Frank and Dave have bought and sold over $100 million in mobile home parks – among the top in the U.S. – and this course is based on 100% pure information and no sales pitch. “We designed this Boot Camp to give every person that attends all the tools they need to buy and operate a park properly”, said Dave Reynolds. “They walk away with a ton of networking contacts and a bunch of additional perks – worth many times the cost of the course”.

For more information, go to www.Mobilehomeparkstore.com or call (800) 950-1364.

Most of the residents at Meadows already own their homes and they will not see a change.  Currently, there are no home owner fees in the park.  However, Frank and Dave, plan to offer a park lawn service to those owners that do not wish to mow their own lawns.

Mobile Home Park Store is a flourishing financial enterprise.  The company owns 29 mobile home parks at this time.

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

This article appeared in the La Junta, Colorado newspaper this week. While it is filled with technical inaccuracies, it does demonstrate the power of getting the town behind you when you buy a park. Whenever we buy a park, we tell the inspectors, chamber – everybody – about our plans to improve it and our goal of providing the best affordable housing in town. Then we stick with what we tell them. The result is a ton of free, positive publicity. Everyone should use this technique. It doesn’t cost anything, and it puts all the important people – inspectors, utility companies, etc. – on your team. Frank was runner-up for “business of the year” in White Oak, Texas using this free strategy.

The town has opted to place sewer lines along a 9 mile stretch of town.  Right now, it only affects businesses, but that may change.  As of Tuesday, the businesses had to pay $3,500 to tap into the service.

Robert Burnsed, manager of Ravenel Mobile Home Park, has 89 mobile homes with septic tanks.  He says, “We’ve been told we have to tie in.  The tap fee for each trailer is $3,000 and then you have $250 just for the tap, piece of pipe goes in the ground, we’re responsible for putting all the lines along the road that belong to us.  It will cost us around $300,000.  By the time we’re finished, you’re probably looking at $600,000.”  But the manager of the park, Dr. Steve Miller, thinks that with the additional fees, the cost will actually reach $1 million.

Burnsed says that the park cannot afford the fees, but if they don’t pay, then their park may have to close.  “We don’t really know.  The cost is tremendous.  He doesn’t know what he’s going to do yet, some people out here are talking about closing down their parks, because they can’t afford it.  I think they picked a bad time with the economy like it is, could have been done at a better time.  Why they picked it, we don’t have any problems with our septic tanks, I don’t know why they would want to do this right now.”

All mobile home parks were told that they have to connect at least ten mobile homes a year, until they are all connected.

Jim Glennon, an independent consultant, is overseeing the sewer project in Ravenel.  Glennon says, “The only ones that have to tap in right now are the commercial (businesses), only those commercial right now along US 17.  We’re not putting sewer at this point in time back in to town in the residential areas.”  He says that they are attempting to work with business owners through the process.  He says, “We have tried, the council has met with two or three mobile home operators out there, I know that they’re not happy. It is going to be expensive for them, because in addition to the tap fees, some of them, maybe not all, will have to install sewer in their system, but it’s no different than a subdivision.” Glennon says mobile home park operators will have to pay 75-percent of the tap-in cost for each mobile home, which will be close to $3,000 per mobile home.  If they do not comply, legal action will be taken.

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

Oh what a happy world it is when you buy a park on city water and sewer – you never have to worry about these type of issues. One of the scariest parts of private utilities is the fact that you can get these giant capital calls out of nowhere, and then have no time to respond. How in the world are most people going to be able to come up with $300,000 or $600,000? Lying around in your checking account? Unlikely. Are you going to be able to just drop by a bank and borrow it within a week? Not a chance. If you don’t want to get in situations like this, then stick with city water and city sewer (and avoid master-metered gas and electric, as well). And if you feel compelled to buy a park with private utilities, make sure to have enough in reserves to handle these types of problems. One interesting note on this article, is that this “tap fee” is not universal. We’ve connected parks that were on well water to city water and not paid one cent in “tap fees”. During your due diligence, make sure to inquire as to what the tap fees are to connect to city water, if the park is on well water. Knowing the cost to physically convert over is one thing, the tap fees are another.

Douglas Danny, who represent the seller, said, “Poway Royal Estates is one of the premier manufactured home communities in southern California.  We received 11 offers for the property in 28 days.  Throughout the transaction, the city of Poway provided excellent leadership and support.”

The park was built in 1972 and taken over by the city in 1992, in an effort to bring improvement and stabilize rent.

The buyer signed an agreement with the city, stating that they will keep the rent in the park the same for at least the next two years and keep the property a mobile home park permanently.  The buyers plan to make at least $2 million in profits on this deal.

The park is in the middle of commercial office space, retail centers, empty space, and residential developments.

Hometown American obtained a new first loan for 50% of the purchase price and the city provided them with 26% of the financing.  The down payment on the park was 24% of the purchase price.  Hometown America states that they plan to spend $1 million on renovating the common area in the park, landscaping, and utilities.

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

Wow, this article makes you look twice to see if the sales price is not off by a decimal. We won’t preach about the concept of portfolio balance, or the concept of mitigating risk, but let’s just look at some basic economic concepts here. The price Hometown paid is $96,000 per space. That’s a gigantic number and represents about 10 times what most buyers are looking to pay on a mobile home park. The lot rent appears to be about $800 per month based on what’s shown on-line. So, assuming a 30% expense ratio, the price paid represents about a 7% cap rate. Our mothers always said “if you can’t say something nice then say nothing at all”. So all we can say is “good job, City of Poway!”

