Investment Info:

Mobile home buy & hold investment in Charleston.

Purchase price: $617,500
Cash invested: $154,375

10 mobile homes, 2 triplexes, and a duplex. Rent is $7,800 and the mortgage is $3,800. After calling dozens of lenders, we locked this one down!

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

Listening to the upside of mobile homes really drew me to this deal. This 20 door complex is far from a 200 lot park, but the cash flow is undeniable! Even in a down economy, this place has stayed 100% rented with 100% of rental payments made since March.

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

My business partner is a builder (awesome idea if you find the right type BTW), and he does work for the owners from time to time. They let us know a long time ago they were getting ready to sell this place. It took us 6 months and dozens of phone calls to lenders, but we finally found someone who would lend on this. We negotiated the price down to $617.5K from $750K by doing minor fixes while under contract for free, taking the property as is, and by charging no real estate commissions.

How did you finance this deal?

Commercial loan with 25% down at 6% interest

How did you add value to the deal?

We have improved these units tremendously and have been able to increase the rents.

What was the outcome?

Awesome cash flowing deal with happy tenants and happy landlords.

Lessons learned? Challenges?

By simply doing some small fixes for free and keeping consistent communication with the sellers, we were able to secure this deal even though it 6 months. Financing the deal was the hardest part. We had one loan lined up that completely fell through 5 days before the first closing date. After that it took 4 months of calling lenders whenever we had time until we finally found 1 who worked. Some lenders were only $1M+ and some ran away when they heard "mobile home." We kept on calling!

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

Silver Hill Funding ended up being the right lender for us. They loan on commercial properties valued up to $1M with $400-$750K properties being their sweet spot. Zack is the builder and I acted as the agent (no commission but lower purchase price).