@DeAndrea D. I own 5 parks and am always looking to fill vacant lots with homes and/or sell park owned homes to investors who will keep my parks full and operate with shared interests. We own in TX, NC, SC and KS (GA is next). Let’s explore how we can work together. We have a park in the Charlotte MSA that we could use particular help with.
Listed below are several things that come to mind when I think about working with investors who buy and rent mobile homes in our parks.
Regarding marketing for homes to purchase, we look on Facebook Groups, Facebook Marketplace, and talk to other park owners near us. We also see deal flow through our network of owner/operators who own parks nationwide. My advice is to let people know what you’re doing and what you’re looking for. Setup a Facebook Page, go on a podcast, attend meetups, and find a few park owners to work with. I think you’ll find that some of them (like us) want to outsource lot infill to a reliable third party. We have other priorities and finding partners who can be trusted to bring in decent homes, rehab them, and get them filled according to our screening criteria is valuable to us.
Here are some things we think about when considering investors/Lonnie Dealers who buy homes, rehab them, move them into our parks and rent them to residents. These same ideas come to mind when we look to sell park owned home inventory to investors who are willing to rehab and rent them to residents while keeping the homes in our parks for several years.
- We focus on turnarounds that typically have 5-10+ vacant lots. An investor who can quickly and reliably move in homes into the vacant lots will be someone we look favorably upon.
- We typically have park owned home inventory that we’d rather sell to an investor than do the work to rehab the homes ourselves. Investors who have appetite to do this in volume (2-5 homes) are people we like working with.
- We want the home to stay in our park. The goal for us is to keep our parks full. We look favorably on investors who want to keep the homes they buy and rehab in our parks for many years.
- We will typically cap the number of homes that an investor owns in our community to less than 10% of total lots in the park. Banks don’t like to see a huge investor presence in the park and it will diminish buyer interest when we consider selling our park.
- An investor who maintains their home and values quality and steady residents is someone we like working with.
- We need our investors to communicate with us via email and text. In addition, we collect payment digitally. Constraints that prevent investors from operating effectively in a digital wold are major negatives for us.
- Investors who understand the move-in process, permitting requirements, and coordinate all steps with moving and utility hookup vendors are the type of people we work with repeatedly.
- We like working with investors who operate as partners and demonstrate a shared interest in maintaining a high quality community.