Building List of Mom and Pop / Non Institutional Owned Parks

I’m taking a number of approaches finding Mobile Home Parks. When I zero in on a park and find the park to be owned Institutionally or by a large buyer… I’m wondering what I should do with this data. Are you reaching out to such owners? working to build relationships?

I’d love thoughts.

Question?? How many first time buyers have found great deal from institutionally sellers and owners with many parks?? Like Buffett they will hold forever the great properties and sell off their junk!!! Mon and Pop owners are the last potential good sources of properties but instead of labeling them poor operators MAYBE they are not greedy like the owners with many properties that look at how quick and how high they can raise rents. Less than 5 years Mon & Pop parks will be history–so sad!!!

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I currently am not doing what I was doing when i started out. I sent mail to everyone. Mailing Too small a deals, institutional, frank and dave etc.

Generally speaking I would say if your primary goal is getting a deal , its improbable.

From all the direct mail i sent out , i once was able to work out a deal with a larger operator but for it to come to fruition was really a non probable scenario but nonetheless it was able to materialize.

There has been other chances i have gotten on deals before they went on the market but then they weren’t really something you might want to buy.

It also becomes hard to classify at a point because there are a lot of people you might not know, but then they might own a few thousand lots.

I also had another one with a very, very large portfolio but i think it was being pruned for a reason.

I have had some call to say they are buying and even gone out to lunch with and pick their brain on what they wanted.

I also incidentally got to be know a bit more ( since i sent out mail to everyone and their mother… ) . And i would go to an industry event and someone would tell me about a deal they might sell . Or even when i had cold callers they would say i talked to blank with your company last week but its a really personal business so you have to be careful. It worked great when i would answer the phone all the time after sending out tons of these things and could take a drive or hop on a plane to meet with an owner if i needed too .

I really solely focus on doing the calls myself now if they get made to just regular relationships

Marketing dollar wise was this whole thing effective? Actually with the one deal i would say yes but i think most of these guys aren’t going to sell you what you are looking for thats not to say it won’t happen. Someone might be looking to shift their core focus.

I missed out on a 500 space deal because i was too green at the time to realize it was a deal (and a very reasonable at that) . I have another deal i talk to thats valued at 15M but its non institutional . So if you are just starting while you think you may know , you do not know what you do not know yet.

Also can I be a mom and pop and still own in an LLC? I would say from experience absolutely ( which i think this goes against conventional thoughts- or maybe not) .

I think that most traditional larger buyers who are active will go the brokerage route. I also suspect not just for maximizing their sale but then my thought is that if you let the brokers sell for you , maybe you get a leg up on an acquisition that might be a fit for you. Just from a couple scenarios i have seen.

I think @carl makes a good mention that for a first time buyer getting a great deal might not happen.

But id also like to add , if you understand the larger operator model , market cycles, and the investment model, many of these guys are set up to hold forever. While i have come across some larger institutions that have owned for 25 years ( probably longer). The syndicate model is often predicated on getting your investors money within a designated time. Ie 5 years, 7 years 10 years. That can happen in one of two ways, refi and or sale. I dont think you often see people pitching those terms for an investment. You have to also look at your yield curve . If you get a deal stabilized in year 6, and you have 10 year debt on it, you can run scenarios on what numbers look like for refi or sale and sale is maybe what you need to do and the numbers give the answer themselves. Market cycle and cap rate will also be a consideration.

I have also had another portfolio operator tell me to be weary of any multi park operator selling a park. I for a bit thought maybe that is true . But people change strategies, regions , and grow up as they build their business so i dont think that is true anymore. But like a deal from last year i reviewed, if someone has 50 parks in one area and is selling one and is currently buying in that area, i would really look closely as to why.

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Is there any list of corporate owned parks out there, so I can avoid spending money and time trying to connect with their owners? For example, I don’t want to waste money sending mailers to parks owned by Frank & Dave already, but can’t actually find any info anywhere on what is theirs…

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I’m a newbie who would like to purchase a park within the next 1-2 years. The pro’s make it sound like it’s near impossible to find anything at all. I’d like to hear more thoughts on this. Does it have anything to do with park size? Are you only looking for a certain cap rate? Thanks!

Here’s a list you can start out with (45k MHP’s) :

Thanks - although that doesn’t look to actually include specific addresses of corporate-owned parks?

@detroitster no problem, the list is from a national public database.

If you scroll down, you will see address, counties, states, phone numbers, size of parks, NAICS codes, and for most, also the name of the park.

Last time I checked the database, it was updated as of last year. That mean’s within those 45,000 listings on the spreadsheet… there should be corporate-owned parks.

image

This is a Riverstone MHP.

Sorry let me rephrase my question - there is no filter or column in the spreadsheet regarding whether a park is corporate owned - therefore without already knowing what parks are corporate owned, how can it be used to identify which parks I shouldn’t be wasting my time to contact?

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There really isn’t a way to determine if a park is corporate owned or not - by calling the owners you will eventually learn how to identify (by scanning a spreadsheet), without 100% accuracy, which parks are likely not owned by a large company.

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That will be for you to determine @detroitster

There are listings in there for corporate owned parks, however Snickfish doesn’t specialize in data. Our resources were meant to provide value for our end-users and anyone else seeking this type of data.

I’ve scoured the internet, for this type of data, and unfortunately there is no list with corporate owned parks, unless someone/someplace has generated that list by hand. The public database which is the HIFLD Open Data platform is here: https://hifld-geoplatform.opendata.arcgis.com/

You could try looking into that and seeing if it provides the data you are seeking on a corporate level only.

You know what I was thinking… take a look at that spreadsheet and look at the column that says “Size”
Use that, plus what @tmperrault said, and that may help you with finding corporate-owned parks.

I would assume… (rough assumption here) that the majority of the larger parks, are owned by corporate entities. Hope that helps!

Thanks Snickfish - appreciate the help! It’s interesting that at the seminar Dave mentioned him and frank are the 5th largest owner of mobile home parks in the US, yet there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to actually see what they (or 1-4 / 6-10 largest owners) actually own!

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Anytime!

This is the closest I can get you to those numbers - 50 Top Manufactured Home Community Owners and Operators

MHP Funds, LLC – Cedaredge, Colo. – 31,652 homesites

I know that doesn’t show the parks they own. But information like that is hard to obtain. CorporationWiki.com helps me find out who owns what though :slight_smile:

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Any luck since last year? Just wanted to see how your progress was coming along @NJonge01

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