The demand for affordable housing is enormous, and most homes sell fast in today’s market. But if you’ve brought in a new or used home – and it’s not moving quickly enough – then there are some steps you can take to make it more desirable. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review some of the lessons we’ve learned to help get homes out the door.
Episode 425: How To Make Home Sales Easier Transcript
We have sold over 6,500 homes during the past decade, which we think is an industry record. And most homes sell very easily, but others need a lot of help to get them out the door. So if you have a mobile home or two in your park that you're having trouble selling, let's explore some of the ideas that you can utilize to create consumer excitement to get those homes sold. This is Frank Rolfe with the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna look into things that create a lot of sex appeal in a home, things that consumers really want, they desire, and when you can give that home a little extra sizzle, it will definitely make your job a lot easier in getting it sold. So one of the first minor items which really sets apart a mobile home, and if you use this idea, it will definitely give your home that little extra leg up, is having some type of solid path that extends from the parking pad over to the stairs that go to the deck of the mobile home. It's something that most park owners ignore. And what you end up with when you don't have that, is a little muddy path right through the grass, which has been trampled, because there's typically no way to get from the parking pad to the front door without going over land.
And, of course, when you walk the same thing over and over in a lawn, the grass dies and you invariably just end up in mud. It's unsightly. It can track into the home. It offers a terrible first impression. So what do you do there? Well, here are some ideas for those of you who want to spend no money on this perk. Just go get some concrete stepping stones. I don't care if they're square, I don't care if they're round. I don't care if they're hexagonal. Place them close enough together, you don't have to have giant strides to get over to the steps. And what you're gonna end up with is a much happier customer who doesn't see a muddy trail, a muddy rut, but instead sees these concrete stepping stones that very logically take them to the door. Now, if you can spend the money, an even more professional way, of course, is to actually pour a concrete path. Now, I've seen some parks go maybe too far, put in cobblestone, that's probably overkill. But having a good solid surface to walk in from the point of contact, typically the parking pad over to the steps, is definitely going to give you a leg up on the competition.
And then when you get to the stairs that go up on the deck, the next thing to ponder is maybe you should put in a huge deck. Because a really big deck ends up being effectively an outdoor room. When we have built onto homes in order to create a little sizzle, oversized decks, it has always been met with great success. We even took some mobile homes that weren't selling down in Florida and we put decks on them so large that they were L-shaped. They wrapped the end of the home, so you could walk from the door of the home down the deck and around and sit out on the street if you so chose. It was a huge turn on to potential buyers who thought we had effectively added an entire room onto the mobile home. It made the sale that much easier. When you go in the home, one thing that many people like to see in the living room is some type of built in entertainment center. Now, we're not talking the types of TVs that people had back in the '80s or even the '90s where if you had a big TV, you'd have a big piece of furniture that could handle that heavy load.
Of course, today's flat screens are very, very light and inexpensive. And of course, yes, you could just have a wall mount for them. But many people like the concept of having some kind of bookcase arrangement around the flat screen so it doesn't just look like you stuck a mount right on the wall, but there was some greater thought put into it. And on all the other shelfing, they can put their other knick-knacks and items that they like. They could put books, they could put whatever they please, but it gives it a more central theme. You know, in a lot of stick built homes, what do you have? You go in the living room, you've got the fireplace with the mantle. Virtually all mobile homes are lacking a fireplace, therefore they're lacking the mantle. They're lacking that one central conversation item. And that entertainment center, very inexpensive to put in, gives them a real sense of pride. Here's a good one for you if you don't wanna spend a lot of money on giving your home a little sparkle, use the concept of an accent wall. Now, an accent wall is one wall in the living room painted a different color than the other walls.
It's typically a color that is supposed to supplement and augment the existing color scheme. And I've seen accent walls of every color. I've seen them in green, blue, gray, brown. The best way to get ideas on accent walls is to head over to your local mobile home retailer, your typical Clayton dealership on the corner of the highway and the surface street and go in there and look what they're using for accent walls. Because most of the manufacturers today are in fact using this concept. They have for a while now. And I would just basically try and copy what they do verbatim. Unless you're a very good designer, I'm not so sure that you can do better than their phenomenally high paid and very professional designers choose. Now here's another idea that many, many park owners miss out on. And what it does is, it causes all kinds of problems on the home sale, but it's not because of the home itself. And that is, what do you see out the windows? What are the views you see out the windows of the mobile home you're trying to sell? Because remember that when you walk up to the home and you're looking at it and it's looking great, that's not what you see when you're inside.
When you own that home, you're looking at the windows onto neighbors. And sometimes that can be your worst enemy. We had some homes in Omaha, Nebraska that ran parallel to a fence line to commercial building. And this guy did not keep up his property at all. The building was rusted, the chain link fence was rusted. And when you were in the mobile home looking out the windows of both the living room and the master bedroom, you looked right smack into this old rusted metal. Absolutely hideous. So we went to the owner of the property and said, look, would you mind if we painted your rusted metal? Would that be okay with you? He said, as you would imagine, I don't care, I'm not gonna paint it. But if you want to paint it, that's fine. And that's what we did. It changed everything. Suddenly when you entered the home, you were no longer looking into somebody else's mess, but now it looked like you were looking into a well manicured property. We even had cases where we couldn't solve what you saw at the window. Maybe you saw an ugly bank of meters or something else.
But in that case, you can block the view by simply getting a solid section of white vinyl PVC fencing and placing that in front of that hideous obstruction. Now, staging homes is an art form. And if you are at a mobile home show, if you were at the Louisville show, you probably noticed that most of the units there aren't just showing you the basic box, but they're staged. They have furniture, they have artwork, they have towels in the holders in the bathrooms. And the reason that retailers do this, is they have found that staging definitely gives you the edge. People don't always have a lot of vision, and when you stage the property, suddenly the vision is there for them to see. Now, spending a ton of money on staging may be outside the budget of many park owners, but there are some things you can do that are very inexpensive. You can go down to Goodwill or Salvation Army, for example, and get fairly decent quality mirrors and even artwork you can hang on the walls. Helps a lot. Mirrors particularly make rooms look larger. And sometimes you'll see at Goodwill or Salvation Army some pretty good looking furniture that's insanely cheap.
You can get a chair for $10, a sofa for $50. You can fill a pickup truck at one of those establishments for maybe a 100 or $200. You can even buy cheap things out of IKEA. But you would be shocked at how far a little staging will go in definitely making your home look more attractive to buyers and help get it out the door. But let's finally turn to the one item that most people overlook, particularly when they're having trouble getting a home sold and it's not something you can buy, and that's having a manager with good people skills. Because a bad manager can kill all of the viewer, all of the customers impulsive positivity. If they have a bad attitude, if they're awkward, if they have poor social skills, it will completely ruin the sale. If I could pick everything on the list I just mentioned and trade that for a manager with great people skills, I would definitely get the job done better. We have found in properties where homes are not selling well, often by replacing the manager, suddenly everything gets out the door. One of the first quotes I was ever given in the industry was, it's easier to change people than to change people.
And often simply recycling, trading in, swapping your existing manager who's not selling effectively for a new one, can do a huge improvement in your overall complexion of your sales. You probably noticed at the end of the NFL season there's a flurry of coaching changes, same players next year, but somehow with that new coach, that new personality, things go much better. And it's the same for getting mobile homes out the door. The bottom line is, if your homes are not selling, look at some of these minor adjustments I've mentioned. These little factors can make all the difference when it comes time for the customer to sign the bottom line. This is Frank Rolfe with the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.