I spoke to a small private marketing company that has the lists of Mobile home parks in the area that I’m interested in. I saw a sample of 10 which checked out. It contains each MHP owners name, and private home or business mailing addresses which is different than the MHP address. I’m assuming he received this specific information form the assessors office as to who owns the MHP and where the property tax bill is being sent. I was told that they can be updated every 6 months. For a list of a 1000 he wants to charge $1500.00. Considering the time it would take for me to put that together is that a fair price?
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Depends on your approach. I’m looking more locally around me roughly 1 hr radias and 20+ lots and further out for bigger parks. I’ve scoured my information from the states Department of health. Since they are the ones that hand out licenses for operation they have up to date information - except on those that are failing. It will vary state to state of how its set up. Indiana, for example, doesn’t provide a data sheet but instead has the each individual park with more information such as park names, address, owners name and address and quite often email and phone for the manager (often are the owners).
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Yes and no…
I’ve bought lists with 1000 contacts for $600…
But what you should be concerned about is… was it a double opt in or single opt in list?
Meaning did they opt in to a mailing list and then received and email and confirmed? or did they enter an email list without double confirming? Difference being that double opt-ins usually have a higher conversion rate. Why? Because they actually chose to be on said mailing list.
Also look out for lists that aren’t hygiened. How often are they updating their lists and verifying its good information? There are codes for each industry and sub industry, make sure he’s not giving you Property Manager lists…
Just a few things to look out for… email lists can be one hell of a doozy.
-Aaron
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I’m still very new to MHP investing, but it seems like it might be more accurate to go through public directories of current MHPs and compiling a mailing list that way. But I would be interested in hearing from someone who’s tried both buying lists and making their own
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Take it from someone who has done both.
You will spend hours if not days and even months compiling lists. There are many data scraping tools that you can use with websites, and linkedin as well.
Snovio & Saleslift.Io are great tools for data scraping.
When it comes to compiling a list from scratch without those tools, what you are left with is public directories like you said, which not every state will have one online, but you could request the directories from each state for a fee…
This one is free for grabs: Florida MHP Owners List From the Dept of Health
SITE:
Actual List:
http://www.floridahealth.gov/environmental-health/mobile-home-parks/_documents/currentparlklist5-19-2017.xls
Fortunately they list most information you will need. Not all states as I stated previously, will have a list sitting out there like this.
Costs depend on what your time is worth.
If your time is worth $50/hr and you’ve spent 160 Work hours to create a list for the entire US… your in 8k already. But in the grand scheme of things… what’s 8k if you have thousands of leads to work off of… there are atleast 40k MHP’s in the US (Correct me if I’m wrong).
You can purchase lists for a fraction of that. But depending on your source of purchase, will depend on how hygiened those lists are.
If you purchase a list, ask about that, and also ask them what their guarantee is…
If you purchase a double opt-in list… they will rent you the list- this is to keep the list from being over-spammed… which also means they will distribute your content for you. Ask about their guarantees on that.
If you purchase a single opt-in list… it’s yours to keep. The likelihood of that list being hygiened monthly is low. Most purchased lists can be out dated by up to 1 year.
Peoples information changes all the time, they move, new email, new place of work, etc.
Hope that helps Mr. Samson
-Aaron
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One last thought…
Generally email lists are more expensive than regular mailing lists. The case is still the same when it comes to public records, some states won’t display the information freely, and you may need to purchase directory lists. (usually .50 copy or so.)
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Thanks Snickfish, Question, I I have a list of the park and park addresses with the owners name but not owners personal addresses.
Granted if I had the owners personal addresses it would be more effective. Do you think it would be a waste of money to send out mail to the park address with the owners name on it.
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Anytime Mitch,
It’s a 50/50 toss.
Reasonably the owner will eventually receive it when they make their rounds to the park(s) they own.
As you know, there are many owners who don’t live in-state.
So yes… eventually lol, and some immediately/soon if they live in-state.
My suggestion:
Don’t just do direct mailer… whatever you can’t get to a personal address, start emailing if you can scrape data on emails.
Sometimes it sucks, but maybe you’ve targeted someone specific… MOST likely… you will be able to locate them on the internet with proper digging.
