All Forum Posts by: Sam Parkins

I completely missed this one in my alerts. Rachel H. Thank you and I can't wait to get on the wagon immediately!

1. Mobile Homes are sold via title (assumption based on comment homes are in a park) just like a car. Your fees should consist of title transfer at DMV (VA is 3% of sale and $10 processing) and any upfront costs the park may have for you to keep the home in the park and sign a lease with them (varies by park and some will allow you to let your "buyer" or renter to go on lease). Also, you will have fees for insurance depending on your exit strategy (and you should get insurance on it immediately even if you only carry it for a week before selling it).
2. If you are buying notes that have title transferred to the "buyer" or renter (the tenant) then you may want to look into the transfer of the lien (assume the previous owner put a lien on the title if he gave it to the tenant).
3. If just buying the paper, there are no fees associated with the purchase. i.e. if you're buying a promissory note tied to the income stream of a mobile home sold to a tenant buyer, you only need to draw up a purchase agreement to buy the paper and get your signature on there as well as the seller. It's not like real estate where the agreement is recorded. Once signed, the seller would give you title as the new owner and you would contact the tenant and let them know to start paying you. If not getting title just make sure to show how ownership is transferred and show that it is now to be your income stream. We've managed properties for others and sold partial income streams on their behalf via a promissory note; we specified in the note that they own 40% of the income stream. Thus they get $40 for every $100 the tenant pays and the original owner gets the $60.

Risks:
You got the risks right. You'll have to decide to fix the place up if someone trashes it or re-sell/rent as is. You shouldn't have to worry about the park taking the home, rather you should worry about paying the park money/lot rent for it to sit there. If you then do not pay THEN they would take the home and your investment. Plus, right or wrong and probably a discussion worth its own post, some parks will charge you for the money they could not collect from the tenant. So tenant owes park $500 for back lot rent, you kick them out, park then tells you that you now owe that $500 before you can resell it again.

Also be mindful of your exit strategy OR what is currently in place (since you're buying the note). There are a LOT of posts here about how you can and cannot sell mobile homes via financing without meeting certain parameters. You could be in a rent only or sell for cash situation before you know it, and trying to sell mobile homes for cash while paying lot rent for the home to sit there is NOT a good situation.

Not trying to intimidate, but there's a lot more than meets the eyes with mobile homes. If not well versed in the business, my suggestion would be to seek experts for help or to purchase a "note" singular as opposed to "notes" plural for starters. Best of luck!

Jackie Lange nice idea for a post. I could go on for days about all the mobile home "adventures" I've seen, and I'm sure you have a few yourself! Just to pick a few more "memorable":

1. House filled with 7 dogs and more than 15 cats. Chickens with the ability to range into and out of the house with the other animals. It smelled SO bad I had to go to my truck and get an extra jacket kept in there to tie over my nose to go back in. There was a "film" on all the walls up to the windows from the animals, and we'll just say they needed new floors.
2. Mobile Home: Had a born again Christian with me that did hard time in his "past life" for major drug/weapons dealing, he was looking to buy. We went in to meet the seller and and after about 2 minutes he took me outside. He explained that in my naivety I did not notice the seller had knives on him, I did not notice the seller was on bath salts, and I was informed NOT to turn my back on this guy. I wasn't apprehensive until my buyer made me aware that HE did not feel comfortable - even with his background. We went back into the home and found our seller's buddy in the back room giving a tattoo to another buddy, and after intense pressure to get a "free" tattoo I decided to leave the place...walking backwards.
3. The mobile home hoarder house: We've all seen the hoarders I would assume. The difference in this one is aside from the waist high piles of crap, the previous owners had claimed to have had their dog run away before moving out. We later found out the dog did NOT run away at all, it was so nasty and packed in that home that the dog got stuck behind the couch, died, and we found his rotted body behind there months after the folks moved out while cleaning the place (which took more than 4 days to clean - it was only a 2 bed 1 bath)!

Lonnie will certainly be missed. He was incredible in the business, and as I've read on this site before there are FEW investors that ever get to the level that their name is tied to a model of investing!

He was such a great motivator, speaker, teacher, and so much more. Best of all, he was a good guy and great person. My thoughts and prayers go to his family!

Personally I will cherish my time spent with Lonnie and will say that his legacy will live on in all of us continuing in the investing business.

SAFE act excluded, you may transfer up to 5 titles FROM your name/business in a single year in Virginia before obtaining/needing a license.

This is directly from the DMV, and has only to do with title transferring. Excludes any other source requirements. As pointed out, there are many requirements. Last I checked in Virginia, I believe it was 3 properties allowed under the SAFE ACT before compliance issues arose.

Bill, thank you. Popped it on the browser and will take a look soon!

