My dad and a partner are considering developing 11.7 acres of land in Houston to a Mobil home park. The demand in the area is good and most people in the area are low income. Each lot will rent for 250-300. We don’t want any Park owned ones, just to rent out the spaces.
My Dad owns a Utility company and we would tie the Park into our water and Sewer systems. We would also individually meter each lot so they pay for that. My question is this something he should get into or is starting a Mobil Home park just way to difficult. I have been a lurker on here for about a year, but can’t remember what you guys say said about starting a Mobil Home Park. I appreciate any advice and tips you can give me.
Starting a mobile home park from scratch is extremely difficult. You will have to probably buy and bring in every single home. There are less than 60,000 new mobile homes sold per year in the U.S., and it is estimated that only maybe 12,000 of those end up in mobile home parks – that’s for the entire U.S. so 12,000 divided by 49 (none are in Hawaii) = 245 per state. Of those, probably 99% are bought by mobile home park owners to fill their own vacant lots. So the bottom line is that there are no mobile homes that will fill vacant lots unless you bring them in yourself. This was not the case in 1999, when there were 400,000 units sold with an estimated 300,000 going into parks – and virtually none of those were bought by park owners. Back in those days, you could fill 10 lots a month with new homes if you had a decent park. But those days died in 2001, and that’s when the opportunity to build and fill a new park died with it.
Thanks for the response frank. The area seems to have a good market for mobil homes. We currently own a lot next door to the land we want to develop and had no problems selling the trailer that was on it and renting out the lot for $350 a month. Do you have any creative ideas to get trailers on the property without us having to buy some 50 trailers.
Any other potential road blocks that I’m missing. The biggest one of laying water and sewer pipes we can handle easily.
The only other realistic options to fill lots would be to attract Lonnie dealers, and to market to and attract RVs. But my bet is that these two initiatives would bring in maybe only 20% of the lots, at best, unless you are in a super hot RV location.
Have you checked with the city, or county to make sure new MHP’s are allowed? Around here they are not, or if you are allowed to develope a new park, the lots have to be 1 acre or larger.
Yes, there is one a couple streets away that never has a vacancy. The area seems perfect for one as there are a lot of trailers in the area and a very dense population. There are also a lot of business in the area.
Just because there is one nearby does not mean that any more can be built. Before you spend a lot of time on this concept, call the city and tell them that you want to build a mobile home park on the property and see what they say.