Mobile Home Park Investing Newsletter

Our least favorite Halloween fright is when we get calls from individuals who have found us on the internet and have a terrible problem with their mobile home park and hope we can save the day. These people never bothered to read a book or attend a Boot Camp prior to buying their park, they just wrote a check, got a loan, and closed on the park in question, without having any idea what they were doing. Some of these calls are simple to fix, such as “nobody is paying the rent” (which means they need to enact a no pay/no stay collections system) or “people won’t clean up their yards” (which means they need to enact a no play/no stay rules enforcement system). But other problems – and the ones that terrify us – are such classic calls as “my loan is due in three days, how do I get a new one” or “my lagoon is broken and running down the hill” or even worse “my septic tank broke and the EPA is charging me a $10,000 per day penalty and it’s been going on for three months” (true story). These calls have no easy fix – or even any fix at all, in some cases. And, the sad truth is that all of them would have never occurred if the buyer had performed basic due diligence. Benjamin Franklin once wrote “diligence is the mother of good luck” and that’s definitely true in mobile home park deals. So our Halloween message is: please perform competent due diligence before you ever buy a mobile home park. It’s OK to assemble a bicycle on Christmas Eve without following the instructions, but never buy a mobile home park any day of the year without conducting an exhaustive due diligence on the property. If you think that Frankenstein is scary, wait until you have a master-metered gas system go out, or a lift station erupt.

I used to own this Mexican restaurant. Well, not really. I owned the building that it’s inside of, because it came with a mobile home park I bought on Lake June Road in Dallas. Back then, it was a rundown Kwik Wash laundry building, on a long-term lease that had only about a year left on it. I walked through the building during due diligence and all I saw was a beat up old building needing significant capital investment to upgrade it for a new tenant when the lease ended. And I have no interest in commercial buildings as a business model. So I set about getting rid of it.

The power of pride of ownership

In any form of real estate, the best operators show pride of ownership. It goes beyond dollars and cents, to a case of taking your property personally. While I had good deal of pride in my mobile home park, which was only a hundred yards from a Walmart Super Center, I had no interest in this little building at all. I knew that, for this building to be a success, it needed someone who cared about it and wanted to nurture it into something more, and build a dynasty of small commercial buildings. I found that person in a small investor who liked to buy and turn-around old commercial buildings. I found them by listing the building on MLS, and they were drawn to its low price. The price was $60,000. They saw the potential the building had, being so close to a Walmart. All I saw was a worn-out dump in a brick shell.

The power of specialization

I believe that in any endeavor, specialization is the key to success. And I had no interest in learning about small commercial buildings. I’m a mobile home park specialist, and not really interested in expanding that horizon for the sake of one dilapidated brick structure. I needed to find somebody who was a specialist in small commercial buildings to take this item to the next level. The buyer was excited about commercial buildings as I was about mobile home parks. It was a perfect match.

A distraction that takes away from the real business potential

I have found that ancillary assets to a mobile home park are problems in more than one arena. Managing them can cause much more stress than they’re worth. And lenders really want nothing to do with assets other than mobile home lots. So it’s typically better to sell them off if you can. In this case, the building was renting for $500 per month to Kwik Wash. By selling it for $60,000, I was unloading it at better than an 8% cap rate and avoiding probably $20,000 in deferred maintenance.

Has to be logical physically

What made the concept of subdividing the property and selling off this building possible was its physical location. It was outside the park and had direct frontage on the main road, as well as its own water and sewer connection. It is impossible to split off ancillary assets in many cases, as there is no reasonable way to construct it. I once had a two-story brick house, built in the 1800s, inside a park in Denton that was of interest to a college professor to restore and live in. He offered me far more than it was worth. But I was unable to subdivide the property because the home was set inside the mobile home park and about 500’ from the frontage.

Must have a release price from the lender

Before you can subdivide property and sell it off, you have to have the backing of your lender, and a “release” price that the lender will allow you to pay them to give up title to that portion of the property. If the lender will not release that portion – or wants more for it than you can sell it for – there’s no reason to even consider this option. In the case of the Kwik Wash building, the release price was $50,000. That worked perfectly, because the $10,000 difference between the release price and sales price covered my survey and subdivision costs.

