Starting from the ground up

I’m 21 and I was looking at investing in starting my own mobile home park as a side business. Financially, I’m brilliant. I was just looking into the perils or obstacles of starting up or even owning a trailer park. I found a piece of land for sale, 18 acres if that’s important, and planned on clearing it and planting a large septic system in the back and placing one trailer at a time (each trailer would have it’s own well), connecting the following trailers to the septic system as I could afford them. But one of the other catches is that I’d like to buy the trailers new. I found, met, and now pretty decent friends with a trailer dealer owner and can hook me up with some great deals on some brand new, energy star efficient trailers that feel like houses on the inside. Like it’s all high quality stuff. And my credit score is already nearing 850 so I don’t think I’ll have a problem with financing, or at least I hope not. But being as young as I am I thought I’d slowing work my way up cause I think even simple folks deserve nice places to live. All the trailer parks around here are just a disgrace and define the meaning of “white trash.” Also, maintaining the property and everything won’t be a problem because I have good sources for taking care of the grass and all that. So, on paper and in my head it sounds like an amazing idea, but nothings ever that simple, is it? Is there anything I’m missing or anything I need to know because in my head it all doesn’t sound that hard so please, someone give me straight up answers, I can take it.

Don’t waste your time considering building a community from scratch. Doubtful you will ever get approval but aside from that financially it is not cost effective. Way less expensive to buy rather than build. You will be carrying a huge financial debt load for decades with no investment income to cover your debt.
Your time would be far better spent finding a way to buy one of the existing communities and turn it around. Income from day one to carry the debt.
You will likely say you do not have the resources to finance a purchase. If your are smart and resourceful you simply find a way. Or save every penny you can from your work until you do have the money. That is time better spent than building a park.

@Greg is right, and Frank has written in detail about this topic here: Why You Should Never Build A Mobile Home Park - Mobile Home University

Assuming approvals is not a major issue, meaning you’re developing in a county’s jurisdiction and you really want to know how much it will cost then you should get an architect or engineer to design the park layout - including pads, utilities, roads, etc. Then work with all the various contractors or a general contractor to get 3 quotes each on what it would cost to put those in place (e.g. electric, gas, telephone, water, sewer, fire hydrants?, roads, site preparation). The result based on other’s experience is around 10K per pad before the homes are installed…

You would have to be in an extremely high demand market (20 calls per week on a test ad) pulling very high rents (~$1,000 / month) and well capitalized to consider this. These scenarios exist, but not often enough to make fiscal sense.

I know that Ken from the @RishelConsultingGroup has built parks in the past and can probably tell you more…

You might be to BRILLIANT but maybe no common sense. I always was smarter than my dad until I left home and needed a budget that could take care of a family. You might have a discuss 5 years from now and your quote brilliant will make more sense, hopefully. Have a great day!!.

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