All Forum Posts by: Bill Ayers

Cash flow looks positive yet perhaps low for amount invested in mobile homes. $13,000 is potentially a lot to invest into a mobile home... especially ones that are old as you say. Mobile homes can quickly rack up repair costs, so getting a good purchase price is pretty crucial to offset potential costs in the future... they quickly can turn into liabilities if not structured properly.

Have you bought or sold mobile homes in the past?

Ok, so that means they are asking $47,000 for a mobile home that is 40+ years old... No way. In my market, I would not pay $6000 for one that old. 

You could buy land and have a brand new one placed on it for much less than this deal... and probably get financing for the land and the home.

 How much do you think the land is valued at?

How much is the asking price and how much are you able to put down?

1. Where is located?

2. What is the market rent for a 2/1 apartment in the area?

Also I never rent out mobile homes! They are too easily destroyed. I owner finance.

In August I moved to Kansas from the SF bay area for the exact reasons you mention that make it difficult to invest there. Currently, I invest in Mobile Homes in Kansas and I have too many good to great deals that I cannot even keep up/finance them all. So now I am only taking the best ones. I typically invest $6k or less per home. I then sell them on payments of about $300/mo for 60 months with $1k to $4k down depending on the market, condition of the home etc.  

@Daniel J. I work with @John Fedro. Start there.

This is a tricky one with a lot of moving parts/potential pitfalls. I am not saying that it looks like a bad deal, but that it likely falls in the medium to expert level of mobile home investing. Please get someone with real MHI experience to look at these properties and discuss your goals and strategy due to the risks inherent in this type of investing. For example, a home that might appear ok from the outside could need thousands of dollars of work or might even need to be disposed of... which typically costs $1200- $3000 just to get rid of it. And some areas don't even allow mobile homes to be replaced once removed. There is a lot of insight needed for a deal like this, which is exactly what makes this type of deal potentially very profitable since so few people could pull it off. And the flip side is that this is the type of deal that could erase a lifetime of savings. As a MHI I would be thrilled to have a deal like this but I would never encourage a first time MHI to go it alone. So once again, my 2 cents is to get someone to advise you that has real experience.

In my opinion figuring out what it is worth to you starts with figuring out how you want to make money on the deal. Are you going to flip it to an investor or an end user, or are you wanting to rent it (if the MHP will even allow that) ?

@Jimmy Kennedy Definitely contact @John Fedro and have a discussion with him. John has been doing this type of thing for 14yrs and even started in Florida.  Just tell him I suggest you two talk.  FYI he is a mentor and I have been working with him for the last 3 mos.

Best of luck.