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!”

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.

New Sale / Finance Model For Parks and Communities
A very smart, experienced, knowledgeable community owner wonders if, because of the lack of financing, the new way to sell a park/community is for the owner to finance/manage/oversee the sale.  Here’s what his situation is:  For a couple of years he tried to sell his park.  The market was falling and lending was constricting.  After a few deals fell through, he was approached by a buyer and the deal they struck was that the owner/seller would still collect the rent and pay the bills, but the buyer/manager would bring in homes, refurbish homes, market, sell and manage the park.  They have a formula for pricing and executing the closing.  In the meantime, the buyer/manager must meet certain benchmarks for keeping the occupancy stable and ideally increasing it.  It is like a contract sale except that it gives the owner/seller a degree of oversight and safety.  The owner/seller has the right to cancel the agreement if the benchmarks aren’t met, i.e., the occupancy decreases.  Is this the new model for selling a park or community?
Living Smaller
Residential real estate agents report that homebuyers today want a smaller home.  Maybe this is an opportunity for community owners.  Realtors say that baby boomers entering retirement, young adults delaying marriage, and the economy still not doing well, results in homebuyers embracing the idea that less is more.  People are questioning how much “stuff” they really need and paring down and de-cluttering homes.  Less stuff also makes a home feel more spacious.  Perusing the covers of shelter magazines indicates that consumers want to de-clutter, de-junk and re-think what they really need.  For community/park owners that belong to the local real estate board and network with  residential agents, there may be some opportunities—especially for a current homeowner wishing to downsize.  They will have cash from the sale of their home.
Abandoned Homes Solution
A community owner finds that by giving away an abandoned home (after the community owner goes through the legal process to obtain title to the home), they are able to get these homes back on the rent roll.  They require the new homeowner to skirt, side, paint, landscape or whatever tasks are needed to bring the home into compliance with community guidelines.  Once the home is in compliance on the exterior, the new homeowner gets the title.  This  community owner says often the prospective homeowner is a current resident that has doubled up with another resident and just wants their own place.
Best Bets 2010
From the Urban Land Institute Emerging Real Estate Trends for 2010
“Buy or hold multifamily.  It’s the only place with a hint of hope because of demographic     demand.  Scarce new construction (developers can’t get financing to build) sets the stage for a strong rebound in any economic turnaround. There could be a shortage of apartments by 2012″.
Could help the demand for homes in communities?
For Rent
A regional manager says that rental homes have added a huge amount of time to the workload of the onsite manager.  The rental homes are a harder business (if the owner is interested in doing it right).  Advertising (Craiglist, newspaper, website) brings in say 50 calls for one home.  Of those, the manager may show the home 20-30 times, take 10 applications and approve one.  That’s a lot of time to rent one home.  On the one hand there is a market, but going through the screening process, really whittles down the list.
HouseLogic.com
A website sponsored by the National Association of Realtors gives homeowners information on owning, maintaining and repairing a home.  Quite a bit of the information will be useful to Manufactured Home homeowners, for example, looking for signs of energy leaks, how to make an insurance claim, and even how to use green household standbys for cleaning.  Any government programs for tax credits (i.e., energy) are described.  It’s a resource for your residents.
Decent Momentum In New Homes For Communities
An account executive for Clayton Homes is having “decent momentum” on sales of single section homes in Western states.  The community is focused on the $26,000—$30,000 price point plus set up.  What’s interesting is that community owners are putting more money into sets for landscaping, more poured concrete for parking, patios, and sidewalks, and more elaborate decks.
Teach Resident/Homeowner
A Midwestern community owner strives to teach his residents the concept of saving money and paying down more on their home mortgages and contracts.  Homeowners haven’t been taught about compounding and discounting.  They don’t realize that by paying an extra $50 per month on a $15,000 loan at 9% they will shorten a 10 year term by 3 years.  This benefits the community owner, too because the more equity the homeowner has the less likely he is to abandon the home.  Anything the manufactured home business can do to dispel the notion that our homes don’t appreciate in value, helps everyone in the MH business.
Insurance On Manufactured Home Rentals
A community owner with a considerable number of rental homes says that he can’t afford to insure the homes and that many other community owners don’t either.  Is this the next black eye for the MH biz waiting to happen?  Headline:  “Fire Destroys Mobile Home—Landlord Has No Insurance”.

Joanne M. Stevens, CCIM
Park and Community Specialist
NAI Iowa Realty Commercial
Brokering mobile home parks & manufactured home communities throughout the U.S

Although the loan has been sent to a special servicer, it is not currently in default.”The company made to request to implement certain amendments to the loan” said Jennifer Ludovice, an ARC spokesperson. “Due to the structural impediments inherent in CMBS debt, it was necessary for the loan to be transferred to special servicing to facilitate this process even though the loan is not in default.”

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

Virtually everyone in the industry has been following the ARC story for over a decade. ARC came on the scene over a decade ago and rapidly bought their way up to 55,000 lots – often seemingly with abandon. Farallon took a huge risk taking over ARC, and this is the news story that will probably garner the most attention in the industry for the next several months.

This is the event in which Frank & Dave, who have owned and operated over $100 million in mobile home parks over the past decade, show you the shortcuts, tricks and insider secrets that you need to know, in a real-world setting -out in the field inside real mobile home parks. It is a complete three-day immersion in the mobile home park business, from how to find parks to buy to evaluating them, negotiating them, doing diligence on them, financing them, closing on them, and operating them.

