All Forum Posts by: Joshua Savage

The way my father in law's is run, each tenant owns their own home and rents the lot from him. He hasn't had too difficult of a time getting new homes from Marlette. Park lot rent is 310 (low for this area and nicest park around), includes brush pickup and septic pumping. That's about it.  At one point they included garbage and water, but eventually they did away with that.  As for rental units, he used to buy homes that were vacant in the park, fix them up and rent them out. That turned out to be a nightmare most of the time, so now he will not rent homes out.  One big mistake he made was not doing background and reference checks.  He had a tenant in the park who rarely paid rent, and every time he took the guy to court he would end up paying most of the back Rent to get out of being evicted. This kept happening over and over again, every time my father in law would lose 2-5k in lawyers fees.  Eventually we just took it back to court and got him evicted, but it went on for 2 years. He also made the mistake of hiring a tenant to do some part time work in the park (mowing, etc) because the guy came looking for work. Let's just say it ended up in a lawsuit against my FIL...all because he didn't have any more work for the guy and laid him off. These are just a couple of things he's dealt with.  All in all it has definitely been worth it, but he has always said that he wouldn't be able to be an absentee owner. I think he certainly could be if he hired a park manager, but he would never want to pay another salary.

I too have found all the other information helpful as I have been thinking about purchasing a park someday. My wife will own her dad's park once he is gone, but that is many years down the road. Since we have experience in that area it wouldn't be too difficult to run another one, but we certainly wouldn't build one from scratch after everything he went through to do it.

 @Samantha Hiscock Thank you for your advice. I was originally planning on becoming a licensed RE agent in VT so I could learn the ins and outs here.  I looked into it recently, and as I recall it takes 40 hours of pre-licensing classes (no problem) - followed by working for a broker.  I work full time (40+) doing IT work with a solid salary, I would not give that up until I had a solid income to replace it with. Do you think there are brokers in VT who would assist me in getting my RE license and allow me to work only part time?  Do I even need to bother getting my RE license - would it be enough to just go through the classes?

My living situation is a bit abnormal. My wife's family trust owns the property we live on, and we would never move out - at least not full time. The property needs to stay occupied and maintained, and it is a nice enough property we would not ever consider renting it out (they tried that once with highly qualified renters - and it was a disaster). That being said, I looked at the FHA requirements and believe we would be disqualified due to the condition requiring the home to be our primary residence for one year. I am a straight up person who likes to go pretty much "by the letter" - so I wouldn't ever consider buying a property using FHA and change my primary address (as I have seen some do) with no intention of having that be my primary residence. I have considered traditional mortgage ... borrowing from personal loans for a down payment then taking out a home equity loan to pay back the personal loan. It's a little risky and ties up my credit though, so I am a bit hesitant to do that.

@Daniel Hyman Thanks for the positive feedback - I am excited to get going!

@Mike Schell Welcome! I wish you the best of luck starting out.  If there is anything I do to help, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

@Mark Nolan I have been listening to the podcasts, and will also be joining the webinar this week. Lot's of great information!

Thank you everyone for your time.  I really do appreciate the warm welcome and advice.

Josh Savage

I spoke with my father in law and he gave me some more details.  By the time you are done, you will end up spending much more money than if you were to buy an existing park. He had access to construction equipment at the time and did a lot of the work himself (he worked for a construction company at the time). If you hired all that out, the cost would be astronomical. He said the headaches associated with getting all the permits and licenses, designing the sewer systems, running the water lines, etc is not worth it. Back then there weren't so many regulations and it was still tough. He also mentioned ACT 250 

One thing I forgot to mention - while building and owning the park has worked out for him, it was not easy and still to this day is about 1M in debt after all these years. The park is valued at around 4M, so he's fine - but still a lot to owe after all this time. He has refinanced a few times to do upgrades and repave streets or run new drainage, etc - it's a constant battle to keep up with the infrastructure. 

If you have any questions you would like me to ask him, let me know.

Have a great night.

Josh Savage
Ascutney, VT

I hit submit by mistake before finishing my post. 

The park does well, and it certainly will pay for itself. I asked him about building another one, and he did say he wouldn't do it with the cost of things now, but he also is getting older and has lost most of his drive.

Hope this helped, although not professional advice.

Good evening,

For whatever it's worth, here is a little information that might be useful to you.

My wife's father built his park from scratch (96 homes). This was 30 years ago so things have changed. I talk with him about the park a lot as I have been very interested in real estate investing.  The land he built on had to be zoned commercial/industrial. Back when he did it, that wasn't too difficult. Now (at least in our town in VT) they would not allow anything like that to be zoned, so he got lucky.

Each home in the park has its own septic tank as well as metered water and separate electricity. He pumps septic tanks every 5-10 years (not all at once, 5-10 per year on rotating list)

Hi everyone,

I am a new member here at BP, but have been scrolling over your forums and listening to some of the podcasts for quite a while now.  

A little information about me -  I have a full time job in IT Support, which I enjoy.  I am also an entrepreneur and have owned a couple of businesses in the past, which I absolutely loved. My latest business was owning a popular bakery/cafe which I ran with my mother. Anyone who has been in the food industry knows how hard it is to turn a dollar while providing a good product. Ultimately we decided to close due to rising costs and only 6k of net profit at the end of our last year.

At this time I am not in a position financially to purchase anything through a bank, not because of credit (I have a good score) but because I have no cash left after closing our business and paying off everything.  I want to start investing in real estate, with a primary focus of buy & hold - although I understand that's not easy to do in my situation.

I would like to connect with anyone in Vermont who is in real estate, whether new or seasoned.  Any advice on getting started would be very much appreciated.  I've been told that RE investing in Vermont is a little bit tricky - not the easiest place for a newbie to get started.  I believe that with the right mindset and tools, anything can be accomplished - so I don't plan to let that slow me down.

Wishing you all a Happy New Year!

Josh Savage