By popular request of our friends from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and surrounding areas, we are taking the Boot Camp on the road to Dallas on April 30th to May 2nd.
If you have been waiting until the Boot Camp got closer to home to save on travel cost, here’s your opportunity. Read more »
Tags: mobile home investment, mobile home park and US Recession, mobile home park business, mobile home park investing, Mobile Home Park Loans, mobile home park opportunity, mobile home parks marketing, mobile home parks rules
mobile home advertising, mobile home park, mobile home park business operations, mobile home park investing, mobile home park news, mobile home park ratings, mobile home park selling | Dave Reynolds | 
February 11, 2010 5:44 pm | 
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By Frank Rolfe
When I got in the mobile home park business, many of the sellers I bought from called the mobile homes “coaches” and “trailers”. Roger Miller even wrote a hit song with the lyrics “trailers for sale or rent”. But manufacturers and dealers thought the business needed an upgrade, so they changed the name to “mobile home”. Of course, the name was misleading, because mobile homes are far from mobile. Some can’t survive any movement at all, and moving one can cost $3,000 or more. And I guess they stuck the word “home” on there to make it sound reassuing or folksy (as opposed to saying “mobile unit”), or to give you greater direction on what you were supposed to do with the thing. But I embraced the new moniker, and so did everybody else. Read more »
Nothing is more disconcerting than approaching a nice manufactured home 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?
All manufactured home communities need a respectable name. If your property does not currently have one, please consider an immediate renaming. You are embarrassing the rest of us. Read more »
Written by Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds, MobileHomeParkStore.com, LLC
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;
First of all, you need to locate the folks in your area Read more »
By: Dave Reynolds, MobileHomeParkStore.com
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).
Let’s face it, if you or your manager is rude when they call in, they probably will call the next park. If they drive in and the roads are in bad shape, the sign is falling down, Read more »
By Frank Rolfe
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.
Enough of the history lesson, you’re saying. How do you rent mobile home park lots in this market? Well, it’s a lot harder. But if you follow these steps, you’ll find it can be done.
Don’t Ignore the Dealers Read more »
Written by Frank Rolfe and Dave Reynolds, MobileHomeParkStore.com, LLC
I can remember when a good, well-located 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.
So how do you fill vacant lots in your community? Well, a lot differently than you did in the past – and it takes a whole lot more effort. But you’ll find that once you put your program together, it will turn your life and spirits around to see new homes coming in to those old, dusty lots. Read more »
When you buy a mobile home park, and if you currently own a mobile home park, it’s a pretty safe bet that you need to change the name. Because most mobile home parks have terrible names that, sadly, could be used as a marketing tool if only they were different. Just like Johnny Cash’s “A Boy Named Sue”, many mobile home parks have names which are extremely inappropriate and downright embarrassing for their residents to live under. And a wonderful marketing opportunity is missed every day that they are not changed.
The Problem
Most mobile home parks were built in the 1970s or earlier, at a time when mobile home park residents dreamed of having their own private jukebox and pink flamingos in the yard. Read more »
Mobilehomeparkstore.com, America’s most popular website devoted to the mobile home park industry, is hosting a conference on February 20 – 22 in Anaheim, California entitled “Successful Mobile Home Park Strategies for the U.S. Recession”. This three-day event also features one day devoted to self-storage investing, which has many of the same low management/high return features as mobile home park investing.
“We get 10,000 hits per day at the site, and one of the number one questions is what the current U.S. recession will do to the industry,” says Dave Reynolds, owner of Mobilehomeparkstore.com. “So we decided to hold a special event to address this issue Read more »
Most mobile home parks I have bought come with a standard sign design – a 4′ x8′ sheet of plywood with a faded poorly written name on it and no phone number. This must be a popular design because I see it everywhere. There is also the design of metal or wood letters on a brick or masonry wall with some of the letters missing. My favorite was on where some kid had yanked off the letters and then spray painted some replacements so that the sign said proudly “F___ Y__ Estates”. What was equally funny what that the owner cared so little about the sign that he did nothing about it — I drove by several years later it was still that way. Read more »
