All Forum Posts by: Matt B.

Nice article. I saw a snippet of it on the Yahoo home page this morning.

@Bill Gulley

I have been to free ones and have probably paid up to about $5k. Have been to them on both coasts, so have had to pay for air fare and lodging on some. I would rather pay more up front for a serious event, than waste time at a free one that I am being upsold at and has no quality info. I look at them as information mini vacations.

Funny thing is I rarely attend them anymore, as I have pretty much heard everything there is to say. I had planned to attend one in January, that was sponsored by a member here, but had to miss it. It was on MH finance and geared to park owners and dealers. At $100, I thought they weren't charging enough.

I think if you were to provide quality info, in a decent venue, with networking opportunities, a price point of $600-$900 per each day of the event is a fair price to pay. Attendees need to leave with at least one or two great ideas and/or contacts, that end up paying for the event in a rather short amount of time.

Also, the sponsor deserves to get paid for putting this together. I think people who say these need to be free have no idea of the costs(money and time) to put something like this together.

Much success.

@Bryan L.

I totally agree. There is the good and the bad, just as there are good and bad real estate investors out there. Just like everyone else I hate paying for bad info, but unlike some, I will gladly pay for good info.

I think the majority of those that posted just read my headline question and not the post. I should have asked, why do capitalist real estate investors(those on a website called Bigger Pockets) think information only needs to be free?

It really had nothing to do with the late night hustler that says you can get rich overnight, while sitting in your underwear, eating cheetohs.

Funny thing is, I have nothing to sell. It was just meant to be a rhetorical question.

@Lori Bossemeyer

There are a couple of ways to do this, but I will explain how we do it. We have different "blanket" loans that cover multiple properties also.

You will need to set up all of the mortgages as a long term liability account with whatever was the opening balance when you started with Quickbooks.

I am going to assume you use class tracking. Set up a class for each property.

Record all of your payments that you made to each mortgage account and assign a class to the property.

Record the interest expense to each mortgage account up to the date of refinancing into your portfolio loan and assign a class to the property.

Record the rental income of each property and assign to the class.

Do a general journal entry for the refinance into the portfolio loan. The credit column will be the opening balance of the portfolio loan. The debit column will be for the balance of the previous mortgage and any other interest or closing costs to do the portfolio loan. The two columns should equal each other. Finally assign classes to each line. The portfolio loan can be its own class.

If you want, at the end of the year, ask your lender for a breakdown of how much of the loan went to which property. You can then separate the portfolio loan into each properties class. We don't bother with this.

Hope that is clear as mud. Others nay have a simpler way of doing it. Much success.

I agree that $5k is probably way too much for that home. You can own it without owning the park, but you need to have something worked out with the park prior to you purchasing it. If you are going to do something like this, you want to find an investor friendly park, which is rapidly becoming more common than it was just a few years ago.

On a side note, the ones we have gotten some for free, we usually paid too much for.

Your quote does seem to be a little on the high side, but cost can vary widely from one locale to the next. If there are several movers in your area clamoring for business, you should be able to get a better quote. Some areas may only have one mover that is booked months ahead and they tend to be pricier.

We do use the movers contract, but we have them provide it in detail, even if they spell it out on a napkin. You can always cross out anything on there you don't agree with. Do not give the final payment until it is done to your satisfaction and if it needs to be inspected make sure that is done as well.

Much success.

Welcome. We have a mobile home park in Wichita. If you ever need anything let us know.

Much Success.

Wow. I hope you took a breath in between paragraphs. I personally would not see a problem complying with any of that. In fact, it would tend to support a prudent business model. Some items I would even venture to be a little more conservative in (e.g., 15 years is plenty long to drag out a sub $20,000 note.) I probably would not be in favor of a full 30 days notice for default, but then again that comes from my point of view as a collateral holder.

The majority of us could and should handle all of that, especially if it would free us to originate and service our own note portfolio, which imo is what may strangle the actual preservation of affordable manufactured housing for the majority of low income earners.

Good thought out piece.

Most manufactured homes should be on concrete blocks, whether it is a permanent foundation or a set of piers usually about 3 blocks high. Local codes may vary on this. If anything is getting wet it is probably a drainage issue. There needs to be more dirt under the home than around it.

A mh should last a fairly long time barring natural disaster. The problem isn't with the home rotting, its usually with the homeowner not doing any preventive maintenance or up keep. For the price, I would assume this is a fairly new home. You mention something about a park and then say it comes with land, so I am not sure what that means. It seems a little pricey.

As for the loan, it will really depend on your credit situation. Try a small community bank. They are more apt to lend on something like this.

@Bill Gulley

I am curious as to what your thoughts would be, as to a solution, that would protect the general public and yet be feasible for the individual owner operators to participate in.

Currently, I don't see it as being a market that LMO's or servicers want to participate in and banks still aren't clamoring to jump into the sub $20k manufactured home lending arena. That leaves the smaller operators to fill a void in a space that no one else deems worthy of their attention.

I agree that some legislation should be required and may even be healthy. In fact, I wouldn't mind it weeding out the unscrupulous, who do take advantage of those that require affordable housing, by employing predatory lending practices. Yet, at the same time the majority of us are in this business to make a profit and if the business model no longer supports that, we may be moving on to different pastures.

So is there an ideal solution that would continue to provide access to affordable housing ownership and give business owners an incentive to provide it, while protecting those it needs to protect?