Read your first post and seems very interesting. Thanks!

Bill Gulley I appreciate the thought. Believe it or not I have put some thought into the non-profit idea. I also read an article about a company in Mass. that pooled funds to buy parks and then donated the land to the home owners...or something similar. I think that for the right people that need this kind of help it's the best thing in the world. We often talk about a "hand-up, not a hand-out".

I do take a lot of pride in helping others. I do have a few items on my plate for the business and will admit I have not devoted enough time to research the non-profit idea, but I do really like it and glad you recommended it.

Furthermore, non-profit is truly a viable concept and it does achieve the goal of helping others. I've focused some attention on land/home deals, parks, and starting a transportation business for the homes, and it occurs to me that yes these other businesses are services (and produce income) they don't help on such a micro level so to speak. With systems in place currently that allow me more time away from the buy/sell business, it is a viable thought to put the buy/sell business on full auto-pilot and turn it 501(c).

Do you or anyone seeing this have further information about non-profit status, application, process, qualifications?

Did not consult further past the DMV, but in Virginia I was told from DMV it is 5 homes (or 6 cars I'm told).

To get a dealer's license in Virginia (I say dealer as you can choose retail, broker, etc - I chose "dealer") you need to contact Dept. of Housing and Community Development...I believe.

If anyone is interested in VA contact me and I'll pull the file directly and give direct contact information to the person in charge of handling at the VHCD.

I very much appreciate your opinion! I agree they weren't specifically at me and agree they are warnings. However, I was trying to say that warnings aside, there still are investors out there doing business, right?

Do you invest in mobile homes?

If I implied that I wanted to enforce terms of a non compliant contract then I am sorry it came out like that. I don't know how that inference might have been drawn but if that was my stance I would have lmao also!

Again, the post, and many others on here, was meant to illicit ideas about how to keep the mobile home investing ideas flowing.

Obviously the "times are changing" in the mobile home landscape and I certainly want to be compliant as well as suggest to all others on here to be compliant. I have done extensive research on my own as well as with multiple attorney's to "figure" out this landscape. I suggest to all others to stay compliant and get the proper licenses and cert. as well.

The fact is, and this will always be my motivation, and I don't say this in jest or with any reserve, is that people need help out there for affordable housing. I've tried very hard to help and will bend over backwards to try to do so, sometimes at a monetary loss. Sure I'm making money as a whole, but isn't the best money made when you can provide help and services, and at a minimum at least believe in what your doing?

I take a LOT of pride in my business and want to help change the landscape in the industry to shed a positive light on those that invest in mobile homes and real estate in general.

As I have read on this blog, it doesn't seem like there are too many investors out there producing volume on mobile home investments (comparatively to other niches). If someone had a fully legal "twist" on the model I would have loved to have heard about it. And all I was saying is that I have a slight "twist" on the Lonnie model, though it's not rocket science at all. It's using OPM to produce volume of deals. If other's are doing the same, I'd like to talk to them about their experiences. If not, anything else similar would be intriguing.

It seems much easier to team up with others for help and ideas rather than hoard and turn away from collaboration. Further, if someone were in my market doing the same I'd love to collaborate with them even further to pitch properties to each other and pass along buyers, etc. to where all can benefit and moreover provide the HELP and service to the buyers and sellers out there in the industry.

I wasn't intending to grandstand here or take the podium, but I'll take the opportunity to say that it seems MOST of the replies and topics on the mobile home world are now involved around the compliance issues. And I get it, it's a huge deal and relevant now. The tone of my original post was very innocent and the first two replies followed as such. I never imagined being on such a popular and useful site would have then elicited the negative energy that then followed.

Here are the facts. I don't have a "PRODUCT". I'm not PITCHING anything. I came across this site a while back and thought it was a GREAT idea for the purposes of collaboration I previously mentioned. I ONLY wanted to discuss the business and models of such with this post and to give back. I've learned a LOT about mobile homes in a short time and wanted to collaborate with others. I know there are MANY!!! other posts in forums about the pitfalls of mobile home investing. There are also many other posts about the strategies, and I was NOT intending for this to be about circumventing anything. If I invested in single family homes, the post would have read, "I use private money to do deals, does anyone else? Tell me about your strategies". It was not intended to say "I use private money to flip houses even though that just became illegal; I found I can skirt the law and I'll ride the wave of fortunes until someone comes knocking on my door. Anyone else want to talk about how to intelligently break the law?"

I'm not claiming to be the expert in mobile home investing AT ALL. However, from what I'm finding and maybe because a lack of others in the industry is that I do at least have enough knowledge to help others. I'm a big boy and can handle responses, but for the good of this site and the forums, I would only say to please try to take the stance of HELPING others before assuming a post was meant to be deceitful and dishonest.