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.

During recent flooding, the park had damage, as well as tenants’ personal property. Those tenants have sued the mobile home park. The park is claiming damages which include loss of revenue during the period the park was flooded.

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

You don’t see a story like this very often. Normally, it’s the park’s flood plain zoning that is being blamed. But you can have parks that are not in the flood plain impacted by heavy rains as well. Even the best drainage plans rely on storm sewers or creeks that can be jammed with debris and fail to operate. Whenever you buy a park in a low-lying area, particularly near a body of water, you have to make sure that you have 100% awareness of what the possibilities are if some type of flood device malfunctions. You don’t have to be in the flood plain to have liability issues with flooding -as this park demonstrates.

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.

MobileHomeParkStore.com
Currently we have over 1,200 mobile home parks listed for sale.  You can read articles from Frank Rolfe & Dave Reynolds and other industry professionals.  Looking for a broker, appraiser, insurance or other service?  There are hundreds of vendors listed on the site.  Would you like to take your investment skills to a new level?  Look into our educational materials.

MobileHomer.com
Are you a “lonnie dealer”, mobile home broker or mobile home park owner?  Our new program – The Mobile Homer can help you.  We have updated the lonnie deal model by bringing park owners & lonnie dealers together.  By forging this relationship we have made mobile home investment more profitable with fantastic incentives.  Park owners benefit from the program by having home investors fill lots.

MHBay.com
Our site dedicated to mobile homes for sale.  List a mobile home for sale here for free.  Find mobile homes, mobile home financing, insurance & more.

MobileHomeParkForum.com
Have a question?  All you have to do is create a username & password for free & you can start asking & answering questions.

Thank you for using MHWeekly & enjoy our other resources

“Until now, there has never been a successful roadmap to investing in mobile homes inside mobile home parks” said Dave Reynolds. “To invest in mobile homes, it is essential that the park owner offer certain incentives and formulas to help share the risk and ensure that the experience is a profitable one. Only at the MobileHomer.com can you obtain the list of participating mobile home parks that will make your investment a winner.”

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

Community Development Director Carmen Cave called Baileywick a “a detriment to public health and welfare”. Code Enforcement Office Wayne O’Gara said “I’ve seen things on the ground there that I have not tasted or touched, but I can tell you by the smell it’s not something I would want to”.

Nelson Moyle, owner of the property, blamed the problems on his tenants and plumbers who had misled him on repairs. The council, however, was unmoved, citing almost two decades of problems that have never been repaired.

The impact of closing the park will be minimal, as there is only one mobile home remaining in the 12 space park – the rest of the tenants being RVs.
Frank & Dave’s Analysis of This Story:

When we’ve been talking about city governments having a new-found love for mobile home parks, it does have its limitations. You cannot own and operate a park and refuse to make basic repairs, such as a working sewer system, and expect a happy ending. The park owner’s excuse that it was the “tenants’ fault” had as much hope of success as Flip Wilson’s “the devil made me do it”. Whenever we read an article like this, we just have to wonder what the owner was thinking. Slum-lording is not a recipe for success in the mobile home park business.

Under a new state ordinance, cities must allow RVs to be in mobile home parks. Cities are allowed to regulate RVs that are used as permanent residences for safety or health reasons. RVs in parks must be connected to sewer and water.

The case began in 2006, when park owner Paul Lawson appealed a city code citation for someone living in an RV in his park. That resident still lives there, but in the ensuing years, has traded in his RV for a mobile home.

Frank & Dave’s Opinion of This Story:

There are two morals to this story.

The first is just how pathetic the legal system is. It took 5 years to resolve what should have been a simple case – so long, in fact, that the state law changed in the interim  and even the person who the case was based on moved on from an RV to mobile home. The only thing worse than the U.S. legal system is… well, we can’t think of anything.

The second moral is how even the State of Washington has been touched by the love of the mobile home park as affordable housing. With RVs now being made acceptable for all parks, it opens up yet another door to improved occupancy at mobile home parks.