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Dave Reynolds Articles

Guest post by: Dave Reynolds

Steps to Prepare Your Mobile Home Park for a Recession - Click To Read Article
You probably already realize that we are heading into economic troubl. Well, if you're a mobile home park owner or investor, then it is worth your while to make preparations to survive and prosper during this cycle. It's important to remember that it takes time to make adjustments in your business plan, so you should start making these changes immediately.

Mobile Home Parks - How to Spot and Identify Crime - Click To Read Article
Unless you have spent time in law enforcement, there are certain signs of crime that you would never notice as a result of your sheltered existence. However, there are important crime signals that every mobile home park owner should know, but that nobody will tell you due to political correctness.

How to Properly Evaluate Mobile Home Park Investments - Click To Read Article
So how do I determine what a specific mobile home park is worth? In this article I will discuss the methods I use in evaluating a mobile home park once I have found one that looks like a winner.

Fixing Mobile Home Park Vacancy Problems - Click To Read Article
Most mobile home park owners today have vacancy problem, thanks to chattel mortgage crisis that began in 2000. It is not uncommon for a park that was full in 2000 to now be at 60% occupancy due to repossession of homes. If you have been waiting for the mobile home dealers to fill you back up, you are probably depressed and making no progress. So here are some ideas to get you back in action at increasing occupancy.

Mobile Home Parks - Lessons from the Olympics - Click To Read Article
The 2008 Olympics in Beijing offers an important lesson to the mobile home park industry. Here you have an event where athletes have taken a certain specialty, a certain strength, and turned it into an extremely advanced skill. Some of these people you and I could beat in at least a dozen parlor games, but in their specialty, they are the tops in the world. So that begs the question: What is the specialty that the mobile home park industry has to offer? What can it alone focus on and excel at?

Finding and Evaluating Mobile Home Park Investments - Click To Read Article
Of all the questions I receive from investors that are looking to purchase a mobile home park there are two questions that are asked most often: 1) How do I find a mobile home park deal that makes sense? 2) How do I place a value on that mobile home park? These are important questions and there are several ways to find mobile home park investments and even more ways that one can approach evaluation of that investment.

The Only People Getting Rich Renting Mobile Home Parks Are Tenants and Maintenance Men - Click To Read Article
There are a lot of books out there extolling the financial benefits of buying mobile homes for purposes of renting them out. DON'T BE SUCKERED INTO THIS WITHOUT GETTING THE FULL STORY. These books generally leave out three important problems that turn any proposed economics into bankruptcy.

Mobile Home Park Collection Tips - Click To Read Article
One of the most difficult and time consuming tasks of a mobile home park manager is in the collection of rents. It has been my experience that about 50 percent of your residents will never have a problem paying on time. Then about 25 percent may be late on occasion and are also not a major problem. It is the other 25 percent that will take most of your time and efforts.

The Effect of Litigation on the Mobile Home Park Business - Click To Read Article
One of the biggest news stories emerging from the embattled mobile home manufacturing and sales side of the industry is the current and proposed litigation concerning formaldehyde contamination in mobile homes. As you may or may not be aware, formaldehyde is used in the creation of the products that are used to build a mobile home, such as wood products, I believe. Recently, there have been some studies that may suggest the level of formaldehyde in some homes may exceed the safe level. But my question is what the worst-case scenario might be from litigation regarding formaldehyde, as it affects mobile home park ownership and operations.

Why Buy a Mobile Home Park as Compared to Apartments and Other Types of Commercial and Investment Real Estate? - Click To Read Article
This article is an excerpt from the eBook, "Mobile Home Park Investing". This article highlights the advantages of investing in a mobile home park compared to other commercial real estate investment opportunities such as apartments.

How to Make Money in the Mobile Home Park Business - Click To Read Article
Although it has taken us literally thousands of pages to describe how to do due diligence and operate mobile home parks effectively, the general theory on how to make money with mobile home park investments could fit on the back of an envelope. These are the few, simple steps to making money in mobile home parks.

Mobile Home Park Selling Tips - Click To Read Article
One question we frequently get from individuals and companies that are listing their mobile home park for sale on our site is "How much information should I include in my listing to be posted"? We have always taken the stance that you can place as little or as much information on the site and will continue to do so.

Buy Mobile Home Parks - What Will You Tell Your Grandchildren if You Miss This Opportunity? - Click To Read Article
There has not been a better time to buy that mobile home park in the last decade. Due to problems in the commercial real estate lending market, prices for parks have plummeted over the last six months. Desperate sellers are dumping their parks at prices far less than construction cost. Just look at the prices on the site. Notice how many sellers have written on their price "must sell", "desperate", and "all reasonable offers accepted". And they are also advertising "seller financing available". It is, without question, a buyers market.