On Tuesday, tribal officials unveiled a high-tech plant where homes are being built for the local reservation.  The facility they are using, owned by the tribe’s Ojinjintka Housing Development Corporation, has enough space to build 48 homes for low-income families and employs several tribal members.

Sioux tribal president, Rodney Bordeaux, said, “It’s us doing our own self-determination and showing we can do it.”

The plant hopes to employ 18 tribal members by September of this year, but could employ as many as 26 with wages averaging $17 an hour.  Officials say that they hope to eventually compete for contracts off of the reservation as well.

The tribe was granted $1.1 million from the US Bureau of Indian Affairs Housing Involvement Program, which they are using to build seven homes.  They were also granted a $1 million contract with the Federal Native American and Self-Determination Act, which is being used to build another five homes.

The tribe’s housing initiative is one of the fifteen different projects currently underway on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.  They were all started because of the federal stimulus package.

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Article:

While there does not appear to be a lot details in this article about exactly what they are building, it’s only a matter of time before more groups realize that they can open their own mobile home park plants. Remember that, prior to HUD, there were literally hundreds of mobile home builders in the U.S. – some only producing one or two a year out of their garage.  Should FEMA follow their example? What about the Army? Clearly, if you’re a major buyer of new mobile homes, it’s worth a few minutes to calculate becoming your own in-house factory.

Once worth several million dollars, Anderson has made a drastic change in her living arrangements.  She went from a Malibu Mansion to a one-bedroom trailer located in a run-down trailer park.

The debt-ridden actress is raising her two children, Brandon and Dylan, in the park while struggling to make ends meet, claiming she wouldn’t change her life with anyone else’s.

“The boys and me love the trailer park, it’s a special community, we’re happy here,” Anderson has said.  “It’s the most beautiful place, it’s where I take my motorcycle, my surfboard.”

She later added, “There are firemen with their children, surfers, all sorts.  The children are so happy.  I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone.”

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

When we first saw this story, our initial impression was that it was a joke. With a bit of research, though, it appears to be true.

Living in a mobile home gives many people a feeling of divine freedom, as they are not tied to any standard conventions on housing and lifestyle. Pam Anderson has always been a “free spirit”, so it looks like she matches up to the product perfectly.

What’s crazy is why the Manufactured Home Institute has not jumped all over this story to promote the mobile home product. Can you even hope for a better testimonial or spokesperson? Hopefully, somebody can shoot a few pictures of her in front of her singlewide before she moves back into a beach house in Malibu, and promote those aggressively via the National Enquirer, etc. That would really give the industry a shot in the arm.

Only three tenants live in the mobile home park year round – the others live there only in the winter, and live out of state.

“It’s probably a foot deep inside my trailer. I didn’t open the door because we got sandbags in front of it” said Martinez. At least one resident has moved their mobile home to a competing park that does not have flooding issues.

 
Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

Before you ever buy a park with floodplain issues, you’ve got to have a handle on what your worst case scenario is and how you would deal with it. Having waist high water is more than a small problem. Destroying people’s trailers while they are out of town is not good for tenant retention. Flood plain is a scientific concept – it’s not subjective. Figure out what the worst case scenario is on any property with flood plain, and see if you can handle it. If you can, fine. If you can’t, don’t take the gamble.

We cap the enrollment at just 20 people, and only have a couple tickets left.

This is the last time that we will be holding the event in Dallas in 2010, so if you are convenient to the D/FW Metroplex, this is the event you want to hit to save on travel expense!

For more information call (800) 950-1364 or go to www.Mobilehomeparkstore.com.

The power to the park was lost when Duke Energy’s lines that serviced the park burned out. To run new lines, the company has to obtain a boring machine that can dig under roads. Duke thinks it will take about a week to get the power turned back on.

Robert Love is a longtime resident of the park, but is having great difficulty coping with the loss of the power. “I’m on oxygen, but I’ve got no electricity. I’ve had to rely on two small oxygen machines, but they’re running low, and I’ve got to find somewhere I can get electricity for them. I’ve already lost over $500 of food in my freezer”

Residents are trying to cope by staying outside their homes, or visiting neighbors who have generators to cool off for a while.
Frank & Dave’s Opinion Of This Story:

This article is a great example of the hypocrisy of the media concerning mobile home park owners. If this was a master-metered power system, owned by the park, the paper would be all over the owner and how terrible they were to let this happen. In this case, Duke Energy receives not one criticism.

The other lesson to be learned here is the risk you run when you own a park that is master-metered for electricity. Imagine if the power being out was your fault. You’d have every tenant in the park threatening you. Do you really think the tenant lost $500 of food  in their refrigerator? What does he have in there, lobster and caviar? But that’s the kind of threats you’d have, too. So before you buy a park with a master-metered electrical system, make sure that you can mentally handle situations such as this.

The levee will cost around $4 million to build. If everything goes as planned, the levee could be in position by the end of 2011.

 
Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

Who would have ever believed a story like this? Ten years ago, most cities would have cheered to think that flooding would force a mobile home park out of business – now they’re willing to spend $4 million to keep them open. What the heck happened? Most cities have realized that mobile home parks deliver excellent affordable housing, and are much more desirable than lower-income apartments.