him, let me know.

Have a great night.

Josh Savage
Ascutney, VT