I’m a newbie who has been reading the forum and considering attending the boot camp. I have one question. How difficult is it to find a good park? As someone who owns a business that takes up a lot of time I am curious just how difficult it is to find a good fit. I have about 100k to invest.
Thanks in advance!
I have been self employed my whole adult life.not sure who said it(Ben Franklin?) the harder I work,the luckier I am
To echo John, you need to put in the hard work to find a deal, but they’re out there. I just bought my first park, and it took about 6 months of looking, after 6 months of learning about the business and learning from the folks on this board.
I went to the boot camp in the spring of 2015 and have worked a ton of deals but some how I still haven’t landed one. Ive been under contract on one, sent out hundreds of letters with lots of response but no luck yet. Takes time I guess.
took me 2 years to get one under contract. No reason to rush into something, especially one that could make or break your financial freedom.
I appreciate the feedback. How much time per week would you say you spent looking for one? I am trying to gauge how it would affect the business that I run
Passively (internet, etc.) probably about 20 hours per week. Actively (going out to visit sites, etc.) probably about 5 hours per week. I also have a full time job, and am trying to run my park on a part time basis until i can stabilize the property. In that regard, the most important thing is getting a good manager in place.
But to answer your question, and to reiterate what others have posted above, it will require diligence as well as patience to sift through all the bad deals — and believe me, there are a lot of those out there.
Alternatively, if you are an Accredited Investor, you could do what I did and invest in Frank & Dave’s MHC America Fund as a passive investor. I also invested the same amount in Park Street Partners’ Mobile Home Park Fund II. It will be fun to see who has the better returns. If you are not a millionaire, you could consider a joint venture with someone you know
Just curious why you say "if you are not a millionaire ". Do you need that kind of money to get into this?
Interesting! This is exactly what I did too (investing in both MHC America and PSP Fund II) and am eagerly waiting to see which fund will do better.
If you’re new to the industry but brilliant in business then this forum may be enough. However, if you’re like me and needed to be brought up to speed and are serious than buy the course first.
A few minor things have changed that you could question here but the cds alone were instrumental for me.
Actively evaluate deals until you have confidence and use the mentors here to double check your calculations for feedback.
So the question is- how difficult is it to find a ‘good park to buy’…
That sort of sums up a whole host of questions. The answer is somewhat complex.
First, you must determine the geographical ‘box’ your looking in. Many investors want a park close by, like within a few hours drive. Some will purchase anyplace if the yield looks right. If your like me, I pick my geographical areas and yields carefully so my ‘box’ is more like a while bunch of ‘boxes’.
ok. So if you know the areas, your down to finding parks. There are only a few ways to do this.
So here is my take- Most people go down path 1 and dabble in path 2. So you will hear stories of a great deal that hit the market and 10 people called the listing agent in the first 7 minutes of the home hitting the market. Yes this works, yes I have parks I have beat everyone to the punch. Yes- its exhausting (for me at least). The path of finding your own deals is a tricky path, forcing you to think out of the box. Down this path lies parks untarnished. The bigger your box, or boxes the faster you will find your deal.
My box- call it 1/4 of the country, would take me 15 - 60 days to realistically find a park to put under contract and be a keeper. In that same time, I would probably find 5 - 8 that were close, but would have something I was not wild about. Of the total parks in that sampling of 6 - 9 parks, say 1/2 would have been listed, but in a way hard to find, or somehow overlooked or passed over. The other half would have not been listed, but in some way ‘word of mouth’ finds…
Here are key ideas-
contact agents, drive areas, use google maps, call parks, email, network, direct mail, search mls databases for old listings and properties that have been input incorrectly… Do all of these things and you will find a property pretty quick- Depending on your ‘geographical box’. A small box equals a longer wait…
One more comment – you might put 3 parks under contract but back out of all of them for one reason or another – just because you get a contract on a park at a price that makes sense, and just because it took you a year to find it, you might be tempted to say “this is too difficult to find another one and I should overlook [problem issue].”
Don’t.
One the one hand, all deals have warts. On the other hand, the whole point of educating yourself on this forum is to avoid being the sucker who overpays and then finds that they can’t make any money from being in the park business. Half (or is it all?) of your profit is made on the front end when you buy at a price that makes sense. Speculation (hope) is not a sound investment strategy.
I know I have looked seriously (contract, visit, etc) at close to a dozen parks over the past two years and I passed on most of them for various reasons (infrastructure problem, local economy/rents too poor problem, city-council restricts the park operation problem).
One good way to find parks is to STAY in touch with the owner/broker for parks that are languishing (on MHPS, Loopnet, etc) because they are overpriced. When the Seller decides to “get real” you want to be first in line to receive the call. Circumstances change. All of a sudden there is a price drop indicating something is new and you want to sniff that out. If you’ve already done your homework you know what you’re willing to pay and you can be first to the goal line that way.
Be creative with your “box.” Once you decide you are getting on a plane, you are pretty much a day away from anywhere in the country. All of our parks require a one-stop plane flight (nothing non-stop from me to park even though I live in a major metro).
Brandon@Sandell
I too invested in Frank and Dave and Park Street Partners. Not exactly even amounts but essentially a diversification strategy within the sector without the actual work of running a MHP
Steve,
We own a 50 space park that we are looking for a lender, partner or both in some fashion to pay down a hard money loan. This is my 3rd park I have owned since 2003. If you would like to join our partners we could teach you a lot about mh parks. 2 of us have owned parks and know a lot of the pitfalls prior to buying one on your own. I have owned apartments and parks for the past 13 years and this particular park has a very big upside. It has 3 vacancies and is very clean.
I can be reached at CJ5863@gmail.com if this interests you.
Amen to that! It took us a solid 4 months (probably 4 hours a day) to get our first park under contract. Nearly two months later and after spending over $12K on DD, travel expenses, 3rd party reports, etc, we found potential legal issues that were troubling - both with the owner and with the property. As difficult as it was we dropped the deal. Since then we have closed on several parks with better returns that we believe are lower risk. Lessons learned for me were:
All the best in your finding efforts