All Forum Posts by: Samuel Coronado

Quote from @Noah Bacon:

I was a Sales Support Rep for a health insurance company when I closed on my first house. Needless to say insurance was not for me, and I pursued a career in real estate!

 Did you find that those sales skills transferred over pretty well to the success in real estate?

Quote from @Alecia Loveless:

@Samuel Coronado I work 3rd shift and have for the past 15 years as an overnight awake counselor for a group home with about 8 clients. The first home I worked at for 4 years there were 20 clients and I worked by myself then the second place there were between 3-8 depending on which house I was at and now I’ve got 8.

I have a few chores and I occasionally give a little medication but usually I have about 8 of my 10 hours to myself to do whatever I want on my shift. It’s been great for my real estate.

I’m getting ready in the next 3 weeks to go full time to real estate. Yay!

 Congratulations! That's a huge step.

Quote from @Randall Alan:

@Calvin Penn

Mobile homes are considered depreciating assets... just like a car.  They generally don't increase in value like brick and mortar homes.  Banks also won't lend on them as easily.  When real estate doubled and tripled in the past 2-3 years... mobile homes didn't.

That doesn't mean that owning a mobile home park won't make money though.  But the homes themselves... not so much.  

The biggest problem with the mobile home 'equation' (if you will)... is the 'lot fee'.  Once you add the lot fee to the price of a mobile home, the numbers don't add up as well, because so much of your money is going to person who owns the park.  With both traditional homes and mobile homes, you have principle, interest, property taxes, and insurance.  But with mobile homes you then tack on $500-700/month to have a place to put the mobile home.  So instead of way more money going to principal and equity, it goes out the door to the lot fee.  

Otherwise, they are difficult to move, and are frequently built very cheaply.

I don't know the ins and outs of buying and selling them (arbitrage).. but as an investment you will be better off in traditional brick and mortar homes.

All the best!

Randy

All of this information is wrong. Like, painstakingly so. I haven't had an issue getting a bank to finance mobile homes, mobile home parks, and now as I go into a new phase of my career even mobile home park developments. There's been a lot of recent law changes as well that allow for CMBS financing than in previous years, which has made the prices of mobile home parks increase quite a bit. It's been hard to find even a small 5 lot that's publicly listed under $300k. Many that start with a $1xx,000 are quickly snapped up unless they are in the middle of nowhere.

Before getting into entire parks, I got my start buying mobile homes on rented spaces. It was the best thing investment I made and regularly turned sums as low as 500 into 2800 in a matter of two weeks or less. Now with the increasing popularity of them, you can add one zero to both of those numbers and do very well for yourself. It's a niche all on its own similar to self-storage. I wouldn't knock it until you've tried it. 

I started flipping mobile homes when I was 18. I worked in a furniture factory 12-16 hours a day in the summer and then went to the project after getting off work to work another 4 hours. It was a heck of a time, but part of the reason I am ahead of the curve now at 30. Most of my adult life has been spent in the military, but now I am out. Just curious what other people did while in the building phase before jumping off the regular 9-5. 

The interest rate debate is often framed on timelines when in reality it is more conditions-based. Richard Werner did a fantastic job explaining all this in his book, Princes of the Yen. The game is to keep loosening credit to bolster the economy beyond sustainable limits, then quickly contract it. When the economy suffers as a result of too much of a contraction, debt payments are harder to make, etc, then go through the cycle of loosening it again, devaluing the currency so debt payments are easier to make, and banks can profit higher than before. All asset classes rise in nominal value although the real value may not be there for every asset class. This is why assets like real estate are the best to buy the higher interest rates go. 

I'm running into this problem as well. I had someone put in a bid for $15k labor only on a mobile home rehab. Absolute madness. The next one was $4,500 labor only. 

It's wild out here in the tertiary markets. I started doing some of the things myself. Some of the stuff they quoted four hours for took less than 1, including watching the YouTube tutorial. 

I'm not sure what changed, but last year I was literally paying a framing crew to pick up trash in my personal home because the owner needed to make payroll. This year, I guess there was no slow season for the contractors. Everyone is trying to make a month's salary in one to two weeks. lol. My properties will literally sit there and rot before that happens. I bought right and have very little carrying costs. It doesn't faze me. :) We're still expanding though as we find the right people. 

I prefer month to month. Way easier to evict. lol

Quote from @James Hamling:

Quote from @Samuel Coronado:

I had to laugh at the very first sentence. You messed up by getting a turnkey rental at market price. That is not investing. That is storing your money in a place where someone has already baked in all the costs plus a healthy mark up. I've spent time in all the asset classes and granted I can't make 20k in one hour through RE like I can in stock options, there is a lot less headache in the bustle of it all  with well-managed real estate. Buying it without leverage makes it even worse. 

Options trading is crazy..... crazy awesome, crazy horrible. Best I've done, I cleared $12k in 12 hours. Worst i've done, I "kinda" lost $10k in 1hr. I say kinda because I missed end of trading session to clear position and lost the profit's I booked as it rapidly fell off a cliff from there. Actual capital lost closer to a few hundred buck's, my fault because I held too long chasing lost profit's. 

Most I've known who tried Options Trading, have lost there shirt. Not for the "retail" trader for sure.  

For sure not for the retail investor at all. I never made a large effort into it and saw it more as gambling, but did love the game. I was smart enough to know my limits and that a hot streak was more due to luck and market circumstances out of my control than it was my own intelligence. Today, I still play a little with them in my Roth IRA and like to sell cash-secured puts on stocks I wouldn't mind owning long term, but my focus is more on acquiring and developing multifamily right now.

Quote from @Mack Fleming:

(Last post was to Roger, not Samuel. Sorry about that.)

Samuel, the site is 14 acres, high and dry, with thinned pines. Public water, septic systems. Nice spot. Not sure how many lots it will yield once it is designed. I prefer it not be super high density since I know some of the neighbors and want to keep them happy if possible. I can draw up a preliminary site plan and send it to you if you are interested.

It all comes down to the numbers. I am building a small 4 or 5 pad one a couple of acres I have in Athens soon. I figure 14 acres would get anywhere between 14-28 lots if you don't want to go super dense and depending on the exact landscape. (The one I am building in Athens has an aggressive hill in the back right now, which is where we will make some septic boxes.) 

Let's take it to the DMs so I can run some numbers on it a little better.

I had to laugh at the very first sentence. You messed up by getting a turnkey rental at market price. That is not investing. That is storing your money in a place where someone has already baked in all the costs plus a healthy mark up. I've spent time in all the asset classes and granted I can't make 20k in one hour through RE like I can in stock options, there is a lot less headache in the bustle of it all  with well-managed real estate. Buying it without leverage makes it even worse.