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

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

If you don’t go to our Boot Camp before buying your first park -you’re crazy. We make up the cost of the Boot Camp within the first few minutes of negotiating your contract, or the first month of operations of the park. The biggest names in commercial real estate come to this Boot Camp before jumping off into the park business.

What makes this event so exciting is that almost half of it is held in the field – in actual mobile home parks. You will walk around everything from no-star to 5-star parks and learn how they work and learn the difference between a good deal and a bad deal.

“We really like doing this event in Dallas, as Frank and I have owned so many mobile home parks over the years here and really know this market well” said Dave Reynolds. Some of the parks that will be toured are ones they have formerly owned, as well as ones that they currently own.

For more information go to www.mobilehomeparkstore.com, or call (800) 950-1364.
Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

If you buy a mobile home park without attending this Boot Camp, you have made a serious mistake. This event will pay for itself many, many times over. We have actually had people who took the Boot Camp and turned around and dropped the deal they had under contract before they showed up, in order to pursue better deals that we showed them how to find. Others have found great deals immediately following the boot camp, using the principals we taught them.

Residents contend that the owner is doing this to end rent control at the park. Once subdivided, the owner will have the ability to set the price of the lots at whatever he feels appropriate. Residents have also hired an attorney to battle the move. They cite case law that suggests that such a conversion cannot be carried out without the approval of residents.

The residents of Surf and Sand had offered to buy the park for $6.75 million, which the owner has so far refused.

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

This is the kind of stuff that only happens in coastal California and Florida. Anywhere else in America, you offer $100,000 per lot for a park and it’s sold. Many of these tenants are paying low lot rents for their spaces, which cannot go up until their death under rent control statutes. The $6.75 million offer is very generous based on the actual net income, from what we’ve read in other articles on this situation. If it was us, we’d take the $6.75 million and go. The owner has postured himself into a win or lose scenario now – if he loses the subdivision case, then the tenants have no interest in buying the park at all, and certainly not for $6.75 million. Since the current owner received the park through inheritance, it reminds us of the old saying “pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered”.

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 30^th to May 2^nd.

If you have been waiting until the Boot Camp got closer to home to save on travel cost, here’s your opportunity.

We’ve also made the Boot Camp more affordable than ever. We’ve changed some things around, and got the price down to $1997 for one person. And you can put that on a 0% payment plan spread over five months.

The Boot Camp is the best learning experience we have at the site, and attendees have the highest historical track-record of successfully buying mobile home parks.

My friend introduced me to the idea of Mobile Home Parks about 13 months ago. I read every book on the subject and every internet site I could find. Nothing compares to the information I got from Dave and Franks courses. I read every book they have and listened to every audio program. I attended the bootcamp in July 09. Now just 8 months after I attended Dave and Franks bootcamp I closed on my first park. Using the information I received I bought a fantastic park with great cash flow and tremendous upside.  

The day AFTER we closed a tenant had a sewer issue. I got a few bids to get it fixed. From $4500 to $6500. I was thinking this was a crappy first day. BUT I remembered a few things I learned from the bootcamp. One was not to panic when this kind of stuff happens. So I thought about it overnight and by the morning had another plan. We rerouted a line and just bypassed that old pipe. Total cost. Less than $450

So my bootcamp price and all my books paid off on the first day. I can’t imagine doing this without Dave and Franks info. They arm you with the knowledge you need to go in confident that you will succeed.  Every dime I spent I saved my FIRST day owning the park. I’m confident that the other skills I learned will save me many headaches and thousands of dollars and literally increase the value of the park.

T Conlin

If you are serious about buying a mobile home park, then you do not want to miss this event.

Seats are limited, so don’t procrastinate to avoid disappointment. We may not be back to Dallas for a while (it’s been almost two years since we did the last event in Dallas).

You can sign up on line at www.mobilehomeparkstore.com or call (800) 950-1364. ]]> http://www.mhweekly.com/the-mobilehomepark-investors-boot-camp-is-coming-to-dallas/feed/ 0 http://www.mhweekly.com/mobile-home-park-selling-tips/ http://www.mhweekly.com/mobile-home-park-selling-tips/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:02:03 +0000 Dave Reynolds http://www.mhweekly.com/?p=106 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. However, based on my experience with selling my own parks on the site I have found that the following formula works the best:

1. Include a description of the park – number of spaces, occupied spaces, monthly rents, acreage, size of spaces, whether the streets are paved or gravel, and type of utilities and who pays what.

2. Include a description of the area – population, major employers, surrounding structures, and other important demographics.

3. Financing and Terms, if any. If there is not owner or assumable financing you may want to talk to some finance companies before listing the park to see what the potential loan and terms may look like for a qualified buyer.

4. Income and Expense Statement – I typically include Projected income based on current occupancy and Actual expenses from the previous year with adjustments for any differences. By including fictitious statements or those that are missing important information, the credibility of the seller will be compromised. If the income and expense statement looks bad, then either don’t include it in the listing or else explain why it looks so bad and how it can be improved on.

5. If you do not want your manager or residents to know the park is for sale then for the location make sure that you make it General (like Colorado or Southern California). You are not required to list the park name and address.

6. A description of any park owned homes and notes. If possible I would recommend you separate the income and expenses from the park owned homes out from the lot rent portion.

7. Pictures – that is often the first question you will receive. If you don’t have a way to scan these or email them to us to post them in the listing, then you can always snail mail them to us and we will scan them on. Like the saying goes… a picture is worth a thousand words.

As a general rule, the more information you post the better qualified the leads will be that you receive and the less information you post the more inquiries but the less qualified the leads will be.

If you have any other questions feel free to contact us.