Hi
I own a 25 lot mobile home park in the heart of Punxsutawney, PA. Weather capital of the world. It is 65% occupied. I have struggled with moving new homes or used homes into the park because it is very difficult to get any trailer bigger than a 12 foot single wide into the park due to the final last turn into the park. As a result, it seems difficult to attract new residents into the park who want to bring a trailer. I am not sure if anyone has any suggestions to overcome this. I debated buying the homes myself and moving them in there but I don’t have large enough sums of cash to cover this cost and banks don’t seem to readily lend money for mobile homes.
I also debated moving RV’s into the park for temporary housing for some of the natural gas workers in the are who move job to job. Does anyone have pros and cons on this idea?
Finally, we have two abandoned homes in the park that are in pretty bad shape. Likely a full gut or tear down. Has anyone every built a mobile home on site?
Thanks in advance,
Jocelyn
What is it exactly making that turn tight and what are you options to change that (if any)?
From what I understand, it is the final turn within a residential neighborhood. Roads that are barely wide enough for two cars to pass comfortably, no sidewalks and obviously telephone poles. I also think there is concern driving over people’s lawns. I have not personally been there to move in a trailer. However, I have hired professional trailer movers on two occasions and they were the ones who told me that 12 foot wide is the limit.
We 12 vacant lots when we purchased a year and a half a go, in Oregon. We decided that our market did NOT support us purchasing homes, as the cost of the mortgage plus rent would be too high. We got two people to move in used homes in about 10 months. Finally, we decided to open it up to long term RVs, fully vetting them with the same criteria we have for the park, which includes an extensive background check. It worked. In the past 5 months we have moved in 11 very nice looking RVs with great tenants, and only have one spot left. One caveat is that we have the only available RV spaces for quite a radius. A huge plus is that our lots are for a single wide with side by side parking, so to RV owners our lots are huge and they love it. Our lender says that once we have RVs in there for at least 6 months they will count the income for a cash out refi. Good luck.
What width home can be physically squeezed in is mostly a technical question best handled by home movers. Get a few other opinions. Some movers are more skilled or have better equipment than others. If 4+ movers tell you you can’t fit in anything wider than 12’ though then it looks like you’re stuck with 12’.
If the concern is driving over people’s lawns, that concern can likely be easily mitigated with some diplomacy and compensation.
Next time you fly out, set up an appointment with another home mover to look at the width problem and be there on site as he inspects the situation so you can see it from his eyes.
Hi Miles,
I think the RV solution may be the best one for the park at the moment.
This is a dumb question as I am quite familiar with RV’s, but how big do they have to be for someone to live comfortably in them year round? What kind of electrical amp hookup and sewage hook up modifications did you have to make for the RVs? Did you level out the spots with a concrete pad or some other method? How did you attract long term RV tenants?
Thanks again,
Jocelyn
Hi Jocelyn:
These are all excellent questions. I can answer all but the first one. I don’t now how big an RV has to be in order to be comfortable to live in year round. I can say that all of the RVs that have moved in are big, and so that issue isn’t a problem. My on-site manager makes the decision what can move in. Our main criteria is appearance–they have to look very nice.
Electrical is an excellent question. After conversations with electricians who were familiar with RVs we now call and tell them that we need our posts outfitted with two plugs: 110 and 200 for RVs. They know what that is. We found a huge difference in price and started out with about $1500 and now found a company that does this for $450. The electric company should take care of all permitting for you.
No change for the sewer hookup as far as I know. You might check with someone else on this.
We did nothing special to the lots, Our home spots are compacted gravel, and they have been working fine for RVs. Most driveways are asphalt then concrete. One lot just had grass so we put in a base rock pad for parking that cost us $450.
I don’t do the marketing, but I know we are using Facebook. I think Fb is where we get most leads. I will follow up and try and get you more detail on this. I can tell you that we have the phone go to Grasshopper, which sends emails transcribed for us. This is a great tool.
This is probably an obvious point… However, I recently went to a Living Legally Tiny home event in Los Angeles. I’m also a Realtor; so it didn’t take long to figure out that tiny homes were really either RV"s or manufactured homes or “illegal” versions of either. Reading the tiny home blogs about how difficult it is for tiny home people to find spaces it would seem as if the mobile home RV parks are a natural fit. But the two groups don’t seem to be on the same page. Tiny homes need the legality of this industry and the industry could possibly use the influx of creative ideas and momentum the tiny home people have to offer. Seems like this is an opportunity for situations like this. Hope it works out all the way around.
The way you answered this makes me interpret that the park owner is responsible to provide the electric. Plumbing too?