Maybe you came into a windfall and want to invest a little more money than you budgeted. Or perhaps you want to test an extra enhancement to help your park break through to a new level. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review things you can do to get that extra edge – if you’re willing to pay for it – and some concepts that are always a waste of money.
Episode 429: When – And When Not – To Splurge Transcript
The dictionary defines to splurge as an act of spending money freely or extravagantly. And all of us like from time to time to splurge. Maybe we get bored with the mundane. We wanna try something different. We wanna test our boundaries. We just want to feel the need to go out there and roll the dice and go to that next level. And there's nothing wrong with that as long as you put your free spending into things that will benefit you. But there's a lot wrong with it when it only goes to hurt you. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. We're gonna talk about things you can splurge on in a mobile home park and benefit from, as well as things that you should never splurge on.
So, the first thing I've noticed in many mobile home parks that if you really wanna gild the lily to make things nicer than they are, is to build a nice concrete path from your parking pad over to the stairs that go up to the deck of the mobile home. This is an area that most park owners miss. It's something they don't think about often, or if they do, they just, they brush it off and say, well, I'll let the future owner of the home deal with this. But the issue is when you're showing the home, you have to then track often through the muddy grass from the street and the parking pad over to show the home. And it's a very bad start. You're making your first impression, and suddenly we're walking in the mud to get in the home. It tracks up the deck, it tracks into the home.
So if you wanna do yourself a favor and your home a favor and make it a little more valuable to the customer and you really wanna splurge, building a path from that parking pad over to those stairs is a great idea. And if you don't feel like splurging big money, because to build an actual concrete sidewalk won't be cheap, just putting in nice stepping stones is a great idea. So there's one good way to splurge. Another great way to splurge, it'll definitely make a home easier to sell, but it'll cost you more than some stepping stones would be, would be to put in drywall in your mobile home you're bringing in to fill a vacant lot, as opposed to VOG, which stands for vinyl over gypsum. VOG paneling, which is the industry norm, sadly, is one item that definitely delineates that it's a mobile home.
Because in no stick-built home in America will you ever see VOG. It's a product of the mobile home industry, and it helps continue the stigma. Because when you go in a room, like any other room, you can't tell, am I in a stick-built, am I in a condo, am I in a mobile home? But then you see those battens between each VOG panel, and you know you're in a mobile home. We have found that when we've brought homes in that have drywall, they sell much faster. So if you can afford it, if your market will allow it, then putting drywall in as opposed to VOG is another great way to splurge. Another item are trash cans. I know this doesn't sound like much, but have you ever noticed in a lot of even some of the nicer parks, they're cutting costs or they're holding back, they don't wanna splurge.
And they just put a regular old galvanized trash can there in the corner of the playground. It looks terrible. It rusts over time. It stands out like a sore thumb. And the problem is the top falls off, the trash blows around. They make really nice trash cans for common areas. You can buy them on purchasing platform. They're not as cheap as that galvanized can, which is typically $20. These might cost you 100 or so, but they're heavy, they're well built. You see them all around you in expensive areas and shopping malls. So consider putting one of those in your playground and getting rid of the galvanized can. That is a good splurge item. Your tenants will like it, cut down on your litter. It's a win-win. And speaking of common areas and playgrounds, if you wanna splurge in your common area, consider putting in a pavilion.
Put a top on all the fun. That way you can have your picnic tables and they can be undercover so people can continue on eating, conversing when it's raining. Also, they can use them when it's sunny, when it's too blindingly hot in the sun to sit out there. Now they can in the cool shade. Pavilions are often not as expensive as you think they might be. Once again, you can buy them through purchasing platform. But a pavilion is a good splurge item for a common area. Another item is to put nice consistent numbering plates on each home. You see that in many of your higher end communities, they don't allow the customer to have their own personal choice of numbering system. They don't have some with brass letters screwed or brass numbers screwed to their mobile home and the next person has aluminum ones because occasionally, every so often, the people just paint them on, it looks terrible.
