Thinking About Buying a Mobile Home for a Rental

[Nicholas J Robichaud]

Hey everyone!

I'm considering buying a mobile home as a rental. The property is in a great town with one of the best school systems in the state. It's a two bed two bath mobile home that's in pretty great condition. The asking price is $79,900. It looks like the monthly fees to be in the park is $575, and the taxes are roughly $2000 a year according to the assessors website. The average rent for a single family in the area according to rentometer are $1750 per month, the bottom 25th percentile is $1557. So my question would be do mobile homes typically rent for less than a standard home? Even if it's in very good condition and in a nice area? If I can only rent it for $1557 as rentometer suggested would be the bottom of the barrel rents after all other expenses I would be loosing about $8 a month. However if it would rent for the average of $1750 that would cash flow me $141 a month. Those numbers also include management fees though. Which I would be self managing bringing it up to $309 a month while I was self managing the property. I'm a new investor I only have one tri plex at the moment so the input of bigger pockets would be appreciated! If anyone has any experience or words of wisdom about mobile homes or any other thoughts I'd love to hear it! Thanks everyone. 

[Mason Hickman]

@Nicholas J Robichaud

Many parks will require their approval of anyone that’s going to live in the home so it’s another hurdle worth considering.

Rents for mobile homes will generally be much lower than single family houses. Additionally, there are many people who just wouldn’t consider living in a mobile home so your tenant pool is going to be drastically diminished. You should really try to get rental rates for mobile homes in that park to see what they’re running.