Have to convince City Hall

City Hall is surprisingly easy to work with when you want to subdivide out any part of a mobile home park – they think anything less zoned mobile home park is a plus for the city. But you should still not take it for granted. Follow the city’s requirements and brown-nose everyone involved. The most frustrating part of doing a subdivision of your property is the time and trouble involved; surveys and paperwork and bureaucratic nonsense. But, other than the park in Denton, I’ve never had a subdivision denied.

More than just a financial benefit

The end of the story is that the new owner did a fantastic job of renovating the building and finding a good tenant, a Mexican restaurant that has been in the building for a decade. This tenant brings life to what was a blighted corner, and offers services that the residents can use. In addition, the new owner cleaned up the property, re-paved the parking lot, and brought pride of ownership back. While selling the property is better financially, it is also superior on a macro scale as it brings new energy back to that asset, brings back pride of ownership, and impresses the appraiser and results in a lower cap rate and higher valuation for the mobile home park as a whole.

Conclusion

The best thing you can do with ancillary assets in a mobile home park is often to subdivide them off and sell them. It’s a win/win for everyone involved: you, the buyer and the park residents.

Prior to 1976, anyone could build a mobile home. Then the Federal Government got involved and demanded that anyone that builds a mobile home needs to be inspected and monitored by HUD, with a seal of that compliance clearly marked with a seal on the back of the home. Prior to 1976, there were hundreds of mobile home builders who worked out of garages and barns and produced often only one or two units per year. That number fell by 90% when the law took effect, as no hobbyist could afford to become HUD compliant. This is a photo of a mobile home from the Mechanix Illustrated August 1959 edition. It’s built by a hobbyist named George Clark in Miami. It looks like he did a great job. Some old-timers say that the best mobile homes ever built were constructed by these hobbyists. Every mobile home that you’ll find in the MH Hall of Fame and Museum in Indiana pre-dates 1976 – so maybe they’re right.

I wrote a while back about the hottest product at the annual mobile home park show in Las Vegas: The Gama Sonic Imperial II solar lights. So we bought some to experiment with. The end effect was as impressive as we thought it would be. We put one on either end of our property sign in Bloomington, Illinois, and immediately received nothing but compliments from the residents. These lights are as classic a fixture for a mobile home park entrance as white vinyl fencing. Here’s why we like them:

• They do not require wiring, digging, trenching or electricity.  They are solar, and all the power they need comes from the sun.
• They have a built-in photocell, so you don’t need a time clock. They turn on automatically when the sun goes down and stay on until dawn.
• The solar LED lights are bright. Many solar products are dull and you barely get any illumination at all – these products shine like real electric fixtures.
• They are easy to install.
• They are big. (19" H X 10.5") Many solar products are much smaller than electric ones. These Imperial II solar lights are game changers.
• They have a range of styles to match your park.  Single, double and triple heads and also have three different pole sizes to choose from: 6.5' /8' and 10'.
• They are made of powder coated cast aluminum and sturdily built.
• They are extremely reasonably priced.

The Gama Sonic Imperial II fixtures drew a crowd at the Vegas show, and we think that they are a perfect addition to any mobile home park. We're a happy customer and we think you will be too.

For more information, please contact Matt Cohen at 678-736-8303 x 104 or email Matt at [email protected] or visit their website.

Double-wides are highly prized by many lenders, and most people who know nothing about mobile home parks think that they are the sign of a high-quality property. But the truth is that double-wides inside mobile home parks are highly overrated and the actual facts would prove that they are merely aesthetic, and not economic, benefits to any mobile home park.

Twice the cost to purchase and install

As far as importing mobile homes into vacant lots inside parks, a double wide effectively means double the cost. It costs roughly twice as much to buy them, move them, and install them. If your state requires a solid concrete pad under the home, then that’s double, too. To justify this, the double-wide would have to rent for twice as much.

Lose two lots for every one rent check

In the same vein, double-wides take up two lots in your park, and that means that they would have to pay double the lot rent to be worth as much as the value you would have from two single-wide customers. So when you add up the pieces: twice the cost on the home, twice the lot preparation and twice the land used over a single-wide would only work if the customer would pay double the home rent and double the lot rent.

Tenants refuse to pay double for them

But here’s the sad truth: tenants don’t come anywhere close to paying double anything. In most parks, the double-wide pays only one lot rent, and the tenant pays maybe 25% to 50% more for a double-wide over a single-wide – and even that’s optimistic in most parks. So, from the perspective of simple economics, the doublewide is a financial failure.

