It looks like I finally have got my head above water and ready to charge 2008! Wanted to give you some updates with myself, properties and Mobile Home University!
The California real estate market is crumbling around me which is great (as an investor) because I plan on re-entering the market in mid to late 2009. Tha banks have not get realistic yet and are stockpiling homes. The dam will break soon and when it does life is going to be AMAZING!
The mobile home parks and self storage facilities have kept us quite busy. We are putting the finishing touches on our MHP’s in West Texas… 200 park owned mobile homes later! They will be completely full within the next 60 days. For quite a few of you that have been to the mobile home park bootcamp you will remember these parks in different phases. It has been 3 years (although at Christoval a/k/a Chernobyl it seems a lifetime lol!) but now these properties are big ATM machines. The residents that we are getting have credit scores of 650+. In less than a year the quality of the buyers of our homes has changed dramatically with the stick built market turmoil and lending blowup. We now are turning our focus to the MHP’s in Dallas.
I also have finally finished a self storage expansion of 7,000 square feet that was supposed to take me less than 12 months and a cost of $110,000. After 3+ years and $250,000 I can safely say that I will never do another expansion of anything the rest of my life!
This year I am focused on two great events. The first being the annual Mobile Home Millions event. I am so excited about MHM6 in Austin (April 18th - 20th). We have a number of new speakers and our topics will address the rapidly changing real estate market and lending turmoil. We will also have a lot of familiar faces but many new ones as well. The networking is just awesome! Make sure and reserve your space as we expect to sell out. We also only have a limited number of hotel rooms for our room block so once they are gone the price almost doubles.
Last year we co-sponsored a week long cruise with Jack Miller and Pete Fortunato and had so much fun. Steve and I brought our familes and really enjoyed ourselves. It was a great time mixed with both business and personal. We have decided to do another cruise and this year we will be going to Alaska (July 27th - August 3rd leaving/returning Seattle). We just confirmed all of the details so stay tuned! Dyches Boddiford will also be joining us!
One of my New Years Resolutions is to be more active on the Forum Board again so you will see a lot of me.
I am the New Guy that posted my first note yesterday and am trying to learn as much as possible. I have been looking at a small MH park which has a little room for expansion. Your comment about the horrors of expansion scares me. Why was it so painful and expensive? Would you advise not even thinking of expansion as a way of increasing revenue.
Welcome! I am glad that you found MobileHomeUniversity.com! I was referring in my post to a self storage facility that I was doing a 7,000 square foot expansion and it definitely was a learning experience in terms of both money and time.
I would look at different ways to maximize revenue of a mobile home park. The expansion would need to be cost effective. If you want to send me the details I would be more than willing to give you my thoughts. You might also want to think about bringing in Sea Containers and renting them. You can buy Sea Containers for about $1k - $1.5k (20’, 40’ & 45’).
I have bought sea containers in 20’, 40’ and 45’ both regular height and high box (14’). The cost is roughly the same for all sizes. I would look in your Thrifty Nickel, Pennysaver, Ebay, local small classifieds first. You can sometimes find the sea containers for $1,000 or less and close to your proximity so transportation charges would be less. If you cannot find a sea container through this method you will need to usually go through a broker that handles the disposal of sea containers. The cost is usually $1k - $2k per a sea container plus transportation. I have bought sea containers out of the Long Beach port and have paid $1,500 per container plus $600 to transport (@40 miles).
There is a self storage facility in my town that has over 200 sea containers that they rent out. They have subdivided some of the sea containers by putting in metal and/or wood partitions. They also installed roll up doors. You can rent the entire sea container (which I do… $250/month) or can create smaller units within the sea container.
The sea container usually comes with a fresh paint job (not the nicest paint job but it does the trick to hide the shipping company’s name and discoloration from the long journey that it has endured for many years). If you do not like the look of the sea container you can use chicken wire on the outside and stucco.
All of the sea containers are guaranteed water tight. I also have installed several vents on the top of the sea container to ventilate the unit.
We attended the 2007 cruise and had an amazing time (besides the very rough day at sea, when I missed almost all of the sessions due to seasickness). Also, we had the good fortune of having Bo and his lovely wife as our dinner tablemates.
I didn’t get a chance to thank Corey, Blake, and Steve personally for the fantastic education opportunity. Their sessions were amazing, and these three guys are really dedicated to teaching (as evidenced by the Q&A sessions that went so long, the Carnival staff kicked us out of the room). However, we’re attending the next bootcamp, MHM and possibly the cruise to Alaska… so, I’ll be sure to thank them in person at the next event.
It is so good to hear from you. I can’t wait to see you at the Bootcamp and Mobile Home Millions. You will see Bo at both. We put him on the hot seat at the Bootcamp and he spills his guts about how he got started in the mobile home park industry (he used to work for the banks and has the inside scoop), the climate of the repossessed homes and all of his secrets in buying repos at the very best prices. He has bought almost 200 homes for us so far! He even walks the MHP’s with the students during the repo/rehab/transport module
Bo will also be having a roundtable at Mobile Home Millions 6 again this year sharing all of his secrets and giving his insight as to what is happening with the repos, banks, etc.
I had so much fun on the MHU Cruise last year with my own family as well as the MHU Family. The Alaska cruise will be even better than last year’s cruise… if you could imagine that! We have just finalized the details and will be sending them out soon. We have limited the Alaska Seminar Cruise to a small group as we could only secure a limited cabin block as the cruise ship was almost all sold out. We will be offering the cabins to Platinum Club Members and then past/current Mobile Home Millions attendees. Dyches Boddiford will also be part of the seminar cruise and we have him speaking for a couple of sessions.
I recently got hooked on the Mobile Home Industry by my dad who’s been in the business for 14 years (we’ll both be going to MHM in April.) Your post on using shipping containers as storage facilities has me extremely intrigued. I’m from south Louisiana and work in the oil field so I have a reasonable amount of experience with containers. My questions involve specifics about the setup on multiple units.
How close together can you put the units?
Do you put them on concrete slabs or block them up?
Do you install light fixtures?
Do you provide a ramp for the entrance or slope the ground up towards the openings?
I probably have 50 more questions, but those were the main issues I was wondering about.
It looks like you have some great heritage! lol Having a dad in the mobile home park industry for 14 years must be just awesome!
I put the sea containers right up to each other (without any space) and rent them out long ways (with door at end). If the dirt is pretty compact I will put the sea container on the ground with no slab or cement blocks. If, not, I will pour a slab or at the very least put in some cement block underneath.
Several sea containers that I have bought had (2) shop lights hanging from the ceiling. The previous owner of the sea container installed the lighting (could not have cost more than $100 - $150).
I do not provide a ramp as there is only a 3" - 4" height difference between the ground and floor of sea cotainer. If somebody wanted to store vehicles inside of the container they could get a 2" x 4" and place it in front of the door.
I look forward to seeing you at Mobile Home Millions 6 and you can ask the other 50! lol Make sure and book your MHM6 ticket and hotel room asap as space is going quickly.
They will be completely full within the next 60 days. For quite a few of you that have been to the mobile home park bootcamp you will remember these parks in different phases. It has been 3 years (although at Christoval a/k/a Chernobyl it seems a lifetime lol!) but now these properties are big ATM machines. The residents that we are getting have credit scores of 650+. In less than a year the quality of the buyers of our homes has changed dramatically with the stick built market turmoil and lending blowup. We now are turning our focus to the MHP’s in Dallas.