Mobile Home Park Investing Articles

Most investments have a shelf life. A CD typically expires in one to five years, and a T-Bill normally lasts up to ten. Half of all small businesses fail within five years, and those that don’t rarely make it to ten. A residential mortgage – the longest form of investment with a standard dividend – burns out after thirty years. And the average life of a public company on the S&P 500 is only eighteen years – 1/3 of what it was in the 1960s.

A drive through a mobile home park can reveal a great deal about daily operations, but resident vehicles must be evaluated carefully. Cars are not a reliable measure of a person’s credit, occupation, or character. They are more useful as indicators of property upkeep, rule enforcement, parking demand, and management standards.

Flooring decisions in a mobile home are not just about appearance. They affect renovation costs, maintenance, resident satisfaction, and how quickly a vacant home can be returned to service. The old debate was normally carpet versus linoleum. Today, the choices have improved, but the basic business question remains the same.

Sooner or later, every mobile home park owner runs into it: a burned-out home, an abandoned home, or an old unit that is past the point of saving. It is not a glamorous part of the business, but it is a real one. And if you handle it wrong, a simple cleanup project can turn into a legal, financial, and safety problem.

The manufactured housing industry has always suffered from an unnecessary lack of confidence. Too many owners assume residents choose a mobile home park only because every other housing option is out of reach. That ignores the product’s real advantages. For many households, manufactured housing offers a lifestyle that apartments simply cannot match.

A good mobile home park owner has to balance two things at the same time: charging enough rent to operate the property correctly, while making sure the resident still feels they are receiving a fair deal. That is not always easy, but it is one of the most important skills in this business.

The Midwest has always been one of our favorite regions for mobile home park investing, and that has not changed. The reason is not nostalgia, geography, or the fact that many operators started there. The reason is simple: many Midwest markets still offer the right blend of affordability, employment stability, housing demand, and practical rent-growth potential.

The first impression of a mobile home park is often made before anyone reads the rent roll. It is made when they drive in and see where the cars are parked. If vehicles are scattered across yards, sitting in mud, or blocking roads, the park immediately feels unmanaged. That matters to residents, lenders, appraisers, buyers, and city officials.

Carports and fences can be great additions to a mobile home park, but only when they are done properly. They can improve the look of the community, make residents happier, and help with retention. But if they are poorly built or loosely approved, they can create safety, code, and appearance problems.

Mobile home dealers are no longer the force they once were, but writing them off is still a mistake. In many markets, they remain one of the easiest ways to fill empty lots, source used homes, and solve setup problems without building an in-house operation from scratch. In a business where one occupied lot can add real value, even one good dealer relationship can pay for itself.

A mobile home park can give heirs something far more useful than a one-time payout: recurring cash flow. That matters because many families do not lose wealth from lack of opportunity alone. They lose it because a large sum, once spent, is gone for good.

For years, manufactured housing has had to fight an image problem that had very little to do with the product itself and everything to do with public perception. That is why the tiny home trend matters. It did not suddenly change park revenues, and it did not rewrite the fundamentals of the business, but it helped make smaller, efficient housing feel more acceptable to a wider audience. For investors, that shift is worth paying attention to because perception often affects demand long before it shows up clearly in numbers.

America is in an unusual place right now with jobs – and entire industries – disappearing overnight. Against this backdrop of instability comes the necessity of having a hedge, something you can depend on if the unthinkable happens and you lose your primary income source. And when it comes to a second stream of income, nothing fills this role better than a mobile home park.

The exterior color of homes in a mobile home park may seem minor, but it shapes how the entire property is perceived. Over the past three decades, I’ve seen owners spend heavily on infrastructure while ignoring one of the simplest visual tools they have: paint. Used well, it improves curb appeal, helps older homes feel more current, and makes the community feel more like a neighborhood.

Sure, capitalism is under attack in America today, but not having enough to pay for your retirement is a lot more serious than being politically correct. The amount you have to save in America for retirement is completely unrealistic. Experts claim that amount to be $1.6 million yet only 5% of households have even half that amount saved. But that doesn't mean you can't fix this situation immediately if you take action. Mobile home parks can fully fund your retirement if you use proper strategy and science in analyzing your options.

Land is easy to build on until local rules, politics, and neighbors say “no.” That simple reality is why manufactured housing communities keep behaving differently than almost every other real estate niche, and why values have held up even through rough cycles.

A 5% CD is twenty times more than what you could get in 2021. But it's still not enough. Not nearly enough if you're trying to amass wealth – or even tread water with real inflation. Here's why a 5% CD isn't getting you anywhere:

Years ago, we took a Dallas park that was “almost there” and quietly pushed it over a milestone that changed the buyer pool overnight. It was not a flashy project. It was a careful, local-politics-heavy grind. The lesson still holds in 2026: adding even a handful of sites can move the value needle, but only if you treat approvals as the main job, not an afterthought.

In the CMBS “conduit” loan industry, non-performing apartment loans are up to 75% of the raw volume of defaults. While office foreclosures are massive at around $50 million to $100 million per loan, apartment loans average around $15 million so that, despite the sheer volume of apartment distress, office still makes up the bulk of CMBS debt losses. But what’s unusual is the contributing reason that these apartment loans are going into default. It’s not only collections problems, but what loan servicers are finding is that there are a huge number of apartment tenants having committed fraud in their applications. And it’s something getting very little media attention right now.

In 1996 I informed all my friends and family that I was buying a mobile home park called "Glenhaven" on South I-35 E in Dallas. They all thought I was crazy. Reactions ranged from "you'll lose your down payment" to "you'll get killed". But all that changed years later when Glenhaven sold for around $1 million more than I bought it for. That's a common story if you talk to mobile home park owners – but why? It all boils down to some basic issues.

My first mobile home park deal was $400,000 with $10,000 down and the seller carrying the $390,000 mortgage. My second deal was $62,000 with $5,000 down and the seller carrying the paper. My fifth deal was a true zero down transaction with the seller carrying the full $850,000 purchase price. Over the past 30 years we have done around 12 "no money down" mobile home park deals. And here's what you need to know about buying "trailer parks" for next to nothing.

A good turnaround plan can fix management, collections, and curb appeal. But it cannot magically move the property to a stronger market, replace an entire utility system cheaply, or redesign lots that were laid out wrong decades ago. The goal is to buy a park that already has the core structure working in your favor.

At a time in which office, hotel and retail properties are mostly upside down with values lower than their debts, it often amazes people that mobile home parks have been free from such problems. What they don’t realize is that mobile home parks have a unique business model that limits downside and is uniquely aligned with all U.S. megatrends. And don’t just take our word for it. Billionaire Peter Thiel and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell have also spotted this.

A strong mobile home park investment starts with understanding what separates average properties from those with lasting value. In real estate, fundamentals matter more than fleeting trends. For mobile home parks, a few core characteristics shape long-term performance and investor returns.

Years ago, I bought a mobile home park in Dallas that came with something I never wanted to own: a tired old commercial building sitting near the entrance. At the time, it was leased short-term to a small laundry operator, the lease was about to expire, and the structure clearly needed work. During due diligence, it was obvious this building would demand attention, capital, and a learning curve that had nothing to do with running a strong mobile home park. That realization shaped a lesson I still teach today.