Without pride of ownership, they look just as bad as single-wides

So, you’re saying, even though they’re economic failures, surely they make that up in increasing the aesthetics of the park. Well, that can be true in some parks, but also remember that the customer who owns their own home (and that’s what all park owners are shooting for) has a huge mortgage on a doublewide and often, as a result, are too poor to afford much else. Often, as is the case in the photo at the top of this article, the pride of ownership is low because the customer is not happy at all with the concept of being a prisoner of their mortgage.

Conclusion

Many of the REITs have given the erroneous impression that doublewides are the symbol of a park’s prosperity. Don’t be fooled. Doublewides are often just the symbol of poor shopping on the part of the customer and/or park owner.

Building white vinyl fencing down the frontage of your mobile home park is one of the best ideas on earth. Nothing works better with the product, and is more long-lasting and low maintenance. But in some cases, white vinyl fencing is still not enough. If the park is along a busy thoroughfare, you may feel the need to create a green buffer between the street and your residents. And the only thing better than street/white vinyl fence/customer is street/white vinyl fence/green buffer/customer. But how do you build a green buffer when tenants will refuse to water and you don’t want to put out a lot of money in landscaping? The answer is the hardy, native perennial that requires little water. In Texas, that is the crepe myrtle. I planted over a hundred small 3’ crepe myrtles behind the white vinyl fence shown above. I did this around 1999. And, as you can see, it worked fantastically. Although I sold this park almost a decade ago, that green buffer just keeps getting bigger and thicker with age. If you are interested in following this example, the key part is to do some study on what you can plant that requires little water and lives well in your climate.

As many people know, we are the largest users of 21st Mortgage/Clayton Home’s CASH program in the U.S. We have around 1,000 homes in our parks under this initiative. So why are we such huge fans of CASH?

• It allows you to fill your vacant lots with no money out of pocket.
• You are not the home owner: the customer is the buyer and 21st is the lender.
• 21st Mortgage handles all the paperwork, so you do not have to be SAFE Act licensed.
• 21st does a terrific job of screening applicants, and has very low defaults.

We’re not alone in our excitement for this program, as the number of homes ordered under CASH has more than doubled this year from a variety of park owners, both large and small.

For more information on this program, call Candice Doolan at 800-955-0021 ext 1735 or email her at [email protected].

Show horses and show dogs are known for having “good bones”, which means great genetics that create the right structure for success in their endeavors. But even mobile home parks can have “good bones” and it’s important to acknowledge what those characteristics are.

Location

Real estate is known for valuing location, location, location – and mobile home parks are no different. The two winning locations for mobile home parks have proven to be 1) desirable suburbs with great schools, high home prices, high apartment rents and scarce supply and 2) gritty urban locations right in the middle of everything, but still surrounded by high home prices and scarce supply. Think of this as the same as the multi-family industry (our nearest competitor) that has seen the most success in garden-style desirable suburbs and downtown urban towers.

Infrastructure

It should come as no surprise that the preferred utility systems for a mobile home park are city water, city sewer and no master-metered gas or electric. In addition, the best water line construction is PVC and the same with sewer. Some parks have even better bones when it comes to water, and feature a situation in which the water company bills and collects directly from tenants, leaving the park-owned completely out of the loop. The preferred “bones” for roads and parking pads are concrete and asphalt.

Density

The dream density for a mobile home park is 7 units per acre. But that dream is a nightmare if it necessitates the park being located in the middle of nowhere. Since most parks were built in the 1950s, 60’s and 70’s, the typical density is more around 10 to 12 units per acre, and sometimes as high as 15. The key to having good bones regarding density is the ability to fit modern home sizes on the lots.

Conclusion

Great parks begin with great “bones”. These are traits that are hard or impossible to fix if they don’t already exist at a mobile home park you are looking at buying. Not all parks are created equal.

Whether you are simply in need of an insurance quote or you have the unfortunate, yet common task, of filing a claim, Mobile Insurance is ready and waiting to take your call. We’ve used Mobile Insurance for over a decade, and their superior service is known throughout the industry. Kurt, the owner of Mobile Insurance, is a top resource for any park insurance question, and they provide free quotes on parks that you are acquiring. That’s why around 2,000 park owners in the U.S. are Mobile Insurance customers.

