I’m looking at a cabin property with quite a few cabins and a laundry/shower house. Financials look good even with the cabins which are rented out. I’m curious if it can be converted to a mobile home park, or RV park. Both would be similar use, but it is currenly not permitted for mobile homes.
How likely is it to get it changed? Where do I look and who do I ask if I want to find out if it is a possibility?
Most every municipality and county has outlawed new mobile home park construction over the past few decades. So it is highly unlikely that this property could be converted. That said, you’ll need to contact either the city or county that has zoning authority for your property, and ask them what the procedure is to re-zone.
Be careful if the government says ‘no problem to re-zone.’ That probably means your property is out in the middle of nowhere and nobody cares what you do with it. Which also means nobody will want to live there.
It generally does not make sense to develop new MHPs. You will be unable to find financing for mobile homes (unless you buy expensive all-new MHs from Legacy Housing - they will finance 2/3rds of the purchase price at 10% over 10 years), so you will have to pay all-cash for all the used mobile homes you will probably buy. It generally takes quite a while to fill a mobile home (e.g. maybe can only fill 1 - 2 MHs per month), so you are looking at having to fund operating losses for years to get your MHP up and running and cash flowing.
So we generally do not advise starting a MHP from scratch unless the demand is very, very strong (e.g. lot rent alone would be $300/mo.+ and could be filled at a rate of 5+mo.). Even then, you are still stuck with bleeding cash to bring in all those MHs.
But if you’ve got a property that is both in high demand for mobile homes (run test ads to find out) and can in fact be re-zoned, then you’ve found a gem.
-jl-
Thanks Jefferson. I’ll post what I find out. It’s in a good location and all of the cabins are rented. I’ts very much like a mobile home park, except with tiny cabins.