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.

# of Mobile Home Park Lots:115 RV Spaces

Price:Auction 8/26

Contact Person:Dan Falls

Contact Phone:866 921 8883

Contact E-mail:Dan.Falls@williamsauction.com

Description:The Spokane RV Resort is a vacation destination for RV fulltimers and weekend explorers alike. Located adjacent to the Deer Park Golf Club in Deer Park, Washington, the gated 17.80+/- acre resort won Woodalls® 5W rating for both facilities and recreation in 2010 and attracts RV golf and outdoor enthusiasts from throughout the United States and Canada. There are numerous amenities available along with gorgeous mountain and golf course views.  The Spokane RV Resort Remains Open for Business

Link:www.williamsauction.com/deerpark (display)
http://www.williamsauction.com/deerpark?utm_source=RVParkStore&utm_medium=enewsletter&utm_campaign=spokane (actual)

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.

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.

The owner, Amnon Dabach, has tried to resurrect the finances of the park through a series of rent raises, which have taken the lot rent from $195 per month to $375. This has resulted in new complications, as many long-time residents are having trouble keeping up with their payments, and have turned to government assistance.

“A lot of people have moved out” said Sheri Dube, a community resident. “Five years ago the rent was $195. Now it’s $375 for no extra services”.

Without sufficient cash flow, the owner has refused to put any additional funds into the park, so the manager can only mow sporadically when she can get the mower to start, and will often take a rowboat out into the once manicured ponds to try and fish out debris.

“There are a lot of things I’d like to see different” said Manager Samantha Dama.
Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

Whether or not you believe in global warming, you have to acknowledge that the hurricane season is growing stronger every year. This year, there are expected to be seven major hurricanes. If you are looking at buying a coastal park in the hurricane zone, you have to look at the potential downside of a hurricane hitting your park. If  you do not have the capital or the constitution to deal with a calamity like that, you should probably not buy a park in a hurricane-prone area. There are many Pink Citrus stories out there. Unlike tornadoes, which are pretty random, hurricanes threaten the exact same areas over and over. And, unlike tornadoes, hurricanes don’t just wipe out a small, manageable area; they wipe out entire cities and employment bases.

The City of Poway had purchased the mobile home park in the attempt to stabilize rents, with around 1,000 citizens living in the park. The second highest bid for the property was only $28 million — $10 million less than Hometown’s bid. Even then, the city will only post a $2 million profit from the sale, which they have held for since 1991.

The residents had hoped the city would take the $28 million bid, as that bidder had offered to sell the lots to the tenants. “We’re not happy with it at all” said Joe Banks, one of the Board of the Directors of the park, and a resident. “We feel the city is not keeping the best interests of the residents at heart. The best interest would be to let us own the land beneath us”.

Frank & Dave’s Analysis of This Story:

No offense to the folks at Hometown America but ” what were you thinking”? For their nearly $40,000,000 investment, they’ll own 397 spaces – at roughly $100,000 per space. The current rent at this park is $770 per month. If there was a 15% expense ratio at the park (which is probably too low), then it’s a 7.8% cap rate at 100% occupancy and 100% collections. You can’t raise a $770 lot rent up too much, in our opinion. Is 7.8% as good a return as you can get in this economy? Hardly. We wouldn’t even look at this deal at this price. The second highest bidder at $28,000,000 was correct – they were at least bidding a 10% cap rate. Just another example of the stupid bids people make at these auctions.

The 236 space park has a long history of battles with the city over rent increases, which has strict guidelines regarding such increases. Besaro’s owners claim that the city has hindered them from catching up in their rental rate with the two other parks in the city.

Currently, Besaro’s lot rent is $669 while the other two parks are $715 and $782. The owners are asking that their rent be raised to $895.

The park was allowed a major rent increase in 2001, but a judge blocked further increases on the grounds that park expenses had not gone up, and that the park’s annual profit in excess of $1 million was satisfactory.

Besaro was developed in the 1970s, and is owned by the heirs of the four original owners.