Why Lonnie Scruggs' Mobile Home Park Deals Don't Work for Me - Click To Read Article
There are people out there who think they can make big money buying and selling used mobile homes. I am not one of them. And after owning about 200 homes, I think I'm pretty qualified to point out the problems with the business plan. The first major flaw in the strategy of making money buying and selling mobile homes is that you have to sell the home for more than what you have invested in it. And what you have invested in it is more than just what you paid for it.

Mobile Home Parks - How to Properly Enforce the Rules - Click To Read Article
Many mobile home park owners feel that it is their duty as the owner to rule with an iron hand. They think that they can cure all of the park's ills with rule after rule. At with many parks, the rules section is longer than the lease itself. But is the park any better off with "rules phobia"? I have tested operating parks with extreme rules enforcement, and also with virtually no rules enforcement at all. And I think I have found the solution to successful park rules.

How to Deal with Difficult Mobile Home Tenants - Click To Read Article
There is no shortage of difficult to handle tenants inside of a mobile home park. In fact, the challenge is to find nice, rational ones. Until that changes, it is important to know how to diffuse the difficult tenant to minimize stress and disruption to your business. Over time, using the following strategies, you can often "wear out" these tenants and, although they seldom become happy, they will at least leave you alone and put their focus on bothering other people.

How to Market Your Mobile Home Park - Click To Read Article
When I am looking to market my mobile home park whether it be to potential residents to bring their homes in or to sell homes in the park, I believe that the first contact with the potential customer is key. This first contact may be via a telephone call to your office, a drive-by by the potential resident, or in many cases could be a referral from a current resident or some other local business (chamber of commerce, dealer, broker, etc).

Why Good Looking Mobile Home Parks Have Ugly Returns - Click To Read Article
Some mobile home park buyers have this erroneous idea that the goal is to buy a great looking asset. They even rate the parks they look at based on physical appearance. The star system is a good example. Most people think a five-star park is always superior to a one star park. However, the only real star system they should consider is which park is a superstar on cash flow. Because at the end of the day, all that really matters when you own a mobile home park is making money. Parks that make money are great, no matter how ugly they are, and parks that lose money are dogs, despite how cute their entry may be. And, as a general rule, the prettier the park, the uglier the cash flow.

Mobile Home Parks - Why Landscaping is the Best Investment You'll Make - Click To Read Article
Some people invest in Google. Some buy shares of Berkshire Hathaway. Other invest in Apple. But sheer investment geniuses invest in bushes. And trees. Because if you own a mobile home park community, these are, dollar for dollar, the best investments you will ever make. How good are the returns? I would estimate that one well placed $20 bush might add $1,000 of value to a mobile home park community. That's a 500% return on investment. And that's a lot better than any of the aforementioned stocks have produced lately. In fact, compared to the current stock market, if the bush was worth $10, it would still be better than the market has produced. And, unlike the market, at least the bush creates oxygen and has other productive uses.

Mobile Home Parks: The Perfect Storm is Building for the Best Deals in Decades - Click To Read Article
Mobile home park sales have been in a continual decline since 2000. From a peak of almost 400,000 units sold per year then, sales are down to under 100,000 today. And most of those sales are units that do not end up in parks. The good news is that, unlike the single family home industry, bad new home sales have been in every park owner's and bank's budgets for almost a decade. There is no collapse to worry about -- it's already been dead for a decade. And no sellers are trying to use numbers based on good sales that are not really there anymore, nor do you have to guess when the rebound will occur.

Mobile Home Parks - Why Owners Should Care about the Name - Click To Read Article
Nothing is more disconcerting than approaching a nice mobile home park community and seeing that the name on the sign is "Roll-a-coach" or "Mobile Heaven". If it is not bad enough that the industry is constantly battling the stigma of being lesser quality housing, let's just beat our customers over the head with their shame by giving their community a name that screams "substandard humans found here". Why can't we name communities with the same care as our brothers the apartment owners? What's the deal?

How to Evaluate a Mobile Home Park - Click To Read Article
Of all the barometers of park performance, from a profit and loss statement to the annual license renewal, one of the crudest and simplest is the fine art of analyzing grass. Because you can tell a lot about a mobile home park just from looking at the grass. The simplest first question is: "is there any grass?" If not, you may be in a desert, or under water. But if there is grass present, then here are some of the things to look for.

How to Rent a Mobile Home Park in a Tough Economy - Click To Read Article
You can't be a mobile home park owner and not realize that the good old days are over in filling up vacant mobile home park lots. Those of us who owned parks in the late 1990s became spoiled with how easy it was to fill up a mobile home park. Back then, all you had to do was to meet with a few dealers, drop off some flyers, and you would start bringing in a home a week.

How to Really Fill Your Mobile Home Park Lot - Click To Read Article
I can remember when a good, well-located mobile home park community could fill seven or eight lots per month with nothing more than some flyers at a manufactured home dealership. To even say such things today dates you as someone from the dinosaur age. And unless you've been in a cave, you know that you are lucky to fill one lot per year in that manner today.

