All Forum Posts by: Matt McCurdy

Hey Aidan,

I'm a local real estate entrepreneur that invests in the Cedar Rapids and surrounding markets.  I'd be happy to talk with you about your real estate goals.

Do you own your home? If so, you can use a HELOC finance your excess equity on your house out. If not, I'm sure you can use some hard money lenders in the area to finance the mobile homes short term.

With all of this being said, I don't invest in mobile homes as rentals. I act as the bank by selling them on contract, so I'm not responsible for renovations, etc.

I think the first sign will be seeing "market rent" being one thing and prospective tenants saying they can only afford rent that is lower than the market rent.  I don't foresee a crash in terms of house prices, I see an erosion of cashflow being the biggest risk moving forward. Inflation isn't going anywhere and tenants will be feeling from everywhere (gas, groceries, insurance, clothes, etc.).

Wow!  This seems like a no brainer in terms of price, structures, and land.  Good work!

Hey Deren,

I've been fearful of rural MHP's as well, but if there's good employment around the small town (within 30 minute drive) and/or there's a larger metropolitan with 30-45 minute drive you will be ok.  The affordability will draw people to the lower priced mobile homes/lot rent.

I bought a MHP with a population of 25k and was a little hesitant, but with the jobs and a larger metropolitan within 45 minutes, I have a waiting list for people to purchase on contract MH's I move in.  I primarily use Facebook marketplace and have enough leads through this.

Good luck!

I use realtor.com to look at properties if I'm not looking in the MLS.

I use tenant cloud for those who have access to internet and for those that don't have access to internet I have them mail the checks directly to my bank and they process/deposit them into my account.  With one property it may not seem like a big deal to not automate this process, but once you start scaling up, you'll be happy you did. Good luck!

You are opening yourself up to a large bill of you don’t do bids by the job. One handyman could work fast and one could milk the clock. I always recommend getting a bid by the job. Hourly rate should just be a barometer and then you can use the rate against them. For example, if they say it will be $200 to change a toilet, you can say ($200/$75 per hour = 2.66 hours) it’s going to take you over 2.5 hours to change a toilet???

Rookie mistake.  I didn't click "follow," so I didn't get an update these meet-ups happened.  Any new meet-up scheduled or virtual meet-ups?

Investment Info:

Single-family residence buy & hold investment in Cedar Rapids.

Purchase price: $92,000
Cash invested: $1

My 1st investment property purchase, turned out to be a good one! Initially, I provided the sweat to create the equity (and ~$15k of cash). After refinancing in 2018, I have zero cash invested (actually got $10k from the bank to re-invest in a new investment). Boy do I miss 2013 prices! The appraisal in 2018 came out to $142k.

How did you finance this deal?

Commercial financing, 25 year term with 5 year balloon.