Anyone have any experience giving individual homes to a realtor to sell? If so, how’d it go? What sort of commission structure did you use?
I have a realtor I’ve met with to sell one of the homes in our parks just as an add’l source of lead generation to move homes, but she just came back to me and said the MLS doesn’t actually allow the listing of homes that are considered personally property. Kinda weak. Wondering if anyone else has tried this strategy out and run into the same problem and managed any sort of work around and ended up having any success.
It varies state to state. If a homes is considered personal property instead of real estate than a realtor would in some states need a dealers license like ones selling cars. to list and sell. Name the state and we could be of more help. As some park owners have found some states want park owners to have licenses to sell their own homes which can becomes tedious with details. We have applied for dealers license but could not qualify but continue to sell homes without a state approved license without the wrath of the state government.
Their commissions are so low they dont care to sell MH’s. And their knowledge of them is so low I dont want them selling my homes. Its very hard to get a good realtor excited about a conventional home under 100k let alone a MH.
I use a realtor. It has been working out very well. She’s local and I’m not. I do all the advertising online and send her my leads as they call in. She books the showings and gives them the paperwork. I sell the home under my dealer license and pay the realtor a flat commission. Since starting this 2 weeks ago I’ve got a couple homes under contract. Now I just need to get a better local lender to handle the financing.
Hey Mike, great info. Since you have your dealer’s license, why not just use 21st Century for the financing?
May I ask what state your park is in and approx population size of the town?
And what sort of flat rate commission have you been giving? Are you using her only for sale or also for rent? I was thinking of giving a realtor flat rate commission of $1000 for sales.
I do use 21st Mortgage. It is a terrific program for park operators in the sense that you can get brand new homes in your park for no out of pocket expenses. However, on the consumer lending side it gets extremely tedious. Most of the time we are dealing with customers that do not have a computer, printer, scanner, fax, etc. When 21st Mortgage asks for documentation I’m the middle man and I’m not typically dealing with clean bank statement scans, pay stub scans, etc. Its always screens shots of the customer’s online bank accounts, photos of pay stubs, etc. 21st Mortgage is very specific with what they accept for documentation so there is a ton of rejected material and the back and forth with just one deal will consume hours of my day. There is so much to be said for a local lender who the customer can sit down with and do a deal in-person. But for right now I am still using 21st Mortgage but actively looking for a local lender.
My park is in coastal Maine and the city has a growing population of 6,000.
I pay her $1,000 per home sold. You’re only allowed to mark up the spec homes 10% with 21st Mortgage and by the time the homes are set up and actually sell (we are very seasonal in Maine), they’ve been sitting on my lot for close to a year and 21st Mortgage is entitled to keep the full 10%. So my point is I’m coming out of pocket for that $1,000…a typical commission of 5-6% would not make sense so I was lucky she was happy to get $1,000 per sale. (Median home price in my park is $55,000)
I don’t do rentals at all so she only gets paid for homes sold.