I picked up a park (75 pads) last year and it is inside of a major metro of 1mill, so close to the downtown that I can see the high rises from the main street. The rents are $700-$900 for lot and home and I own all the homes. Lot rent is about $500. The catch is that the renters are “low income” due to the although I require they earn three times the rent.
I am hesitant to switch to lot rent only because I do not have $350/month in work orders. Also the homes I am rennovaring are absorbing $5-$8k per turn with labor and will be solid for years. I worry they won’t be well maintained. Also from a valuation standpoint at refi or sale lot valuation will control and will be estimated anyway.
Aside from the additional management is there a case for lot rent only in this situation?
The case for lot rent only will always be the same. Long term the maintenance costs associated with these homes and the maintenance costs of managing non owner tenants will always eat up the home rental portion of your total rental income.
It is simply a matter of time. With all fully renovated homes for many years you may have low maintenance costs but if you hold long term the costs will escalate considerably or the home will fall into disrepair and become uninhabitable.
The standard in the income investment industry across all types of rental properties is that expenses will average 50% of income. If we assume the average is derived from a range of as low as 30% and as high as 70% expenses it is easy to see that initially you could be making a profit on home rentals however as expenses climb with age and tenant abuse you will reach the point quickly where the home rental income portion ($350) is more than canceled out by growing expenses.
The major mistake investors make is assuming their expenses will never reach that level. This is a wrong assumption unless they sell within 5 years of renovating rather than hold long term.
In your case your pay back on renovations is 14 - 22 months (zero return on investment). You also need to consider your CoC returns based on the total you have in each home. All things considered the logic indicates no value in owning/renting homes to this class of tenant. Once the repairs begin you will be lucky to break even on home rentals. Your efforts will no longer be rewarded.
There is nothing wrong with your model of renting out all the mobile homes. Typically you then make the switch from being a mobile home park owner to more of a horizontal apartment owner. If you are okay with this and all the things that apartment owners deals with, then by all means go for it because you will make more money up front due to the rental amount, etc. But when you go to sell you may have a harder time because park investors(majority of them at least), like to see as few POH’s as possible. And the majority of investors will not put much value into the homes and they don’t capitalize the rental income when evaluating parks to buy. They only value the lot rent. The ability to essentially own a parking lot with utilities is the ultimate goal for most park investors, but whose to say your model isn’t the right solution based on your investment criteria. Its sounds like you have a good location.
Also, everything that @Greg said is true as well.
My payback is actually around 8 months ($800x 10 months =$8000 rehab ) with consideration to common expenses which are few and I have no debt. It is a value add play. Most homes are 70s/80s. From a valuation standpoint I have tripled the value in the last year with consideration to comp sales and cap rate as it was a good buy. The underlying question is will ‘low’ income City renters take care of the home long term and how do you police them if they do not?