024 Mobile Home Handymen with John and Frank

In today’s Mobile Home Investing Podcast episode #24, I’m proud to welcome active mobile home investor Frank to the co-hosting microphone. Frank is a young investor with a bright future in real estate. Frank has been investing in mobiles for only a few months and already secured his first few investments mobile homes. He is focusing on creating cash-flow with his mobile homes rather than selling for all-cash at a discount.

In Frank’s local area he went from virtually being an unknown investor to now helping a small handful of community managers. Without Frank’s daily effort and action to push outside of his comfort-zone in order to help others and grow his local portfolio of properties he would still be virtually unknown when it comes to his local mobile home market. For this reason, the credit for Frank’s success goes to Frank, and to every other investor that makes a success for themselves. Keep up the daily effort.

In the 41-minute podcast and separate 15-minute video below we discuss some of the attractive points and gross details of Frank’s 1st mobile home transaction inside a park. We also discuss a great hidden source of quality and trustworthy mobile home handy people.

In the audio mobile home investing podcast episode below (at the bottom) John and Frank cover: 

• 1:51 What do you do outside of mobile home investing?
• 2:52 Why mobile homes?
• 5:30 Becoming a licensed Realtor and advice.
• 7:48 $11,000 real estate training?
• 10:09 Can you discuss how you found your 1st deal inside a park?
• 11:38 What price did you pay for the home?
• 15:23 What repairs were made to this first mobile home?
• 18:23 Listening to advice from handyman/contractor without mobile home experience?
• 18:53 Did this first handyman turn out well?
• 19:13 What specific lessons did you learn with this handyman?
• 22:31 Repair costs? Over-repair costs?
• 25:28 Sold price/terms?
• 20:46 What happened soon after closing?
• 26:27 How did these first buyers react to this situation?
• 29:32 Selling to buyers #2
• 29:51 Adding value to people’s lives for a win-win business.
• 31:21 Leaky roof – who repaired this?
• 33:49 Speaking with your buyers/renters about extra work they could use if they are mobile some handy.
• 34:48 Tips while working with your buyers as handymen & handywomen.
• 36:24 Protecting yourself
• 37:38 What advice would you give your younger self?

Something that has always impressed me about Frank is that he rarely makes excuses. This is an amazing quality to have. It allows for almost immediate corrected action towards a future goal.

Mobile home investing is a crash-course in people skills. Be willing to change and grow.

In the video above Frank is awesome enough to allow us to point out a vulnerability many of us have as human beings and mobile home investors. As real estate investors most of us do not want to appear foolish to others more experienced than ourselves. As a newer real estate investor or mobile home investor you will naturally have an almost unending number of questions, clarifications, and concerns. This is a good thing and to be expected if taking daily action and looking at mobile homes/seller regularly.

• DO care about losing money and losing time.
• DO care about how you treat and follow-up with others.
• DO care about how much action you are taking every day.
• DO care about always having clarity.
• Do NOT care about asking too many questions.
• Do NOT care about looking silly for asking too many questions.
• Do NOT care about writing questions/confusions down now and asking what these questions/confusions mean later.
• Do NOT care about spending the time needed to gain clarity to your questions and any opportunities in front of you.

Paying your current buyers to repair/clean your future mobile homes.

Selling via structured payments or renting? If you choose to sell a mobile home via monthly payments, then you will be establishing a long-term relationship with buyers for many months or years to come. For this reason, it is critically important to thoroughly vet and screen any potential adult applicant wishing to move into one of your mobile home properties. This background check should ideally include information such as credit history, eviction background, criminal searches, job verification, landlord checks, proof of income, and much more. Also, a prudent mobile home investor will aim to understand if your payment-buyers or renters have any handy abilities when it comes to mobile homes.

• If so, what are they able to fix around a mobile home?
• Do these buyers/renters have experience? Plumbing? Electrical?
• Are these buyers or renters able to paint?
• Remove junk and clean?
• Are these buyers or renters looking to make extra money?
• Could this be a win-win relationship?

Pro Tip: Aim to keep separate money-trails between investor and handyman/payment-buyer. It can be very tempting to simply credit or discount future monthly home payments to your handyman/payment buyer(s) VS paying them directly for labor preformed. Example: Aim to pay your handyman/payment-buyer with one check for repairs. Then allow the same handyman/payment-buyer to use another check (perhaps at another time) to pay for his/her monthly home payment for the property. This tip may vary if the handyman/payment-buyer is currently behind on home payments or lot rent. Always aim to get repair agreements signed with all handymen and contractors before starting any repairs.

Selling Cash? If you choose to sell a mobile home for cash or bank financing, then you typically may not know much about your buyer(s). You do not need to perform a background check as this buyer is paying you in cash and therefore you will not typically have any relationship together moving forward.

Pro Tip: When selling to an all-cash or bank financed buyer let these buyers know that you may be happy to repurchase back the property if they ever need to resell in the future. Let your cash buyers know to please pass along your phone information to any mobile homeowners that may want to sell down the road.