The approach of winter often brings forth mental images of the holiday season. But for mobile home park owners, it also brings forth other items: some dreaded and some good news. Here are the winners and losers of winter as far as community owners are concerned, and how to mitigate these issues before the snow starts falling and the temperature dips below freezing.

There are few things more predictable in life than the seller’s expense numbers being lower than they should be in reality. While mobile home park buyers know that the typical operating expense ratio runs 30% to 40%, there’s no question that those seller numbers reflecting 15% to 20% are not accurate. So what’s typically missing in the seller’s numbers?

Let’s first clarify – we’re talking a million in value, not in cash out. But we’re still talking an increase in value of over $1 million in one year. That’s a huge number in any business, but not that uncommon in the mobile home park industry. How is this possible? Let’s examine what community operators can do to increase value, and model out how much value they can tap.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued an order temporarily halting residential evictions for failure to pay rent until December 31, 2020 if the resident provides the “declaration” that they meet certain criteria. This misguided concept is re-writing eviction laws once again and causing mobile home park owners to thank heaven that they are not apartment owners. So why will mobile home park owners fare better than apartment owners in this latest restriction in making some tenants pay rent?

Webster’s Dictionary defines a “shed” as “a structure built to shelter something” but in many mobile home parks it’s more like “the ugliest thing on the property”. Why are sheds such a problem and how can a park owner turn the situation around?

Bing Crosby once sang “Don’t Fence Me In” but his song did not apparently reflect the desires of many mobile home park residents. Indeed, fencing inside mobile home parks is a standard feature, despite the fact that mobile home park lots do not have technical boundaries. Yet many resident fencing choices and maintenance will not work with you desire to make the property desirable (such as the one shown above). So how can you make the best of the residents’ innate desire to mark and secure their property with a fence?

Most mobile home parks have some form of office – whether it’s a free-standing building or inside the manager’s home. And it’s pretty standard practice to set office hours so residents know when they can and can’t come by to pay rent, look at homes, or discuss problems. So how do you set effective office hours?

Sam Zell is the largest owner of mobile home parks in the U.S. He’s also been the largest owner of apartments and office buildings. But regardless of the sector, his strategy has always remained to buy assets that are near death and then bring them back to life. Why has this strategy worked so well?

Mobile homes are an engineering marvel: they are the only form of housing that can go down the highway at 55 miles-per-hour. But even though they have this unique skill, transporting a 15,000 pound object down the interstate can frequently cause minor damage to the home by the time of its arrival. What do you need to know when you order a new home to be delivered at your property?

Closing on a mobile home park can be a very stressful experience. Making it go smoothly requires proactive preparation and strategy. So what are some concepts to improve your closing experience?

Industrialist Andrew Carnegie once said “problems are only opportunities in work clothes”. And J. Paul Getty, the nation’s richest person during the 1950s and 1960s, held the belief that depressions were a great time to make acquisitions and to refine business operations – he, in fact, was only happy when times were bad. Throughout American history, most fortunes were built upon the bedrock of times of economic collapse, when values were lower, distractions few, and the fundamentals of business were easier to enact.

The U.S. government frequently attempts to modify investment and business creation in support of policies that are not profitable. They do this through subsidies – either direct cash or tax savings. The wind turbine shown above – used to create electricity from the wind – are just one of the products or industries that the government has created through artificial subsidies. So what’s wrong with this behavior?

We’ve all seen the Progressive Insurance commercial where they build an “insurance amusement park” called “Progressive Park” and nobody shows up to attend – because without risk it’s not fun. This commercial should be a regular reminder of the needed “test ad” that should be completed during due diligence for every mobile home park purchased.

The media and many politicians are absolutely convinced that low rents are what the nation’s mobile home park residents need to have a happy and productive life. They share this belief because they have absolutely no idea how economics work or the damage their deranged attempts at manipulating markets has on their constituents. Indeed, low rents are the worst thing possible for residents in our nation’s mobile home parks. Why is that?

Perhaps the best way to fill a vacant lot is with an existing homeowner. When someone moves their mobile home into your park that’s called an “organic move” – and it can be a win/win for everyone if properly handled. So what do you need to know about how to properly make organic moves happen?

“How to Build and Operate a Mobile Home Park” was written by L.C. Michelon, the Director of Management Services for the School of Business at the University of Chicago, in 1955. In the book you will find this paragraph: “Much of your income will come from services other than from space rentals. In a mobile home park these include the laundry, the store, the gas station, mobile home services and sales, the bottled-gas franchise, the storing of mobile homes, the hauling of mobile homes short distances, telephone calls, and so on” [from Chapter 14 “Increasing Net Income” page 115]

Many economists predict the next U.S. recession to begin in 2021. Even if that date is incorrect, it’s a certainty that there will be another recession in the near future. It’s been 12 years since the Great Recession and economic cycles are a part of American (and world) history. So what will be the impact of the next recession on the mobile home park industry?

“Baby Boomers” are the generational term for those born between 1946 and 1964 – one of the largest population segments in the U.S. The impact of the Baby Boomers has been felt throughout the American economy for decades, propelling any item that was in demand to this group to record-setting levels of sales and usage. And the aging of the Baby Boomers is about to result in what is now called the “Silver Tsunami” in single-family housing. Here’s an interesting article to read [INSERT LINK HERE]

A road is just a road, right? Wrong. The type of road surface you use in your property will influence a number of factors including potentially the cap rate, lender interest, future buyer interest and customer satisfaction. It’s important that every park owner match the type of road to their goals and budgets, and the universe of options is growing as new types of road construction are tested. So what are the considerations?

Vacant lot preparation is a big deal when filling vacant lots – it can cost as much as 1/3 of the total home in some states. HUD controls the lot preparation requirements in some markets and, while the purpose is to minimize home movement from frost heave, the reality is that it’s a terrible financial burden for the homeowner and a pain in the neck for park owners to perform. But if you have to do expensive lot preparation, what are the options and which should you choose?

For many years, the mobile home park industry had no available information except for a few ancient books like the 1955 “How to Build and Operate a Mobile Home Park” by L.C. Michelon. It was a lonely existence for park owners with nobody to bounce ideas off of or to share experiences. And that’s as recently as the 1990s. Today things have changed. So where can you go to get answers to your mobile home park questions?

One of the key requirements of owning mobile home parks is to provide working utilities. But in many older mom and pop parks there may be problems with old lines that have been denied proper maintenance for decades. Here are some things to think about when it comes to the issue of replacing a utility system.

Texas has been an important part of our mobile home park past. We have owned mobile home parks in Texas for over 25 years – it’s an extremely vital part of our strategy to look at every deal that comes up in Texas that meets our criteria. So do many other investor groups. So why is Texas such as great state for mobile home parks?

In the same theme as the bestseller “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People” we would like to present our list of the habits of successful mobile home community buyers, along with thoughts on how to create these attributes and what the impact will be.

There are two types of inhabitants of mobile homes: owners and renters. One has a capital investment in the home and the other does not. We feel strongly that every resident in the mobile home park should have the opportunity to be an owner if they so choose. Why is that?