Mobile Insurance can help you engineer the policy you need to cover all your concerns, and their prices are unbelievably low. Being able to contact them when you need them is just as important. We recommend that every park buyer call them first, as we know of no other group that has the same expertise, quality of service, and low prices. Call them at 800-458-4320 or email [email protected].

This is a photo of a small, 10-lot expansion that I successfully completed in a park in Dallas. It was a very important project, as it changed the total number of lots in that park from 90 to an even 100. Since parks with 100 or more lots are highly valued, it changed the value of the property significantly, and resulted in a huge gain upon its sale. But most expansions fail to gain the necessary approvals. So how did I pull it off on this property?

Make the existing park look great before you even think about an expansion

If you want to expand a park, you must first earn that right. The city is not going to approve expanding a park that is already a big mess. The park in question must have everything immaculate, so that the city council and city manager will drive through the park and think “wow, this is not that bad – this park is one of the nicest I’ve ever seen” and not “I don’t want them to expand this park – I want them to tear it down!” If your park is not in top form, don’t even bother taking the expansion shot. Give yourself more time to make the park the best it can be before you even think about filing for expansion.

Get the necessary votes BEFORE you go to the city council meeting

Back when I owned my billboard company – which required frequent trips before city councils – I was advised by a smart attorney that “everyone shows up at the council meeting with their vote already in mind, so you don’t sell people at the council meeting, you sell them on the idea before the meeting”. Effectively, you go behind the scenes to each council member and say “what would I have to do to get your vote for my mobile home park expansion?” What you’ll find is that politics is pretty corrupt (big surprise, right). Most of these council members will make demands that benefit them personally, and not really in the best interests of the constituents that are supposed to be serving. For example, the council member may say “I live near this park, and I don’t want to see it anymore, so if you build a screening berm, I’ll vote for it” and you add that to your plan. You never want to go before the board until you have already secured the necessary notes behind the scenes (you can request a continuance of your appearance before the board often for as long as you like).

Think small

Most people lose the ability to expand their parks by being too bold with their plan. It is much easier to sell a city council on a 10 lot expansion as opposed to a 100 lot expansion. It seems much more benign. But what if you really want 100 lots? Then go back to the well ten times over the years, at 10 lots at a time. The city will be impressed that you did what you promised on the last expansion, and are more likely to approve your successive requests.

The economics

Expanding parks has great economics, as you typically already have all the operating costs covered with your existing park, and the additional operating costs are minimal. It costs, on average, $10,000 to build a new mobile home park lot, but the value of that lot, in the right market, might be $40,000. But as great as that sounds, don’t be a big spender on your project. Try to build new lots that are in keeping with the current park, although you will typically want to build slightly larger lots that are better able to meet the new home sizes out there. You would not want to build an expansion that features a water-fall, nine-hole golf course, and gated community.

Conclusion

Adding lots to an existing park is a great strategy if there is the available land to do so. But there is an art to getting that valuable permit to proceed. Play it smart and raise your odds of obtaining approval by 500%.

It’s a common news story that Janet Yellen is planning on raising interest rates from their historic lows. Of course, she’s been saying that for years and is yet to actually do anything, always being thwarted by the weakest economic recovery in history. But just her continual discussion makes being ready for any future rate increases extremely prudent. So how do you protect your mobile home park against potentially higher interest rates in the future?

Buy at reasonable cap rates

The first strategy is to not buy parks at ridiculously low cap rates. Sure, the REITs might buy a mobile home park on the beach in California at a 4% cap rate, but that’s not what you should be doing. Your cap rate range should be roughly 7% to 12%. Remember that the key to hitting 20%+ cash-on-cash returns is to maintain roughly a 3-point spread between the cap rate and the underlying interest rate on your loan. With current loan interest rates around 4 ½% to 5 ½%, that would predicate cap rates of 7.5% to 8.5% on most deals.

Be able to raise rents to maintain spread

Remember that you need to buy parks that still have significant upside to raise rents and fill lots, so that you can keep growing that net income from the moment you buy the park. This allows you to maintain that spread in the event that interest rates rise. We raise our rents in all parks at least 5% per year, and that should give you the effective protection to whether most any interest rate increase. Some parks allow for even faster rent escalation.

