Seller Financing with $0 down!

[Brian Goodling]

Investment Info:

Mobile home buy & hold investment in Fort Mc Coy.

Purchase price: $51,900
Cash invested: $5,500

A quiet and rural 2/2 manufactured home sitting on 0.7 AC. Bought using seller financing and $0 down! Negotiated a 20yr note @ 5% non-amortized interest. Manufactured home is a single wide with a full length addition and a 400 Sq Ft covered porch. Sits about 25 minutes from the closest town.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

The openness of the seller to be willing to accept a $0 down payment and a longer term.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

Brought to my attention by my agent. He found the place was owned free and clear then we started off negotiating rough terms of the seller financing. Our plan was to see how willing the seller was to negotiate and if they would even come close to what I needed the terms to be for the deal to make sense. After we got rough terms outlined we went to check out the property and then gave a final offer with the terms we settled on. 20yr note @ 5% interest and $0 down. I pay all closing costs.

How did you finance this deal?

Cash

How did you add value to the deal?

The lot is quite big (0.7AC) and there is the ability to subdivide the lot into two additional lots that can each hold another manufactured home. There is potential that over time I would subdivide the lots and purchase more homes to place on the lots and increase cash flow significantly.

What was the outcome?

Currently trying to rent it out and will be looking into subdividing the lots once everything settles in maybe 2-3 years.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

Seller financing shouldnt be this easy.. i mean it was by far the easiest way to get a property. Maybe I got lucky with a very motivated seller, but everything from the negotiations to the attorney writing the promisory note and mortgage to closing was super super easy. The biggest challenge was all the coordination required on my end to get everything in line all while working a full time job from home. There were a lot of moving pieces.

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

Real estate agent I worked with has been awesome and is also a fellow BP member (Bryce Wade). I worked with a local real estate attorney in the Tampa area that also had a title company attached to it. I would recommend them as well as they were very responsive and easy to work with.

[Brian Goodling]

@Ryan Allison This was on the MLS but my agent did some digging and actually started the conversation with the sellers agent. My agent knew I needed something with low money down since I had just dropped 35k in Feb I didnt have much left over. It was on the market for about 90 days before we engaged the seller with negotiations and going to see the place.

Let me just say, this property has been super interesting so far. I wanted to try my hand at being the PM for the property so the day I closed I threw it up on Craigslist and Facebook marketplace and within 24 hours I had over 30 people wanting to come see it. This place is literally in the middle of no where. But you know what? Because of the terms we settled on my monthly payment is $350 but I'm asking for $800/mo for the unit. With this much traction it makes me think I could have maybe pushed to $850 or so. Either way, I'm happy with $800 because the people in this area are mostly blue collar and usually dont make all that much. You also can't find a 2/2 within 30 minutes that rents for that cheap AND has some land where no one is going to bother you. So I should be cash flowing about $400/mo before setting money aside for repairs. Not many plans for any CapEx here any time soon unless something breaks, but even then I wouldnt need the nicest appliances since its always a 60 yr old mobile home with an addition. These people dont need a palace but still trying to keep it nice enough. The only thing that I'm anxious about is that it's on septic and a well and I've never dealt with either of these before. So we'll see how that goes. But overall, can't say I'm disappointed with the deal it's just been a lot of work talking to prospective tenants and setting everything up.