All Forum Posts by: Bill W.

my last mailing, i sent out 970 postcards for $385 through vistaprint. They do design, mail merge, etc. I've shopped around a bit and continue to use them. To get the best price, you need to search online for coupons.

Ollisha, in addition to Marc's questions, is the home a single or double wide?

Obtaining financing for a mobile home in a park is difficult at best. There are certain lenders that will lend on singlewides if they are less than ten years old or doublewides regardless of age. The buyer has to qualify as well.

In practice, bank financing is almost non-existent so your best course of action is to negotiate a low sales price for a cash purchase from the buyer and find exit strategies that would suit your needs.

Matt, thanks for the tip and words. The company I'm using will come back in two weeks after treatment to inspect and offers a 90 day warranty on treatment. Hopefully it will get a clean bill of health during that time and won't need further treatment.

The only good thing is this is in a stand alone unit. I couldn't imagine having to deal with this on a multifamily or apartment.

Collen, Thanks for the comments. I'd love to give the original seller the benefit of the doubt but seems so unlikely. The bugs were in all three bedrooms and common areas including the kitchen which the exterminator said was unusual.

Xing, Bad to hear. This is my first time dealing with them so I don't have any thing to gauge. I'm crossing my fingers they are gone tomorrow and I can move one.

Bill

Sold a manufactured home last week and all went well. Buyers were happy and were moving in that day. The following afternoon they called to tell me that the home had bed bugs. Ugggh.

I arranged for an exterminator the following day who, after going through the home, said the home was badly infested. The poor buyer was crying as she listened to the news. The treatment is to happen tomorrow afternoon and should take care of the problem but the buyers have had to live in those conditions for four nights. The exterminator advised not to go sleep elsewhere or they will likely contaminate wherever they go.

I texted the seller, whom I had bought the home from, and he played dumb and then would not respond to any more texts or calls after that which is what I figured would happen.

I had owned the home for two weeks and saw no evidence of the bugs. I wish I had sooner as it would have been easier to treat if the home were empty and the buyers would have avoided the unpleasant experience. It seems difficult at best to detect until someone spends the night there which is when the bugs are drawn out of the walls. Hopefully after tomorrow, this issue is in the past.

Congrats on a successful outcome, Stefan. Sounds like a great tactic you used to find a good price point.

Sean, without knowing more about the local market and being familiar with those very-specific local conditions, you're not going to get a very accurate answer to this question. There are too many unknown variables at this point to give any useful information. The best way you can answer this yourself is to determine what comp lots have sold for recently and make adjustments to your own property based on similarities and differences.

Some things that affect the value and would be need to be known prior to giving an accurate value in addition to comps would be the lot size, utilities on lot, whether there is a home on the lot now and what the condition of the home is, whether it can accommodate multiple homes, and zoning ordinances.

Mike, what is the property worth? You really need to determine the market value of the place. Certainly don't rely on what the seller tells you she got offered through someone else. And don't count on reselling it to their phantom buyer as your exit strategy. I would determine what you can sell the property for, what amount of profit you'll need and make an offer based on that. Also, I'm unclear as it wasn't explicitly stated but it sounds like the house comes with the land, that correct?

@Scott VandenBerg There's not a deal to be had for several reasons. There is not enough of a margin here. You will want to purchase for much cheaper as once you factor in expenses including lot rent, repairs (you said move in condition, but I have yet to see a mobile that is going to be foreclosed that didn't require repairs), etc. Once you add those in, you might be in for low $32k. Then you misjudge your comps and you quickly lost money.

Another equally important consideration is that you're moving in on the park's business and could start off on the wrong foot. Perhaps they don't want to sell to an investor and would rather control the property themselves.

You might want to stop by the park office, tell them that you're an investor and ask if they have any homes for sale for cash that they would sell to you. Emphasize that you will keep the home in the park and run all applicants through their office. You might be able to pick one up much cheaper than the foreclosure price.

@Michael Quarles

That woman most likely has some mental health issues that she is struggling with. I don't find the message particularly funny but don't have anything against you posting it if her personal contact information were removed. I hope you reconsider and either pull it down, remove the personal info or a mod does one of those. You're setting that woman up to be harassed and conceivably are putting her in harm's way by keeping it up.