All Forum Posts by: Mark Smith

Update:  Resident has decided to not renew her lease which I agreed too provided she also removed the home from the park which she agreed too.

I told her I'll hold off calling the health department if she shows me a move permit from the county and a paid invoice from the moving company with a scheduled date of the first week of March and that she shows me her final water bill statement and that the account has a zero balance.  I need to see the permit and paid invoice by Monday.

Agreed!  But most people with this kind of issue don't face rock bottom until their landlord or the health department steps in so if I don't do my part, I'll just enable her mental health issues to continue.

The plan is a good cop/bad cop approach.  I'm the bad cop.  My park manager the good cop.  The two of us met with her today, I didn't give her any sympathy or wiggle room it was get it done or the health department is my next call and based on the condition of the home, they will redtag it and remove her from the home.  I gave her a week to get the home cleaned out, heat turned on and get that front door fixed so it won't fall on anyone and actually protects and insulates the home.

My Park manager used to be her neighbor, knows her kids and has enough contacts around her circle to hopefully get things moving.  I told him if he sees an opportunity that a little money will make a big impact, let me know.  We can manage the timelines if she's making progress.  If she continues the pattern then it's time for the health department to step in.  She really is a fire risk, this must get sorted.

I learned today, she's probably making 30/hr working six days a week.  She has the means to clean this up, we just need to help her re-prioritize and get it done.

So many great stories already posted.

I looked at a two flat once, in the top unit, the tenants were still there, two guys and a girl.  The bedroom had an unkept bed, a tripod with cameras attached pointing to the bed.  I immediately glanced over to the girl tenant to give her a second look and her clothes were a bit disheveled and one of the boys looked hastily dressed.  I bit freaky looking, this was back when Goth was all the rage and these kids fit the bill, hair, make up and other things.  When I say kids, I mean late teens, early twenties.  Seemed it was all consensual, what ever was going on...

Not so much an object, more a situation...

Boy, that would be nice, in Indiana, it just prevents them from entering the home and it sits as a big oozing mess on my property until the owner gets it done or I jump through all the legal hoops to get control of the title so I can get a permit to move and have a mover haul it off to the dump.

This is part of the solution but if I exercise it without a bit of pre-work,  leaves me with an abandon home on my property and with Covid slow courts it may take months to extinguish her rights under the lease and then go through the abandonment process for the home to get title so we can get a permit to haul it off to the dump. 

Trash is included in the rent. All water bill and abandon homes become my issue and she is one phone call away from having her home red tagged by the health department. It is doubtful her furnace works (vents/returns all blocked) so she is using heating sources that greatly increase fire risks in a home stuffed full of Firestarter in those trash bags.  Fire puts the community at risk.  Since she's created a haven for vermin, this also puts the community at risk.

The situation needs to be dealt with, it's irresponsible not to.

It may be just me but it doesn't seem like win/win when attempting to use his poor booking keeping against him. Or, he's cooking the books.

I would probably work with my lender to sort out how they will respond and what numbers they think are right and will support in underwriting.

Then the conversation goes, My lender is concerned with the large delta between reported and estimated income and will only write this deal based on the reported income (or whatever they decide), as a result, I can only support this purchase price.  By the way, my lender is using industry best practices so nearly any other offer will have the same challenges.  

I'm not asking for advice, I know what to do but thought this would be an interesting real world situation to discuss.

Today at our one of our mobile home parks my manager was collecting resident info we didn't have like phone numbers/email. He knocked on the door of one home (keep in mind, she is an owner) and discovered the following:

1. Front exterior door was broken, leaning against the opening with a blanket hanging over the opening to close it in.
2. When he peeked around the blanket, he saw the room to the right filed to the ceiling with full bags of garbage.
3. He noted a possum in the home with garbage hanging out it's mouth
4. He noted a trail off to the left between the bags leading to the back room, trail was about 15" wide
5. He followed her car into the park and knew she was home but she would not come to the door.
6. She leaves for work every morning and is home by 5
7. She drives a new (2021) car
8. She is the owner if this home, not me.  She pays lot rent like clock work.
9. The home is pre-hud, 12x57 home
10. Indiana law governs

I'm meeting with the resident tomorrow, what would you say/do?

Quan, you need competent legal help, sounds like your eviction company punted.  You will have to interview a few firms locally to get the help you need.  

Josh,

This is a process that finds the vacant, locates the owner (vin number), gets control of the title, rehab and sell.  Sounds simple, well...

Some things to think about if you plan to scale this model.

Today, the mobile home flipping business model depends on the number of units you plan to flip in a year and how your buyer will finance the homes.

- flip too many, the state will require you to be a Dealer. Indiana it's three or more in a year and you must be a dealer for example.

- Financing has to be compliant with the SAFE ACT and NMLS.  If you get busted, the fines are devastating so tread carefully with owner financing.

- A good park owner would only allow you to flip the homes, not rent them so plan to sell your rehabs

- title issues are rampant with vacant mobile homes and sorting that out can be a PITA and expensive in some instances.

Not to discourage you but the days of Lonnie Deals are over as he describes them in his book, not saying it can't be done but to do it legally and be compliant, requires a bit more rigor and working closely with your park owner and a licensed MLO/NMLS lender who can process and fund loans to your buyers.  The most difficult obstacle is the dealers license.

Can you fly under the radar and deal, you can but is it worth it?  As a park owner, I wouldn't allow it in my parks.

To do this the compliant way, I think you would need to partner with a large park, convert the first rehab into an office (or work something out with the owner to borrow space) to satisfy the dealer requirements, build a channel with 1 or 2 lenders, then go 1 or 2 homes at a time, acquire, rehab, market, sell, repeat.  The other challenge is making sure the remodeled home qualifies with your lenders underwriting requirements AND you actually make money doing this.  If memory is right, Triad for example won't fund anything pre 1994.

If you want to try 1 without all the rigor, I'm sure you will be fine but if you want to scale this model up, it will requires some real structure to be legal and successful.