Portfolio loan for Manufactured Homes on land

[Craig Price]

Hi BP,

I hope this post will find some experts in lending/investing that can help us uncover a much needed lending opportunity. We have been in the business of buying and selling homes for almost 10 years now in the Greater Houston area. We own many of what is on the line of SFR or Manufactured house, I say on the line because when you say Mobile home or Manufactured home, most people think of a old metal singlewide in a park.

The homes we prefer, look about the same as many other homes, in neighborhoods, some with garages, some with acre or more of land.  These homes are bread and butter rentals in Montgomery County Texas. We currently have about 10 that we need to refinance out of a bridge loan, from a private investor. All have been refurbished and rented, except one we bought yesterday and it will be rehabbed in 3 weeks. Currently we have two up for sale unless we can find a loan, which is our preferred option. 

(See pic of one of the homes)

We have had several portfolio lenders look at the rotating package of homes and it is never the borrower or the income, they just balk at the closing table over it being a manufactured home that is now permanently attached and surrendered to the land and made part of the deed. However when we buy and rehab these houses many get traditional lending.

For instance when we sell these homes on MLS, most go through traditional lending channels, they get a 30 year Conventional or FHA/VA loan and we close at title company and all is the same. So the properties are lendable through Freddie and Fannie. The catch is we cannot find a lender willing to lend to us a business entity on multiple properties.

The homes we have range in ARV from $120k-$180k and we are looking to refinance into a 20-30 year fixed note. Possibly a 10 year with a balloon we could look at. We only need to refinance 65-70% of ARV. We have equity in the houses, some are as low as 20-25% of ARV that we need to free up and keep buying more.

However we are at a crossroads, the houses we have are great rentals so we hate selling them, but unless we find a solution to the refinance we must free up capital to keep buying. That's not our goal as we prefer to keep building our portfolio of rentals and the selling them is last option.

Thanks for any suggestions or ideas from those that have dealt in this type of product or might can help direct me to somebody else that can speak this language.

Best,