Coorporation Wiki is a great tool as well to find out who owns a company. So you cant treat it as a reverse ended look up.
Start with company >> find owner name >> find state >> google that person.
Lot of work, but I can tell you from experience that I have come across some major leads just by doing that.
Also for example:
http://dos.myflorida.com/sunbiz/
Is a great way to look up companies (Florida only) and see whose registered that business. Again reverse ended lookup - so company, owner, then google to find anything about the owner. Sometimes if you can’t get an address, you can find a way in their inbox (email - facebook - linkedin - etc)
-Aaron
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This advice is very helpful… As someone with a limited budget, I might invest in these data scrapping tools instead of buying lists directly. But this will still save me hours from doing it without anything.
I’m assuming when you use a tool like Snovio you’re looking for a mobile home park owner’s email address from a name you already have. But I’m curious to how you find the park owner’s name to begin with?
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That is the million dollar question Mr. Samson!
Snovio & Saleslift.io are free to use. They both have paid features.
∙Snovio is more keen on data mining and has a wide range of tools, definitely check them out.
∙Saleslift.io is great for LinkedIn and is meant for scraping emails – try searching with filters on LinkedIn:
Mobile Home Park >>> location (US) >>> title (owner, principal, managing partner etc)
This should show you listings of all the people on linkedin with their titles – alot list as Owner of Mobile Home Park.
Saleslift will have a button to do this on everyone’s linkedin page under their bio & title.
Both of these run as extensions for Google Chrome by the way, so it’s convenient for you anywhere on the web.
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Very fortunate to have you in the community! You just saved me a few months of finding out the hard way.
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Mr. Samson, anytime. I am always looking to help where I can.
I stay on this forum daily, and a lot of it I don’t always understand. I think being in this industry with our company’s line of work… has made me more interested in learning about how to acquire parks and create residual passive income.
Keep hustling & thanks for giving me a topic I can speak more definitively about! 
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Snickfish or Aaron,
You were a ton of help. Thank you very much!!!
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Hey guys, we receive at least 4 mailing per month now maybe 8 with all the new efforts to locate possible parks for sale. The average park owner will think back to 2009 NOBODY was even buying parks but some were being foreclosed on . The park business has cycles and presently that why as sellers we can a 6 cap or even less. Keep on sending the stuff maybe 5 cap will be the new number and we will sell since we know even the MHP business has DOWNTURNS!!!
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Carl you sound either angry, upset or very defensive towards those who want to do direct mailing. If you own a MHP you should be happy if you think the trend is going toward a 5 percent cap. And since you’re getting 100’s of letters each year or per month from various investors wanting to buy your park shouldn’t you be happy about that. What are you doing with the tons of letters you are getting from buyers that are interested in paying top dollars for your park?
BTW what method did you use to find the MHP that you now presently own?
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So I shouldn’t get into the park business because you receive too many mailers? Sounds like good advice.
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Actually a 2009 bank foreclosure auction sale–with a +12 cap rate–30 years watching the park business and watching the new trends such as the oversupply of buyers to sellers. Remember the times it took over a year to sell a great investment or find ones for sale. The market is very fluid with some parks that WERE ONCE full with NO rentals well taken care off now looking ??? with vacant homes, untrimmed tress, broken up streets near NEW exciting apartments. Just trying to be helpful with our experience–what you do is YOUR business–just my observations!!
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I think it’s healthy to understand this business model has ups and downs like any other, and while market conditions vary - it can be ugly. I always refer back to this one when I see too much euphoria.
While I am not saying this means anyone should not get into the park business, but I do think it’s worth caution how much you leverage yourself if getting started.
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Snickfish or Aaron, You were a ton of help. Thank you very much!!!
You had it right haha, Snickfish is the company, Aaron is my name. Thank you Mitch, you are much appreciated.
What business doesn’t have downturns? This wasn’t a discussion on leverage, this thread is on direct mailings to find off market properties.
Also, I can’t understand how the influx of “newbies” buying off market properties through mailings is killing cap rates, yet using a broker or buying a park online isn’t? How does that work?
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