After months of searching, finally found a turn around park. Owner is interested in doing a partnership letting me own a certain percetage of the LLC, while I am the managing partner.
Did all the due diligence items, but found out the park sits on serveral parcels of land(about 10 of them), whose titles are in owners personal names. The MHP park business itself is in an LLC.
Shall I ask the owners to deed their parcels to the LLC first, then file a change in the LLC?
Shall I do a title research on all those parcels? What to look out for in those types of transactions? Any experienced legal guru there?
MHP was purchased…straight Sales Contract or a Lease with Option. But in my area my ins. agent won’t write a commercial policy with homes in an LLC. Makes sense in a way, why write liabilty attached ins. for a LLC.
So the way I structured that was homes in a subS and land in an LLC. during lease period and at my discretion (and cost) at Option trigger can purchase with Title and Deeds or wrap all of the individual portions into a Trust and buy a beneficial (or portion) interest in Trust. A way to avoid sales related stuff (sometimes expensive stuff).
The way you will structure this lease or purchase will be predicated on what you want this property to do and how you want to exit to minimize taxes and transfer fees. is ther SDIRA money involved?
Is this a buy and hold? Fix and flip? keep the dirt, lonnie the homes?
If you place the dirt in a seperate LLC make sure you are the manager of the LLC and look thru the entire doc. or better yet have a lawyer (yeah, I know) look it over.
They can be complicated…how many owners are in the LLC now?
There are 3 owners right now. Park has been losing money due to vacancies and rentals. Owners has been putting money in every year to cover the cost. They were initially trying to sell the park since one of the owners didn’t pay on time and wanted to get out.
The idea is for me to get in to replace the one owner that didn’t pay. Haven’t seen their LLC docs yet. (oh well, as far as I know, the LLC wasn’t even current…)
One of the owners just faxed me all tax records of the parcels and their names were on different parcels.
Do you think a land trust would work in this case?
You also asked me about my plan with the park…
Well, this gets into another complicated situation. I would want to ideally keep the park for cash flow once it’s been turned around. One of the owners want to turn the park into a subdivision in 5 years and sell each lot individually…A tricky situation since I am going to spend money putting homes on those lots …I can see a potential problem here.
legal in 6 States. Without naming a specific area can you tell us the State this Park is in?
Why was park losing money? Poor management? out of area owners?
Sounds like you are fronting cash and experience for partial ownership?
I would want to talk to the owner that walked…might have some good info on the deal and the other owners. Be very careful. The real opportunity would maybe be to lease option the LLC holding homes AND another for Land and have total control for a period of time, collecting cash floe, then either buy or sell at Option time?
Owners are 2 hours away from the park, who has no interest in upkeeping the park. It’s been run by a manager who is overwhelmed with tenants. They want to wait for 5 years for the park to turn into an “PUD” when the sewer lines comes in and sell the lots, while paying money just to keep the park.
My hope is that once I go in and turn around the park and they see cash coming in, they would change their mind and not selling the lots.
park has 160 spaces and has good infrastructure.
The 2 other owners are not eager to sell. If I do offer them a lease option right now,they might not like it or they would ask for a higer price then what the park is worth.
I was trying to get in with very little money and that’s why I though it would be a good idea to be only a partial owner. I also want to avoid a sale as much as possible due to the costs and increase tax basis…
I think I may have looked at the park you are considering. I own a park in Burlington, NC. I wont say the name but I might be able to shine some light if it is the same park. Call if you like Rick Ewens at 805 550-9753
post tried to show just how critical (I say necessary) networking is…
I just left NC and I would love to own a Park up there.
Ginger, the beauty of a L/O is it really does not take a ton of money (loot) to get control of cash flow for awhile. I would not really care what the price of the Park is…seriously. If they asked 1.5M or 2.5M, I would gladly pay that at “AT SOME LATER DAY” preferably in 7-10 years. In the meantime the lease amount is much more important to me. I’m involved in one now where gross rev. is 31K per month, expenses are 6,800 per month ( garbage, insurance, lights, taxes, accounting, upkeep). There are 9 empties and lot rent has been the same for several years. No park owned homes, city utilities w/ master meter (this will change).
