All Forum Posts by: Patrick McKenna

How do you plan to finance the project? 

Where is the park? 

All other things being equal ... 55+ parks are generally more attractive. Aside from potentially limiting his renter pool, are there any other positives that he sees from opening it up? If it’s a good deal, in a good location, I say leave it as it is. The 55+ generation has a proven history of being good tenants. 

I am in the process of interviewing & comparing third party bookkeeping solutions and have come across a few good ones, but wanted to check here to see if anyone had any input. 

Proper.ai and Bench are my two front runners. Proper.ai is definitely more robust with the ability to work with my own software (i.e., Rent Manager) but is also a good bit more expensive. Bench is cheaper but also seems a little more manual, but does have a nice dashboard interface. 

Another option would be just to hire someone off upwork, but I have heard mixed reviews and lots of trial and error with that. 

Would love to hear pros / cons or details of anyone else's experience.

Thanks! 

I would echo @Ryan Murdock ... Our second park was a turnaround project that we purchased at a bargain cap rate but where we were going to need to replace all the water and sewer lines in order for the city to agree to let us get all the tenants on direct bill with the city (initially it was one master meter paid for by us, about $5-$6,000 per month, crazy leaks, terrible). So the project was also in the dollar zip code Ryan mentioned, but the way we looked at it was the payback period was manageable since we would be saving ~$60,000 per year in water expense. Took a lot of time, money, patience. But in the end we believed it would be worth it. 

Another thing to consider is how hard it is to manage a project like unless you are there every day, or every week (which I was not). Very few contractors are going to work like you are over their shoulder, unless you are. This could start out as a qualitative factor, but can quickly become a quantitative factor. 

Lastly, I would suggest having many many discussions with the city or the county about this proposed project. Talk to the water people, talk to the sewer people, talk to the planning people. Get to know them well. It will benefit you. 

Good luck.

@Sergio Rios Where are you getting these numbers? Based on our experience these numbers seem astronomical. We normally do free lot rent then $10 per occupied pad per month then incentive type bonuses on top of that. And this is based on the parks we currently own and operate, ranging from 50 to 75 pads per park.  

Any update on whether or not they sold? If not, are they still interested? 

@Brad Mooney I currently own and operate two parks in WV, and we generally like the area, so would be interested in learning more about this opportunity. Feel free to send me a message. 

I would second  @Account Closed ... Where is this park located? 

I definitely think there is a case to be made ... when we bought ours we used recent local comps for the land value and then broke out as much of "everything else" as we could ... roads, mailboxes, fences, light posts, there is a storage shed on site ... each type of "improvement" will have a different depreciable life, but it should get the weighted average down which will help ... there is a good podcast episode on this topic done by @jeffersonlilly early on ... you should look that up and check it out ... good luck