Don't Hold Your Mobile Home Park Residents to a Unreasonable Standards - Click To Read Article
Most every mobile home park owner in the U.S. has a list of rules attached to their lease which is longer than the lease itself. While it's always a good idea to cover your bases and address every possible behavior concern, it's another to expect people to follow more rules than the local prison. More importantly, what's in it for the park owner?

Mobile Home Park Owners - Why You Should Pay Close Attention to the Utilities - Click To Read Article
When you first buy a mobile home park, you should pay close attention to the utilities. Why? What if it breaks down? If so, can you afford to fix it? Will your tenants get mad and leave if the water goes out for a couple days? One of the key things to remember is that each mobile home park's utilities has its own personality. Just like people, all utility systems have their own strengths and weaknesses. The key to living with your utility system is to recognize it's unique "personality" and to accept it for what it is.

How to Really Make Money with Mobile Home Parks - Click To Read Article
Anyone can buy a mobile home park. And many do. But if your goal is to truly make money with it, then there are some simple rules that you must consider before taking the plunge into this niche. If you follow these guidelines, your chance for success is much greater, and your chance for failure is drastically reduced.

Mobile Home Parks: How To Dispose of Ancillary Assets - Click To Read Article
Mobile home parks sometimes come with the strangest assets. I have wound up as the owner of everything ranging from used car lots to commercial laundries, and from apartments to single-family homes. How does this happen? Since most mobile home parks are fairly old, the original owner sometimes had additional businesses for rental properties that he owned in his heyday. And when you buy the park, you get the whole works.

Mobile Home Parks - How to take Advantage of the Greatest Buying Opportunity in Decades - Click To Read Article
Warren Buffet once said of Berkshire Hathaway, "We only get greedy when others get fearful." That statement has never been more accurate in describing the opportunities in the mobile home park business. We are approaching a time in the industry when the owners of mobile homes for sale are fearful, and their fear is amplified by a struggling, nearly dead mobile home retail industry and a sudden reversal of fortune in lending. It appears to be the perfect storm for many owners. And that cyclical train wreck is going to lead to some really great buys if mobile home park buyers are properly prepared to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime buying opportunity.

How to Finance a Mobile Home Park: You Can Still Get Zero Down Financing - Click To Read Article
With single-family homes, a legitimate zero down deal is about as likely as snow and sleet in San Diego. However, with mobile home parks, they are as common as rain. Of the 25 mobile home parks I've bought, about five of them or 20% -- were zero down.

How to Retire on Just One Mobile Home Park - Click To Read Article
Most mobile home park owners tend to amass a portfolio of several parks, simply because, after acquiring the skill sets, it seems wasteful not to buy "just one more". But, in reality, they only need to buy one mobile home park to be set for life. How can this be? There are several reasons.

How to Buy a Mobile Home Park and Turn It Around - Click To Read Article
When you buy a mobile home park that needs to be turned around (and most parks need some type of turnaround), the first thing you need to do is disengage the prior ownership/management. Face it, if the park is not running like it should be, you will most likely want to start over with a new management team. Even though the prior owner is usually to blame for the poor operations of the park, it is difficult to keep the prior managers that have been trained poorly or incorrectly. So, in most cases, fire everyone and start over. There are always exceptions to the rule, but they are few and far between. I have found that it is easier to train a new manager than to retrain the existing one.

How Mobile Home Parks Make More Money Than Single-Family Home Investing - Click To Read Article
Just about anybody who watches late night TV, or receives email, or reads, knows that there are hundreds of people promoting concepts to make money in single family homes. "Buy foreclosures", "profit from short sales", "wholesale houses", there are at least 1,000 different concepts. Unfortunately, the only people who actually make money in many of these ideas are the promoters. There are so many people chasing after single-family homes to invest in that the market is beyond saturated, and any profitability has been extinguished. This is not the case with mobile home park investing.

Mobile Home Park Investments - How To Make 10% To 20% On Your Money - Click To Read Article
When you hear the words "mobile home park", what do you immediately think? Hillbillies with rebel flags in their windows? The show COPS? Sure, that's the stereotype, but the truth is that a huge number of Americans- about 20 million of them- live in mobile home parks. And the demographic make-up of this group is not much different from normal residential subdivisions and apartment complexes.

Mobile Home Tenants - Fixing Mobile Home Park Vacancy Problems - Click To Read Article
Most mobile home park owners today have vacancy problem , thanks to chattel mortgage crisis that began in 2000. It is not uncommon for a park that was full in 2000 to now be at 60% occupancy due to repossession of homes. If you have been waiting for the mobile home dealers to find mobile home tenants, you are probably depressed and making no progress. So here are some ideas to get you back in action at increasing occupancy.

Referred by: http://www.mrlaundromat.com/



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