All Forum Posts by: Mario Dattilo

Jason hard money will likely not make financial sense on these deals unless you’re flipping out of them or creating enough value to refi them quickly. Between banks and seller financing options you should not need to get aggressive financing like hard money. I wouldn’t advise it. Banks finance parks every day. It’s knowing what type of banks and how to sort through them that will get the loans done. You can often get sellers with properties that can’t be financed to carry paper to give you time to stabilize the property to make it bankable and refi them out. High leverage hard money is risky and not recommended. 

It’s a headache but doable. Get about $1000 per home from the seller or at least budget that to be safe. 

If you can get a hold of the person who is actually on title then you can get a duplicate title and then sign it over to you. This is what you hope for. 

If you can’t find the owner on title then you will need to likely go through the abandonment process which is different in each state but a slower more costly route. 

If all the homes have VINs then it will help a lot. If the VINs are missing then it is usually a combo of inspections and court processes to get a new VIN for the home so you can then go through the titling process. 

Titles are the biggest headache that nobody talks about In the MHP industry and if ignored or not managed well become a bigger headache later in ownership. 

Use an attorney that does them in your state for the abandons and more complicated transactions and you can probably manage the low volume of duplicates/transfers yourself. 

Hope this helps. My profile has a lot of resources for MHP investors as well. 

In your due diligence get a zoning report and have a land use attorney review it to help you determine the risks. It’s pretty common and a good % of my parks are legal non-confirming. 

@Chico Ford rent manager is one of the most commonly used property management softwares used for MHP. It is also a fully integrated accounting platform as well. It is as robust as yardi but build for MHP. 

Manage America, yardi, rent manager are the 3 that most professional operators with scale are using. 

I would not recommend using property management software that does not have accounting built In. Then you will need to export to the accounting software and you lose a lot of detail and drill down capabilities. 

With rent manager you pay per login seat and not per account or property entity. 

@Sarah Dignardi get other quotes. That does sound a little high but I don’t know the size of the parcel and how complex it is. Always get the ALTA based on what future buyers or lenders will need, not your current lender. 

Once you own the property you need to deal with any issues it has. If you find them pre-purchase they can be resolved before closing. 

I don’t typically do the topography on my ALTA surveys. You do want all structures shown with dimensions and setbacks etc. 

this report, the phase 1, and zoning reports are not the reports to cut corners on in your due diligence. 

An ALTA for a good size park should run $6-10k in my experience across several states. 

My profile has references to other MHP investor info that can help you through this important acquisition. 

Good luck!

@Charlie Loomis use Metron meters but do not use their installers. It runs us normally about $175/lot installed. Every market will vary due to labor costs. 

The meters are rented and the monthly fee ($7.50) can be charged to the tenant on their statement. 

The meters are read electronically with 3g and you get great reporting in their water scope platform. The meters do act up from time to time so you will have to get them swapped out but overall the best we have found.

We have also done pro rata bill back but moved most of our parks to Metron. Pro rata is the best but it’s definitely not the fairest and it causes the tenants to be upset, for good reason. 

Make sure to get legal advice on what you can and can’t do for bill back and what kind of notice period is required in your state. 

I always bill back water/sewer/trash before raising rents. 

That's about where I would back of the napkin it too. I would model it out before offering to get more accurate and look at all your key metrics (cash in cash, IRR, cap, annualized return, etc) for the overall deal before offering.

Something this size will likely land around 50% expense ratio because little expenses have more weight on the NOI. Glad you're being realistic.

Good luck with the deal!

Scott, we run at <5% uncollected MTD and <2% uncollected YTD. We normally recoup our lost rents/legal fees by renovating the homes and selling them. It’s going to depend on how good you are at collecting and the market etc of course. Remember with MHPs you have collateral that you often get when they are evicted. That’s unique to MHP and most other property types don’t have that. 

Do not use agents to draft contracts on commercial property. Use an attorney. The agents just fill out state templates.

If a broker is representing the seller, the seller will pay a commission to the listing broker. The listing broker can choose if he wants to work with other brokers and share their commission.

Most agents/brokers in commercial are not members of Assoc of realtors which means they don’t have all the rules of reciprocity etc that the resi agents have to follow. It’s a whole different world in commercial brokerage. 

Kathy, in commercial real estate brokers usually list the property and you can hire one to help you. sometimes the listing agent will not agree to share commissions with a buyers agent but often they do. You’re not going to do an exclusive right to rep with a buyer broker though like it’s customary in some states for resi. 

My suggestion is you forget brokers/agents all together and go straight to owners. Market to them and build relationship yourself. You’ll make much better deals that way. I’ve never bought a commercial property using a broker because I’ve never found one that made any sense with a broker involved. They set sellers expectations too high.

I’m not putting brokers down and I have a brokers lic myself for a reason unrelated but knowing how to use them is important… 

Buy direct from owners and sell with brokers. 

Check out my profile for some resources for park buyers (rv too). 

Go get em! 📈