So instead they say, no one's allowed to put numbers on anything. Only we can do it at the park level. Then they have printed up really nice aluminum plates, typically dark green, also black, with white vinyl numbers on them. It looks so very professional. So is that a good splurge item? Yeah, it's not cheap. And also you'll have the difficulty of going to the residents' and making them take their things off and you putting those up. But the final end product does look really nice. Finally, if you really wanna splurge, one thing you can do, and this one you'll have to really think twice if you wanna take the gamble, is to plant hardy native bushes and trees. We tend in most mobile home parks to work with man-made objects like white vinyl because it doesn't die, you don't have to water it, it's kinda self-cleaning. But when you get into mother nature, it's a little riskier.
You can plant things, but if you don't water them, they're gonna die. And who's gonna trim them, who's gonna take care of them? You have to think through these issues, but when it works out, it's spectacular. There's a mobile home park down in Balch Springs, Texas, in Southeast Dallas, and I took a huge splurge gamble on that park. The park did not have a lot of physical beauty. It had one beautiful thing: it was right next to a Walmart. And I was trying to figure out how to elevate this property. Trees don't grow really well in Texas because it doesn't rain a lot in the summer. But there's one kind of tree in Texas that seems to do well even when it doesn't rain, and that's called a crepe myrtle. So what I did was I bought about a hundred crepe myrtles. I had a lot of frontage, and I bought them in two colors, pink and white. And I planted them just like that, pink, white, pink, white, in a pattern all the way down the frontage.
And unbelievably, if you go there today, you'll see that almost every single one lived. I think out of the 100 I planted, probably 10 of them died. And you have this giant wall of pink and white flowers through a large part of the year. And then with that, I installed white vinyl fencing. It's probably one of the nicest looking entries in that whole city. So again, it's a splurge, it's a risk, it's a gamble, but in the end, it paid off really well. Now, what are some things you should never do if you're in a splurging mood? Number one, don't put in fancy sinks and toilets in homes that you are renting or potentially even selling. People will destroy them. They will break them, and you will feel very crushed and very foolish when you get the home back only to find this expensive stuff that you stuck in is now broken.
And also putting in over-the-top appliances, not your standard, but your next generation up, the fancy things you would put in your own house. The problem is if you get a bad tenant, they're gonna steal those because they know how valuable they are. They're gonna pull them out, they're gonna pawn them. So again, that's typically not a great splurge. Also, fancy carpets. It's always sad when I see someone putting in, maybe on a Lonnie deal, fine Berber carpets, something that they bought very expensively. And they'll tell me when I say, "Gosh, are you sure you wanna do that?" They'll say, "Oh no, I think this will elevate my tenant base." Typically doesn't. All it takes is one resident with a pet, and of course, that carpet is ruined. It will end up going out in the trash.
Also, don't get into the concept of fancy entry signs. Fancy entry signs has always been a bad idea. The problem is people will deface them. They'll spray paint "FU" on them or something like that, and you can't get it off because those fancy entry signs typically are sandblasted. And being sandblasted, when you get paint into the crevices of the sandblasting into the wood, you can't get it out. Then you're stuck with trying to paint over it. You'll try and match the color of the wood. It doesn't work. You still see it. You can even see it just from the sheen of the paint as you're approaching. So those simple signs, the good old aluminum signs with the vinyl letters, those are always your safest bet. And when you splurge and upgrade that signage, it typically won't work out well for you.
The same with posts. Those fancy architectural aluminum posts, sure, they look fantastic, but you hit them with a car and what do you have? You have a multi-thousand dollar mess. If you can even find a matching replacement. A lot of those things are sold in abundance to single-family home developers. They probably buy a few extras when they do it, but then often they change up the designs, the styles, you can't even find that stuff anymore. The bottom line is that splurging is perfectly fine if you have the desire, if you're feeling good about life, if you wanna spend a few extra dollars. There are certain things you can do in mobile home parks that will elevate it, elevate the entire experience, elevate the customer, elevate the amount you can charge. Certainly nothing wrong with that. Just make sure you do that in the right categories. This is Frank Rolfe, the Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.