All Forum Posts by: Ben Roddey

@Michael D Addison demolish (or give the home away to scrappers and save yourself the costs) and purchase a new home for $43k installed (we do these all the time). New homes are much more attractive because the financing is better for buyers (and yourself if you dont have the option - the CASH program from Clayton is an effective way of doing this).

FYI you may have to create a login to view the listing with LoopNet (free). 

Fully leased 24 unit mobile home park for sale 10% CAP on current numbers. More details can be found here: Loopnet Listing

• 2715 Providence Rd Lakeland FL 33805
• 23 MH Pads
• 1 SF Rental
• 22 of 24 Pads Occupied
• 100% Leased Lot Rental Family Community
• 1031 Exchange Situation (moving up to developing now)
• Every Home Has Been Renovated and Resold
• 35% Expense Load
• Public Utilities

1.) See if you could secure a lease option with the seller and time it (with plenty of cushion) to where you could complete the purchase after you secure green card/financing or 2.) Find a nother local investor to team up with buying it and maybe make the deal sweet for them for a short hold period with a buyout provision.

You'e only limited by your creativity 

Everything makes sense for the right price. Buying 15cap rental trailers for cash is pretty solid if you're getting the land as well, but be advised that if you ever want to sell the home, your buyer pool is very limited because financing for used trailers is basically non-existent. The plus side is that trailers are VERY easy and affordable to repair, so if you can amass a number of them, you'l have a sizeable cash flow.

 It's situational; I couldn't afford to lose my investment if a manager ran it into the ground, so I operated it myself, then taught others to follow my system and moved on to bigger projects. 

If, however, you can afford a potential loss on investment if somebody screws up, and you can't afford the time involved in managing yourself, then I would encourage you to bring in an experienced manager.

@Sandy mobile homes are chattel, so you'll be lending on a vehicle, not real estate. I'd be VERY apprehensive about this plan, as there's typically little (if any) appreciation in the value of a mobile home.

Mobile homes are chattel - you use a bill of sale, just like a car. 

@Meghan McCallum I love your enthusiasm!

Sent to @Cole Stoneman :

"Hey Cole! If I read your Rent Roll correctly, most units are park-owned rentals, where the mobile homes are owned by the park owner and rented like an apartment. This is a great deal if you're into having higher cash flows per unit at the cost of additional maintenance. If that doesn't scare you, here's a little run down:

Most "rental parks" trade for 10+ CAP rates, and the quick math on any apartment or rental park (assuming no major improvements need to be made) is a 50% expense load relative to gross income. Quick math indicates an offer price of $540k is about $100k higher than you should be paying, but please understand all I have to work with is a rent roll.

Everything makes sense at the right price, so I'd encourage you to look deeper into this deal to see if A.) the price can be negotiated down and B.) there aren't any major grenades at the onset of purchase.

Feel free to send me more detail and I'll happily provide any help I can. My background is in rental parks just like this, and now I own/manage over 600 units."

@Patrick Philip Just to clarify, most mobile home parks in Florida fall under chapter 723 mobile home communities of the Florida statues, which has some different requirements for leases. Assuming you're operating under chapter 83 landlord-tenant statutes, then your written lease typically takes precedent over what the ramifications are for not fulfilling the lease. In the case of a verbal lease, well then it's your word against the tenant's.

I'd highly recommend seeking the input of a real estate attorney, but if you're using a FAR-BAR lease, the newer version makes it clear that the tenant is responsible for the entire lease amount, unless the property owner allows for a buy-out (typically two months advance rent to cancel plus loss of security deposit).