All Forum Posts by: Tyson Cross

@Avee-Ashanti ShabazzI keep saying this over and over again. The best form of affordable housing in the country is mobile home parks. Hands down. The problem is that most cities won't allow the zoning so that you can build new parks. And on top of that, the numbers don't make sense. What we do need more of are options for people financing manufactured homes. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are both running pilot programs to finance individual manufactured homes. This is great news. Additionally, now you can use your section 8 vouchers to buy a home in mobile home parks. This is fantastic news for people who receive rental assistance. On top of this, we need more good people interested in taking parks that are in shambles and turning them around. We need money being reinvested into these parks and new homes brought in to supplement these parks. Investors can make money, make the places better for people to live and keep it affordable. It works, trust me.  It's unfortunate there is still a stigma with parks and that most banks don't understand the model. I sell apartment buildings for a living and there are many many apartment buildings that are just as bad or worse than a lot of mobile home parks. The stigma is unjustified. 

If you want to look for more affordable housing options, looking for parks that need help. I think this is the best place to start. Feel free to pm me for more info. 

As @Theo Hicks mentioned, Apartments.com is a great way to find apartment buildings in a specific area. If you have any real estate friends (anyone who works in real estate) ask them to call a title company they have a relationship with and get a list of these properties - they can run it for you. OR subscribe to something like Costar (which is very expensive) or I think there are some CRM hybrid property databases out there. If you're local, get in your car and start driving! Plenty of creative ways to find apartment buildings.

What's really sad is when the people you love question your actions. I remember when we told some of our best friends we sold our house and invested the funds into a mobile home park and their response was, "WHY?" Most people just do not understand the power of real estate. Those who do and never take action AND make you feel stupid for doing so as in your example are just jealous. I think that's the sad truth. The reality is most people will never take action and don't have the courage to make the jump...and so they resort to making you feel bad. It's unfortunate, but true. 

Hey, mhp investor out of Portland, OR. I love mobile home parks and am focusing more attention on it these days. I have one park in the midwest and am close to putting two more in contract - 1 of which is out here in OR. I love networking with mhp investors and happy to collaborate on ideas/strategies etc. Best of luck to everyone!

Looks pretty straight forward. Only things I would consider are landscaping (lawn mowing) - can be a decent expense, unless everyone is mowing their own lawn. Also, you'll want to consider management. Are you going to have anyone manage this or do you live in the area? As Ian mentioned, do good due diligence on the septic tanks. How many tanks are there per home? 

Hey @Ben Naught love that you're thinking like this. MHs can be great fix and flips and if I had my choice between a stick built and a mh flip, I would choose mh all day. With 5K you are limited, but it is still very possible to get a deal done. There are multiple ways to do this, but to start, both Rachel and Gordon provide good advice above. First, get a sense of the market, where the parks are located and what kind of parks. Also, you'll want to know what single wide and double wides are selling for in general. Drive the market - drive through as many parks as you can and start to learn as much as you can. Figure out what the lot rents are in different areas and what kind of homes are in the park. In other words, just get to know mhs and parks. Next step is to start talking to managers int he parks. Explain what it is you are looking to do and ask if they know of anyone who is interested in selling their homes. Make it clear you are looking to partner with the park owner/manager to improve their community and you have no intention of moving the home out. Several parks will not let you do this, so be ready for it. However, when you do come across the parks that do allow this, most likely this is where you will find the deals. Once you get a lead, meet with the owner and figure out if you can profit from it. Obviously this is just the start of the process. With 5k you may want to think about partnering with someone to who has capital to get things going. Partnerships can be great and can you jump start your investing. Or, you can acquire homes creatively with payments and flip as investor special. Many options here, but the key is taking action. It's definitely possible and very likely you can be successful if you work hard enough. Good luck.

Hey Sam, I feel your pain! Yes, banks will do longer amortization on loans, but as it was mentioned above, financing small deals like that can be incredibly challenging. You may be better off trying to find a private loan from someone to pay all cash and then pay them as you would a bank. For $169,000 is there someone you could partner with? I would keep trying, don't give up but I will say you might want to start looking at friends and family or someone who is willing to finance that deal for you. How many pads are in the park?

@Denzell Hoover That's a good move. I hadn't read all the way down before I was going to ask you to think twice. Here's a couple things: Next time, a good way to get rent comps is to pretend you are an appraiser doing an appraisal for a park in a nearby town/city. Call owners around the area, say you are with some RE company doing an appraisal and you need to get some information. Generally, most owners will offer up information if they think you're doing an appraisal. Second, there are some red flags with this deal and I'm not sure how much market diligence you do, but the first thing I always do no matter what is look at the market. Go to bestplaces.net or citydata.com and you can type in Blytheville, AR. From there you can look at the demographics for the town, county and even metro. AR is typically a soft market state, Bytheville especially so. Once on the site you're going to look at population growth (positive or negative), unemployment rate, home price and some other things. Anyway, good pass on this deal, probably would be tough to operate anyway. If you guys want, I'm starting a podcast called "MH Parkster Podcast" Check it out! Good luck

@Wenda Kennedy JD Congratulations! Yes, real estate investing is not always flashy, pretty or even at times tolerable! But you persevered and it paid off. And I'm sure it made you all the better for it. When's deal number 2 happening? :)

It's funny to see people talk about getting 12% returns and say that is bad. Some picky investors out there. Look, ideally you want both right? Yes, everyone wants both. You should not focus on houses and instead focus on multifamily/mobile home parks. Specifically, I invest in MHPs. We get phenomenal cash flow AND you can force appreciation. At the end of the day, if you are investing in multifamily buildings or mhps that are 10 units and up (really only 5/6 units and up) its considered commercial and thus valued differently. I say 10 units because you want some scale. When you invest in these buildings its valued much more heavily on income vs market driven. Thus, if you can improve that income you're going to increase the value of the property (assuming cap rate/interest rates stay relatively the same). This is why I highly suggest investing in mobile home parks. There's just no asset class like it out there. I can get both. Now, apartments will traditionally have more appreciation than mobile home parks just because rents are more likely to increase at a faster rate depending on the market. The key is to make sure you buy right, don't over-leverage and be smart about the market you're investing in.