Lock-on fixed rates

The best insurance against near-term interest rate increases is to thwart them with fixed interest rates on your current loan. That’s why CMBS “conduit” debt is so popular, because it comes in a 10-year fixed rate format. If given the option of two mortgages on a park – one being floating and one being fixed – we would always take the fixed rate option. Of course, the bank will always try to persuade you that variable rate loans are “better because they have a lower going-in rate” but the truth is that any benefits of that initial rate will be ruined with just the slightest rate change. Basically, most banks prefer floating rates (because that’s the safest for them) and borrowers prefer fixed rates (because that’s the safest for them).

Target long loan terms

The most dangerous moment in any loan is the moment that it has to be refinanced into a new loan. Although your home mortgage may be 30 years fully amortizing, nobody offers a 30-year mobile home park loan (except for that rare local small-town bank). In light of this, you want to choose loans that are as long as possible. Typically, that’s a 10-year term. Our rule is to refinance mobile home park loans two years ahead of expiration, which gives you a year to find a new bank and a second year to sell the park if you fail in that mission. That means that a 10-year loan is only an 8-year loan in our opinion, and a 3-year loan is not even worth messing with. You need at least 5 to 7 years in term, and 10 is best (but we’d take 30 years if you know of any banks doing those).

Use “reasonable” leverage

One of the great traps in the world of financing is not changes in interest rates, but changes in down-payment requirements. For example, back in 2006, you could borrow against a mobile home park at roughly 100% (which means zero down). And today, the going rate is about 70% loan-to-value (which is around 30% down). Assuming you bought a mobile home park for $1 million in 2006 at zero down, and now had to refinance it, you’d have to cough up $300,000 to meet the new 70% LTV requirements. To protect yourself, you should only engage in “reasonable” leverage, which means roughly 20% to 30% down payment. That way you don’t get stuck.

Conclusion

Janet Yellen and the Fed has become the poster boy of “crying wolf” – they have declared higher rates numerous times and never backed up their assertion. But, at the same time, you have to acknowledge that interest rates run in cycles and we are at the all-time U.S. historic low right now. Only a fool would assume that interest rates will not increase at some point in the future. As a result, all smart operators should do their best to mitigate this risk going forward.

The best corporate lawyer we have ever used is Dave DiMarco at Woods Oviatt Gilman, LLP. We have used him on virtually all of our conduit loans, as well as traditional bank loans. What we love about Dave DiMarco is that he knows what we are trying to accomplish (get the loan closed quickly and inexpensively) and he can quarterback the situation and push it to the goal line without us having to bug him or worry about our progress. Here’s a story that illustrates why we use Dave Dimarco.

A few years ago we bought a mobile home park and, after turning it around, went to refinance it into conduit debt. Everything looked great until the lender’s counsel found a minor problem with the title: a city street that fed into the park actually belonged to the park and not the city. On top of that there was around 16 square feet of land that the park owner had not obtained an easement for 40 years ago, and that made one side of the city’s road in jeopardy. Now, the whole situation was ridiculous, as the city itself was adamant that they owned the street. In fact, state law mandated that, under adverse possession, they had owned the street for decades. It even showed as the city’s street on the street map. However, the impossible-to-please lender would not move forward unless we could obtain a letter from a judge stating that the city owned the street – which could take months or years. So Dave DiMarco ran out and located the owner of the 16 square feet, initiated negotiations, and we bought the easement. It saved the day on that loan. No other attorney on earth would have taken that outside the box effort. We knew then that Dave Dimarco was our man.

If you need service like that, then consider using Dave DiMarco on your next transaction. You can reach him at (585) 987-2833. And, yes, he’s the brother of Anthony and Gerry DiMarco – the #1 mobile home park loan brokers in the U.S. This is a family that definitely shapes the industry.

