They definitely don’t meet the defiition of Frank & Dave target parks.
Does anyone own a park in a rural area where there is little to no city infrastructure or economy? I’m looking at one out of curiousity and I think I’m going to find that the homes are owned by undocumented farm workers.
Has anyone here bought a park like this before? The agriculture work is likely never going away.
Any thoughts on risk analaysis on this type of park? I might be interested at the right price.
While the agricultural work will never go away, there is a chance our elected officials will get a backbone and begin enforcing our borders to protect Americans. While unlikely, this does pose a risk to purchasing such a property. If politicians begin enforcing the Constitution, the illegals will return to their home countries, those jobs will go to deserving American families, wages will rise, and those mobile homes on/near farms may go vacant.
Oklahoma passed pro-American legislation in 2007 (actually signed into law by a Democrat governor!) with actual enforcement of penalties for landlords that rented to illegals and for employers that were undercutting American wages. Oklahoma’s unemployment rate dropped by 1% (100BP) in 18 months after that law passed. There was at least one mostly Hispanic park in Oklahoma City that went from 100% to 50% occupancy equally as quickly. But they bounced-back and got full again - with a different clientele.
Your mileage with an agricultural MHP, and political views, may vary,
-jl-
You can tell that Jefferson lives in California! In the Midwest and Great Plains, where Dave and I live, immigration reform is a non-issue, mainly because we don’t see any immediate impact from it, unlike the border states of Texas, California, Arizona and New Mexico. Missouri voters, where I live, are more likely to vote in favor of popcorn reform than immigration reform (mandatory Orville Redenbacher popcorn in all theaters could have legislative support). With the realities of politics – and the desire to be elected – there’s no way that you will see any additional immigration reform, in my opinion. If there ever was to be immigration reform, it would probably only center around California and Arizona, as it would be an unpopular discussion in Texas and New Mexico. I was unaware of the Oklahoma laws, but I looked on Google and Jefferson is correct. My only question would be, all the articles are dated 2007 and talk about challenges in court that would shoot it down. Jefferson, do you know what happened with that? There’s no recent articles that I could find – the most recent was 2010 and still talked about lawsuits from the ACLU to rescind it.
Another hot topic (which my mother has kept me updated on) is the extreme shortage of home health aides in the U.S., which will literally need millions of additional workers to handle the baby boomers as they age. Nobody seems to want this work, and they can’t pay much more than minimum wage or the budgets collapse. My mother says that the current wisdom is that the U.S. will have to relax immigration to allow for the necessary workers to fuel this mandatory industry. She thinks it will herald the next wave of U.S. immigration, similar to the influx of immigrants used to supply the needs of American factories at the turn of the century. I have not read up on this issue, but it sounds reasonable.
To the best of my knowledge, that pro-American legislation is still in effect in Oklahoma.
-jl-
Politics aside. I would not invest in a mobile home park containing a majority of illegal immigrants. Contrary to what you might think & what is being reported, our laws are being enforced by Homeland Security. I am aware of farming operations in the U.S.A. that Homeland Security visited in the past few months at random & removed all workers that could not document his or her status.
I’ll stay away from the politics of it all and talk dollars and cents as I had a former client who did a lot of low-income multifamily in these migrant worker areas. Like all investments there was the good and the bad. First expect a decent amount of residents slipping away in the middle of the night and not staying the duration of their leases. This will be most prevalent issue so you’d be frequently having to fill spaces. Also whatever occupancy limits you have per lot (in his case per unit) will be largely ignored. Also any damages you seek whether from non-payment or otherwise will be impossible to collect, expect to recover 0% of bad debt. Also as Jefferson stated you never know when a state will pass legislation that will effect landlords who rent to undocumented workers. Here in Arizona SB1070 at the time was a huge hit on many landlords.
Now on to the good - undocumented workers generally won’t stay on as UD’s after non-payment and cause problems like other low-income residents will. If they can’t pay they’re gone and generally leave the place in good condition since they don’t know to game the system like a lot of Americans do especially in California. Also they pay on time when they’re there (fear of INS) and pay mostly cash. And farm workers are in the fields almost every day from dusk until dawn doing hard manual labor so they don’t cause too many problems within the community as far as trouble-making.
As others have said - no such thing as a perfect investment. Just know what’d you be in for.
Briton, a few years back I sold a couple dozen of my old 12’ trade ins from a sales lot in NE Missouri to a large orchard. They were buying these units to house migrants. I would scope out the ag businesses and try to get a feel for what their operation is like. seasonal only? are they considering providing housing? are they looking at switching to row crop production that doesn’t require hand work.
As cold as it gets where you live, I can’t imagine they keep guys working year round.
Does anyone know is it legal to ask for proof of citizenship as part of selecting new tenants?
It is legal to ask in all but two of the most liberal states - CA and NY. It was required in the Oklahoma legislation. And you can certainly ask for a Driver’s License, and most states are not (yet) issuing DLs to illegals.http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-screen-select-tenants-faq-29137-7.htmlGood luck, and please only provide housing to those not breaking the laws of this great nation,-jl- www.lillyandcompany.netJoin my LinkedIn Group: Mobile Home Park Investors