First of all I just want to say thank you to everyone who contributes such valuable information to this site. It is enormously helpful for new investors such as myself.
My father and I are seriously considering purchasing a new park that has never had a home in it. Normally I would never consider such a thing but it really seems priced very low.
It’s a 52 space park in a fast growing area of central Florida.
All lots are fully permitted. The park has its own sewage system installed. Underground utilities are installed and its hooked up to city water. Each lot has its own address with mailboxes in place.
The park is in a fairly rural area but only about an hour from 2 major cities and 30 minutes from a medium sized city.
2 years ago they were asking over 1 million for the park and are now down to $229K. They have never tried to put any homes on the land.
I think we can get the park for under $200K.
Are we crazy to try to fill this park?
At this price we’d have plenty of money left over to purchase homes to try to sell and turn into a mostly lot rent park. At this price it wouldn’t take too many rentals to cover the mortgage.
As always any candid input is very appreciated.
Ed
I would not move forward for a number of reasons as follows: 1. Financing: You will not be able to get financing for the purchase of the homes unless you buy new at $30k+ per home from Legacy which is too high unless you have very high lot rents (see paragraph below). If you can find used homes which are more desirable due to a lower price of approximately $20k, which are not financeable, you will not be getting the financial benefits of leverage so your cash on cash return will be low. 2. Labor Intensity and Supervision: You will need to have a great sales person on site to fill the lots and rehab contractors fixing up the used homes which will require maintenance supervision, etc., which is a much more labor intensive and hands on business. 3. Significantly Higher Risk: Since you are starting with no cash flow, you are taking on significantly higher risk which should command a greater return as well. If you still want to move forward with this project then consider the following:What are the lot rents? Have you looked at the demographics and done test ads to see if you have enough demand? The landed cost of used homes will run in the $20k range after moving/fixing, etc. and new are north of $30k so you can do the math. Rule of thumb is not to pay more for the home than the capped value of the noi for each lot when considering only the lot rent (exclude the revenue for the home rent in your analysis.) So if the lot rent is $300 and you charge for utilities then you would not want to pay more than ($300 x 12 x .7) / .12cap= $21,000. This assumes you are ok with taking on the higher risk of this project with a 12cap which I would think is too low. (I am also assuming your property taxes and insurance are not out of sight because of being in Florida, so the .7 noi flow through in the above formula may be too aggressive so check this out as well.) Also, check out the availability of used homes, which are getting harder to come by.Perhaps a better idea is to find a park that has much higher occupancy, say 70%+ and cash flow to support debt.All the best, Bob
Bob,
Thank you for the input. That is extremely helpful.
Best Regards,
Ed