I have a park under contract. It has 60+ park owned homes. My plan was to sell the homes on a lease option to get away from the cost & problems associated with renting. During due diligence I discovered that the owner has title to only about 10 of the homes. Several he inherited when the prior mobile home owners abandoned them. He also can’t find the written leases for most of the abandoned homes, making it difficult to get tiltle via the lien process. The others, he obtained when he purchased the park around 20 years ago. Unfortuneately he never got title to those and the prior park owner is deceased. This changes the situation completely. Has anyone ever run into something like this.
1 Is there a way to get title to the abandoned homes, without having the written leases as evidence.
2 How can I get title to the homes the seller got when he bought the park 20 years ago.
3 Is there some way to get title to all the homes via some equitable lawsuit, vs having to go after all the prior owners one at a time.
Why not simply insist that as a condition of sale the present owner obtain all the required ownerships.
Make him do the work if he wants to close the deal. This would obviously be a strong position for you moving forward that could be financially advantageous.(or break the deal allowing you to walk away)
Each State has a different process and cost structure buy I believe that you will be working to obtain “abandoned” vehicle titles. You will need to obtain each title one by one. Google “abandoned mobile home title (your State name)” You will probably find the neccessary method…if not NADA produces a publication that instruts each states vehicle titling processes.
Titles are a PITA - it will suck an unbelievable amount of time out of your life - and while doing that, you can’t be doing dollar productive things.
Have the seller do it as a condition of sale - or you’ll inherit this nightmare. Ask us all how we know.
If he won’t do it, and you still need to proceed, make sure he at least gives you a bill of sale ‘transferring’ them to you - or he could come back after the sale and pull them out - another ask me how I know.
Got the titles - seller: ‘it’s easy’ - William: great, you can show me how to do it.
ALSO - BIG POINT HERE - make sure the seller isn’t on recourse for any of these homes - that won’t show up on any title search - only the lender and the recourse signer would know.
When a home goes into default, and the seller’s on recourse, there is nothing stopping him from pulling the home. We learned that on the last acquisition - 15 times. yup.
The only one who can accurately answer those questions is a competent attorney licensed for that state. Our experiences on titling in other states will have no bearing on the state that the park is in. You might get some initial information from that state’s manufactured housing association, plus calling the titling office for that state. However, we would never bet the farm on some advice from the internet or the MHA. I’d find a decent lawyer in that state and let them be the quarterback on that issue.
