Hello and thanks for the responses, I thought this thread was long dead.
The owner of the park first approached me nearly a year ago, he constantly strung me along never being able to come up with a firm price, he started around $630k but I mentioned a few things I thought were overpriced on his breakdown and he agreed, but never came back with any adjustments, therefore I didn't really pursue talking to a bank until recently.
Around a month ago when I made this post we hadn't talked about the park for a couple months, he stopped in where I work to tell me $500k and it was mine.
So I talked with two banks, they have wildly different terms, neither I find appealing. The first bank wants 20% down, 5 year term with balloon payment, 20 year amortization. I don't recall the interest rate but I don't like the Refinance every 5 years part, it would take forever to get it paid off.
The second bank wants 30% down, and 15 year term. I was hoping for something like a fixed 15 year but coming up with the $150k would be a struggle for me. I would have to sell off alot of stuff that makes me money to come up with that much.
As far as the infrastructure the streets are all owned by the park, 1 is paved which he paid $100,000 for about 10 years ago and the city plows it. The rest are gravel. The water pipes underground are all owned by the park as well.
As far as the evicting tenants question...They do a pretty good job of getting rid of the non paying tenants so that shouldn't be an issue right away but there is always a pretty high turnover down there. I make sure the tenants moving into my trailers are good people and not criminals, drug users, etc. but that is something the MHP has not done. I would like to clean out some of the bad elements down there, probably at the expense of having more vacancies though.
Mobile homes, modular homes, etc. are pretty common up here in my neck of the woods, they are always for sale for cheap or free sometimes when people want them off their property(such as when building a house). I have a local house moving company that I've worked with before that has said they will just work hourly for me when they have the time and guessed it would be roughly $3000 to move a mobile home into the park for me as long as it wasn't too far from the town. My plan was to snap up some of these nicer homes to move into the empty lots, like 1 or 2 a year maybe.
The repairs that the MHP owner has made are all readily apparent, like the new roofs and he built entryways onto all that he owns. I don't think there is any sort of trickery on the owners part, he's just in his 70's, lives in Florida half the year and probably doesn't need the money anymore. He came to me because he saw I was buying some of the trailers for sale and thought I would be a good fit.
To be honest I don't know if I have the time to take something like this on right now even though I know it is a money maker. I have a decent sized farming operation, manage a very busy sporting goods store my family owns and have a feed business that all divide my attention as well as the 5 rentals I already have.