My plan is to pay less than 20K for Option and lease the park giving Owner 16K per month. Another 7K for expense, another 2K for manager and put 6K in my pocket each month for 7 years. Raise rent 50 per month and put an added 3800 in my pocket each month. Bring in 9 d/w and lonnie? Add another 2920 per month of lot rent and twice that in d/w home itself rental. cost of bringing in 9 homes? quarter mil…a great return.
At the end of lease? Sell for profit (perhaps giving Owner a portion of gain.)
Renew for another 7 year term. or Let the Park go back to owner…I’ve made close to a mil in profit over 7 years. With 10% appreciation each year on sale I’d make a fortune, but that really doesn’t matter that much to me. Given a choice of a higher sale price with lower monthly amount or vice versa, I’d take that lower monthly every time. I’ve made my money monthly in free cash flow… so whether he wanted 1.5M or 2.5M doesn’t matter at all if my spread is there each month.
I’m not saying this is the right way or the smart way, but it is my way from this day forth. I don’t feel you should pay a lot of money to help them solve their problems, it is worth an ask? Probably it is.
You have a case of Partner Squabble going on…the ones paying are looking for someone to make the problems go away…be that person and you are set for seven years or more. Do another, and another…see a pattern here?
Thanks all for good suggestions and insights. I have been feeling down for quite some time after seeing all the potential issues with this park. Now I feel so much better.
Being a newbie in this business is not easy and believe it or not I have been searching hopelessly for months for the right park to buy. This one seems to be the best canidate for a “turn-around” park.
Greg, I love your lease option idea and but it might not work in this case. The existing owners are not interested in running the park but like to have the upside 3-5 years down the road when they may convert the land to a “PUD”… A lease option for 5 years with a high sale price will suffice their needs. However the park is not currently making money and it would take 3 years with lots of money pouring into it to make it cash flow nicely. Then I will be hit with a 5 year expiration with high sale prices…
Rick, your teleseminar really serves as my moral booster in this business!
in need of a bunch of homes, it does not fit the model for what I try to do.
Bringing in homes is a HUGE expense (both in time and money) and if you were to do this on your dime, you would need some kind of guarantee you would have the time to profit on this.
In my market, a nice repo doublewide set up is approx. 26-28K (my cost). In my market It will rent for 850 -900 per month. Remove lot rent of say 300 per month and that leaves say 600 for payment of home. I would need 48 rent months to just break even with no repairs needed if renting. The numbers are much better if selling ala Lonnie deals cuz of 5K down I would ask for, but still significant time is needed to make a profit.
These kinds of deals can be heartbreakers if you don’t have money in place to start bringing these homes in.
When ever you have more than one owner there are multiple dynamics. You may never understand, nor meet ALL of their needs. BUT… they may agree to work with you because they HATE their partner/s.
IF YOU DO NOT ASK - YOU ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT ADVANCE
I have put together some very convoluted deals that I thought would never be accepted but were with only slight modifications.
As Nike advises “JUST DO IT”
The risk is attempting to accommodate everyone putting yourself at risk.
Make an offer that will allow you to succeed. You will learn more by putting an offer on the table and let them counter than talking a blue streak!
The owners came back and talked about not wanting to do partnership anymore but a straight sale.
Now I am trying to see if they are interested in owner finance this deal. This is truly a people business and I beginning to taste the ups and downs of “deal” or “no deal”. It’s been 4 months since I started talking to them and it just keeps dragging on…
could work in your favor Ginger. There are several investor types listed in the Connections portion of this site that are looking for a partner on just this type of deal. With no positve cash flow, you should be able to name your price and terms. They will try to sell the proforma dogma but the bottom line is it loses money each month. The hard part will probably be trying to get all the Owners to agree on a realistic price and terms.
I would never attempt the Purchase without some big bucks behind me to bring in homes immediately. Repos are starting to get scarce and new homes are spendy.
I have found it to be real helpful to put a time limit on my offers (time is of the essence). With no real incentive to sell, they will drag it out forever. Maybe try to create a little urgency? " I have an investor willing to help with this purchase but I need a straight up yes or no and outline of deal before I take up his/her time" Talk to a few investors beforehand and most WILL be very busy.