Long-time reader of the forum, but first-time poster. I am very interested in becoming a mobile home park owner in the future, but I understand that there is a lot to learn first. In addition to reading all that I can (including Frank & Dave’s materials) and (when I’m financially ready to buy) attending a Boot Camp, my thought was to begin birddogging for third parties who have the cash and are ready to make a purchase (to learn how to analyze deals). A few questions along this line:
Is this a bad idea? Am I better off just saving and learning until I can jump in myself?
If this is a good idea, any recommendations on materials to read or the best way to get started?
Should I focus on finding deals that are relatively close to me geographically or does proximity not matter?
A few concerns I have are: (1) wasting the time of potential buyers and the brokers selling properties, and (2) whether any sellers will want to talk with me after I explain that I am looking on behalf of third parties who may want to purchase the property.
As the saying goes, I don’t know what I don’t know.
I’m green as green can be with all of this, but I have the time and income to be able to jump into the industry at some point in the not-so-distant future.
If it makes a difference, I live in Las Vegas, NV currently.
Lilly & Company has a Bird Dog Program; so far we’ve signed-up three people.
The way it works is this: we agree to pay you a 1% finders fee on any MHPs you bring us that are ‘qualified.’ ‘Qualified’ means they are not on mobilehomeparkstore.com, nor LoopNet, nor any brokers’ website. Basically you have to add value; you have to find a property that is off-market and put us in touch with the owner directly. If you do so, and we end up buying the MHP, we pay you 1% of the purchase price.
If you are interested in more pay and training, we will hire you on an hourly and commission basis to run the deal. This means for 6+ months you’d be the Asset Manager and be responsible for overseeing the rehab of homes, finding and bringing in new homes, getting the website up and running, fielding phone calls, etc. (And we are hiring for just this work for a few properties we have under contract and expect to close on in the next two months.)
Ours is a ‘learn and earn’ bird dog program to get you fully up to speed on how to operate and improve a mobile home park and learn everything you’ll need to do the next MHP deal on your own (or you can keep partnering with us).
If our Bird Dogger Program sounds of interest (or just stepping in as Asset Manager on a few deals we’ve found on our own), please let me know.
If you are serious about it, I’d love to help you get started. A bird dog is something that I desperately need. Basics of it are sending out letters and making calls to parks that meet my criteria. You get it under contract, then sell the contract to me for a fee that I gladly pay especially if it was a deal that I couldn’t have found on my own. It’s a lot of hard work and extremely time consuming to make phone calls and send letters, but I can’t think of a better way to start since you will own the deal flow that you can take advantage of once you are in a position for buying.