There is probably no sight in a park that is more aesthetically disturbing than rusty roofs. They are like giant billboards of ugliness. Of course, roofs should never rust. But some mobile home park residents are so clueless that they let their metal roofs rust and deteriorate rather than keep them maintained with inexpensive sealant. What’s really sad is that this is such an inexpensive fix. You can seal a mobile home roof, in most markets, for around $250. That’s much cheaper than skirting, yet ten times more important in regards to park aesthetics. So how do you get a tenant to seal their roof and turn that rusty eyesore into a soothing white or silver expanse? Well, they won’t do it unless you become the catalyst. You will have to give them a notice of rules violation. Then, give them a deadline to correct the rusty roof and, if not, then you will do it for them and bill it back. And, when they miss the deadline, take complete photos of the rusty roof as evidence, and have a professional seal the roof for them. You can then offer to bill this back to them at reasonable monthly rates of $20 per month for a year or so. Even if you had to write the cost off, it’s still worth it as a rusted roof ruins the appeal of the park to inspectors, appraisers, bankers and future buyers. Don’t hold back – declare war on rusty roofs immediately. You’ll be glad you did!

You can’t buy a mobile home park without doing a Phase I – you could lose everything if it turns out to have environmental pollution on it. So who do you choose to do the report? We choose Mike Renz. Mike is the consummate professional and his range of knowledge is unparalleled. Here’s an example. We were buying a mobile home park and it failed the Phase I. Most people would have given up, but Renz knew that something did not seem right. It seems that a disgruntled manager had called the EPA and claimed that the owner had been operating an illegal land fill at the back of the property, yet Renz saw no evidence of this on aerial photos. So he did some quick borings and found the claim was a lie and the EPA removed it from their database. Case closed and park purchased. That’s the reason that we refer so many people to Mike Renz. Have you ever seen the “Beard of Knowledge” character on the show Pawn Stars – the guy who is a walking encyclopedia of all trivia? Well, for environmental issues, Mike Renz is that guy.

You can contact Mike Renz at (614) 538-0451.

This is a new section of the monthly newsletter that will allow park buyers to better communicate directly with each other for opportunities and information sharing. To advertise here, you must be a member of the MHU Investor’s Club which is a program available to our Mobile Home Park Boot Camp and Mobile Home Park Home Study Course customers.

Everyone has probably seen an episode of Antiques Road Show on PBS, in which a pottery jug from 1800 is valued at $50,000 or so. What makes this old jug so valuable? Scarcity. It’s probably one of only three in existence. Supply and demand is one of the most fundamental economic theorems – and perhaps the easiest to understand. The less there is of something, the more valuable it is. Not hard to grasp. So how does this relate to mobile home parks?

Finite number of parks

Mobile home parks are the only sector of real estate that is finite. Every other niche is ever-expanding, like the big bang theory. You can build office, retail, self-storage, industrial – all other sectors – with abandon. In any given city, construction cranes are everywhere. Except for mobile home parks. Cities have not allowed new mobile home parks for decades – since roughly the 1980s.

Existing parks re-developed consistently

The number of parks is actually shrinking. Every year, there are fewer parks than the year before, as they are perpetually being torn down for redevelopment into a new use. That makes the supply of mobile home parks even more scarce. That this simple fact increases the value of the remaining mobile home parks out there.

Overlaying the demand part of the equation

What has really changed about the baseline value of mobile home parks over time is the demand for the product as an investment. Back in the 1990s, mobile home parks were considered goofy and weird and few mainline investors had an interest. Over the past 20 years, however, that attitude has changed enormously. There have been no less than three $2 billion mobile home park transactions over the past 180 days: Carefree, Northstar and YES Communities. Investors have suddenly come to realize that mobile home parks have high rates of return, stable resident bases, and a unique contrarian relationship with a declining America.

Putting it all together

When you have growing demand and dwindling supply you have higher prices. This is true of all assets, from Ferrari’s to Cartier necklaces. This is one of the key reasons that mobile home parks have risen in value over time is simply the law of supply and demand. It’s textbook simple and beyond reproach.

Conclusion

Mobile home parks have become a valuable commodity due to their scarcity. And unlike an 1800 jug, they pay out a monthly dividend. Will a park ever appear on Antiques Road Show? Not unless someone has a really big two-wheeler.

We do a lot of conduit loans -- and regular bank loans -- every year. A common feature of those loans is Security Mortgage Group. If you are buying or financing a mobile home park, let Security Mortgage Group get you the loan. They build the loan package, they pitch the banks, and they bring you the best options. It saves a ton of time and energy, and the rates and terms they find are always better than what you can obtain on your own – they effectively more than pay for themselves. If you have any loans you need help on, you can reach Anthony or Gerry at (585) 423-0230. Tell them Frank & Dave sent you.