Can someone help with this POH riddle?

I am looking at a park in a part of East Texas with high density & demand (250,000 pops in a 15 mi. radius of park) with great employer diversity (i.e. not dependent on oil only, etc). Park has about 60% of homes as POHs. The owner says that he started out with tenant homes about a decade ago, but one by one over the years everyone has defaulted and the homes have fallen back into his lap (in terrible shape, and he says spend $200K last year getting them refurbished). His position is that he now is better off keeping these POHs as rentals. If I got this park I would want to convert the POHs to TOHs ASAP. Has anyone seen a park/market where tenant demand for renting was high but it was tough to find potential buyers? What would I need to test to ascertain if these POHs could be converted to tenant-owned with solid owners over the course of the next 12 months or so?

Thanks in advance for any insight or commentary on this.

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Run test ads on your local Craigslist.

Something like:
“3BR/2BA $2,000 down, $495/mo., own it in 36 months.” Something like that. Upload photos. Further describe the house. If you get >20 responses/week, you are golden.

From what you are telling me, your market sounds good. The current owner sounds bad. Great. You can fix a bad former owner; you can not not fix a bad economy.

My gut says you’ll be able to convert POHs to ROHs relatively easily. But beware - you’ll need to have a good website and be advertising on Craigslist regularly. Build yourself a wait list. You are going to need it. With that many ROHs, you’ll likely have 50% turnover during your first year of ownership. Just be ready for that, advertise, and get the homes into the hands of owners quickly. Your vacancy may go to 20% for a few months as everyone is turning over. But after a rough 6 - 12 months, you’ll be in much better shape with higher-quality more stable residents that will show pride of ownership.

To your continued success,

-jl-

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We do a lot of that in our parks in eastern Washington State. We offer the homes up on private contract. They pay less than renting but more than just the pad rent. Spread the terms out longer with a higher interest rate. If they default… you get it back but in the meantime you are freed up from the rental maintenance.

Thank you both for the feedback and ideas. We’re weighing the options now to see if we want to take the plunge on this one.

Hello, I read the post here but rarely make any comments. I am also in east Texas and thought I would give you my opinion for whats its worth. I am a park owner since 1986 and was a retailer for 10 years. I think at 53 years young, I have covered just about every aspect of park rentals and manufactured housing. Ok, enough about me. The park owner you are talking to most likely lives close to the park and is very hands on. You can get alot of data from the Texas manufactured home association or stop by a dealer maybe they have a monthly report of the homes sold ( new and used ) by county for Texas. I dont get the monthly report anymore but I am sure they still put it out. If you want to sell those POH’s and leave them in the park and collect lot fees. Ask yourself what kind of client will buy this home and live in it? Will these clients be a asset to the park or a liability? You may have to remodel them and then sell them. Remodeling the house and making it attractive brings up the atmosphere and the attractiveness of the park and pulls in better clientele. I personally dont think you are going to make a turnaround in 12 months without spending alot of money. Move out any homes that cant be made attractive and keep the houses that have potential. I am saying all this, without knowing what the year model of the homes you are talking about and the conditions. I wont even think about keeping a home that is early 80’s or earlier. I think you could sell the refurbished houses easy and if they dont sell at least you can rent them out. One more thing, you can talk to the local dealers in that area and tell them that if they sell a home and move it into your park. You will give the tenant 6 months free rent. This may help fill the park with good looking homes and keep the park looking good. I hope this helps in some way.

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