030 Mobile Home Investing Nightmare Park Manager with John and Garrett

In today’s Mobile Home Investing Lesson Podcast episode #30, I’m proud to welcome part-time mobile home investor and part-time single-family home investor, Garrett.

Garrett grew up around single-family home investing however is relatively new to the mobile home investing world. However, in a relatively short period of time Garrett is already building a local reputation for himself with park managers, owners, buyers, and sellers nearby.

In today’s quick 36-minute podcast listen in to a nightmare mobile home investing story from active mobile home investor, Garrett. Hear as Garrett speaks candidly about this particularly interesting mobile home deal, the awful park manager getting in the way of reselling, and what we did to overcome the situation successfully.

A special Thank you to Garrett for opening up his business on today’s Podcast.

In the podcast episode below John and Garrett cover: (Times to fast-forward if needed, however maybe listen to the whole thing.)

• 0:51 Was this mobile home your very first deal?
• 2:40 What has been your past real estate investing history and career?
• 3:45 Let’s talk about finding your first mobile home deal.
• 6:40 Purchasing a clean 2/1 mobile home in a family park for $3,000.
• 8:20 What repairs where needed?
• 8:45 Marketing and trying to resell the mobile home at first.
• 9:30 The trouble begins.
• 15:00 Were there any clues ignored when you initially met the park manager?
• 16:20 A blessing in disguise.
• 17:10 The potential tenant-buyers were all hearing lies.
• 18:40 Did the park manager offer any help to us at all?
• 24:30 Moving the mobile home to a different friendly mobile home park.
• 25:30 Did this new mobile home park owner offer any move-in incentives to help you pay for moving costs?
• 27:25 Who ended up purchasing your investment mobile home via monthly payments?
• 29:00 Do you plan to continue to invest within the new mobile home park?
• 30:30 Are you moving more mobile homes currently?
• 31:00 How long after you move-in a mobile home to this park will it usually be connected to utilities, repaired, and on the market for resale?
• 33:45 Are you planning on renting or reselling this newer mobile home for monthly payments? Why?
• 33:50 Any last advice for mobile home investors dealing with an awful mobile home park manager?

Spectrum of park managers

Mobile home park managers are human beings. Most mobile home park managers will fall somewhere on the “normal side” of most social personality traits. However, a very small handful of mobile home park managers will have extreme-tendencies and extreme personality traits that may make it very difficult to work with as an active mobile home investor.

In the podcast episode #30 below, we hear about a mobile home park manager that consistently manipulate situations, cries victim, and lies directly to Garrett’s face and over the phone. This park manager has no problem lying to Garrett, Garrett’s potential buyers, other sellers in the community, and seemingly anyone else for personal gain.

Building relationships with many, many, many additional park owners & managers

In the podcast #30 below we discuss that Garrett had an exit strategy if the mobile home could not remain in the current location. This exit strategy takes the form of transporting Garrett’s mobile home into a competitor’s investor-friendly mobile home park.

In the podcast episode below Garrett discusses that this new mobile home park owner helped pay $1,500 towards Garrett’s transportation costs.

Pro Tip: Aim to learn which mobile home parks have different move-in incentives and age/exterior/size criteria before you potentially have a mobile home you may need to move into a community.

How to help weed-out malicious and sneaky mobile home park managers?

In the audio podcast #30 below, Garrett does a great job meeting with the park manager many times before he figures out, she is deliberately and consistently lying directly to him and his potential buyers. The park manager is likely doing this to sabotage Garrett’s chances of selling his mobile home and hoping Garrett would simply abandon the mobile home and give it directly to the park or manager.

Use the ways below to help learn about each mobile home park & the park managers better…

• Meet each park manager multiple times to help confirm similar attitude and demeanor each time you meet. Consistency is good.
• Check Google reviews and Yelp for reviews.
• Ask multiple sellers and/or residents about park safety, how rules are enforcement, park flooding problems, and [the main question] about park manager issues or troubles.