Burger King used the tag line “have it your way” in all their marketing since 1974 as a weapon against McDonald’s refusal to customize their burgers. But as a mobile home park owner you want to be much more like McDonald’s and not at all like Burger King in this regard. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to discuss why making exceptions with customers and managers often leads o catastrophe.

Most mobile home parks have a mixture of old and new homes – but some have strictly pre-HUD vintage units. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the good and bad attributes to having nothing but old homes from an era long ago.

Even though the amortization on a mobile home park mortgage is typically 25 to 30 years in length, the balloon comes due around year 5 to 10. Like a relay race, the successful mobile home park owner must make sure that the baton can be seamlessly passed to the next lender. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review proactive methods to make that transition reliably smooth.

Brokers frequently claim that a market is “hot” which they equate to being of superior quality and therefore worthy of potentially overpaying. But it this a good idea? Should you favor “hot” markets? In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore this concept in depth and offer some constructive pointers regarding buying parks in these parts of the nation.

Eventually the manager at the mobile home park down the street will inquire about being in charge of yours. Or one day you’ll get jealous that the community a few blocks over is nicer or fuller than yours and you’ll say “I wonder if I should approach that manager to work for me?”. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to drill down on this concept and give you case studies of how that concept typically tuns out.

All borrowers prefer “non-recourse” lending, but is “recourse” really a deal killer? It’s all a matter of perspective. In this Mobile Home Park Mastey podcast we’re going to explore the issue of recourse and analyze the real risk and how to mitigate it.

There are some skills learned during Covid that we don’t need to throw away, and one of them is the concept of “cash for keys”. Born of desperation from the national evictions moratorium, this playbook of paying tenants to leave who can’t come up with their rent is still a win/win solution in many cases. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore why this works, how to implement it, and discuss its inherent win/win outcome.

We’ve been trying to unlock the science of mobile home park ownership for three decades, but there are some unwritten rules that are not supported by math and nobody even knows where these supposed “truths” came from. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the odd certainties that are used by bankers and bureaucrats yet have no basis in actual fact.

Many people track how many mobile homes are sold in the U.S. and are only focused on the total number that are shipped each month. But the more important information for park owners is found in where those homes go. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to derive some meaningful conclusions from the 2023 manufacturing data.

When the seller carries the financing they typically don’t require a formal appraisal. Despite the absence of a formal loan committee there’s still the need for a Phase I Environmental Report and a survey. But do you need to have an appraisal done? In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the uses of an appraisal, the cost vs. benefit, and some alternatives to help you gain confidence in the price you are paying.

It comes as no surprise that America has become enormously corrupt in so many ways. Simply watching the news gives you a full knowledge of how “rigged” our systems have become. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore what the corrupt systems are that mobile home park owners have to contend with and how to properly fight back or work around them.

Even if you sell a mobile home in “as is” condition and make no warranties, there is always the risk that the phone will ring with the homebuyer asking for a needed repair. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the obligations of the park owner from both a theoretical and practical perspective.

Very few Harvard MBAs apply for jobs as mobile home park managers – and that’s probably a good thing. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the problems with over-qualified managers and why they rarely work out despite having glamorous resumes.

You cannot have a deal until both parties of signed. So how can you push the seller to sign on the dotted line after spending so much time on discussion? In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the different way to motivate sellers to execute the sales contract.

The National Association of Realtors settled a class action lawsuit recently (following a $1.8 billion jury award in Missouri) and now the real estate commission of 6% that is baked into a standard single-family home transaction is changing to where the buyer no longer has to pay a commission. Good news for the consumer, right? Wrong. This perversion of justice is about to have massive consequences for all the celebrating folks that think this will lower the cost of home ownership. And it will also have extremely positive results for mobile home parks.

Numbers are words are great, but there’s something about charts and graphs that takes your management to the next level. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the many ways that you can use visual elements in buying and operating mobile home parks for maximum productivity.

When you’re buying a mobile home park it’s essential to start off on the right foot. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the vital first step strategies and explore what makes them so important. Since you never get second chance to make a first impression it’s important that you understand what you need to do when buying the property.

Spring is an important season for mobile home park owners for many reasons. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review how smart park owners position themselves to harness the warming temperatures and more hours of daylight to create a better resident living environment as well as to improve your park’s net income.

When park owners talk about billing back utilities to residents it’s mostly about water and sewer. But rarely do most operators consider billing back trash. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to review the pros and cons of billing back the trash service and how to better make a decision on that option.

Some of the theories behind the correct way to buy and operate mobile home parks comes from careful testing and study. But still others are passed down from earlier generations of park owners who simply believe them to be so, even in the absence of any scientific reasoning or data. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore some of these superstitions that often prove to be accurate despite their lack of statistical reinforcement.

Sam Zell always used the axiom that you should always buy deals with low risk/high reward, never buy deals with high risk/low reward and the ones that require thinking are those with high risk/high reward. So how do you approach those type of deals? That’s the focus of this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast.

For the park manager that wants to cheat you, stealing cash is old school. There are a number of bigger scams that involve an enhanced level of sophistication in today’s world. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore the latest embezzlement strategies that some managers deploy as well as how best to avoid them.

Mobile home park vacancy can either be an asset or a liability – and this bi-polar nature is typically separated by a very fine line. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we’re going to examine how something that could equate to greater net income in the future may also be viewed as a terrible liability in the near-term.

If you think the current $35 trillion U.S. deficit is a problem, just wait until 2050 when it hits $100 trillion. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery podcast we discuss past, present and future of the deficit and exactly what the ramifications might be for mobile home parks when the government finally ceases to make payments on its crushing debt load.

In most mobile home parks you can find homes from nearly every decade from the 1970s to current. But can old and new homes happily coexist side-by-side? It’s a fair question – particularly when you’re bringing in newer homes to fill vacant lots in a predominantly older park. In this Mobile Home Park Mastery Podcast we’re going to focus on this issue and what we’ve learned over the past 30 years.