You see Rina, Rolfe spent three days painting a picture of:1 - The perfect business (high gross margins, high barriers to future competition (quasi local monopolies), increasing demand).2 - Claimed that this perfect business counterintuitively sells for a big discount to its true value - and painted a plausible dual reason for it:a - the stigma premium - mobile homes are yucky and embarassing, therefore demand for them is lower than would be expectedb - the current set of owners of this asset class (mom and pop) are so stupid and lazy that they have priced the rents of the asset class lower than they should be compared to apartments.3 - He then masterfully executed the classic sales technique of creating a sense of urgency - saying that the current fragmentation and irrational discount-to-value of this asset class (mobile home parks) will soon expire because "mom and pop" are dying off, and will be selling out to professional investors with huge pools of capital.4 - He claimed that when this de-fragmentation occurs (the next 10 years) the discount-to-value will disappear and that the real value of the rents of mobile homes will finally be extracted through inevitable professional management.Item number 4, Rolfe must know, makes any experienced investor salivate - it's like cat nip.

We hold the utilities in our name and pay them, but provide the tenant with copies of the bills {this enables them to monitor and regulate their usage}.Every three months we reconcile the utilities budget and give the tenant the option of retaining any surplus in the budget (say for coming colder weather) or applying it to the next month's rent.

I work closely with all kinds of investors as my company provides self-directed retirement plans enabling our clients diversify out of the stock market and invest into non-traditional assets.

I agree with the points in the previous post.Seller financing (at better than market terms) is good for buyers because they may be able to buy more building on a limited amount of equity invested, and it is good for sellers because it may enable them to get a higher price. 

Our combine gross monthly income is $4,800-$5,200 (I know people ask questions a lot, and get many "it depends" answers; I am hoping that by being as descriptive as possible, I can enable the best answers possible).

You can sell your note (aka future cashflow) at a discount or whatever you can negotiate on the open market but that about your only remaining option for extracting cash out of your note.

I was initially seeking opportunities of low and no money down, but realized that is just not my style as I prefer to be responsible for my own success so I've been focusing on paying down my debts to further enable me to save up for a down payment and so far I've paid off nearly $20K in one year!!

I prefer not to go into too much detail, but can't just sell my house, as I have other obligations and ties here, and also have to live somewhere (which $270,000 wouldn't enable me to do in my area).Is it "better" to have the bank foreclose on the SFR in Birmingham or do the short sale and sign an unsecured promissory note which will not be paid?

This enables me to do a better job at marketing the property.

You should be able to extract a wealth of information if you are forthcoming about your situation in that they will be trying to win your business.