Mobile Home Park Hacking

Divorce can make you think smaller. I went the other way. When I needed a place to live, I didn’t sign a lease or lock myself into a new mortgage. I bought a mobile home park, then bought a better one and moved into the on-site cabin. That decision became my first real taste of “mobile home park hacking,” and it set the direction for everything I do in real estate today. 

I walk through how the first park was cash flowing but located in a spot I didn’t want to live, and why that pushed me to find a higher-quality park where I could live quietly, learn the operations, and see the real problems up close. From meeting tenants to working on units and tightening up management, the lesson is simple: parks can produce strong cash flow and equity, but they don’t run themselves. If you’re searching for passive income, this isn’t that. If you want a business that can grow net worth fast when you run it well, it’s worth a serious look. 

You’ll also hear the numbers behind the transformation: buying a park for $750,000, refinancing at $1.1 million, and seeing an appraisal around $2.2 million after improving the asset. We talk about creative real estate financing, value-add strategy, and the bigger “why” behind it all: freedom as control of your time. If you get value from this, subscribe to Property Profits Podcast, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more investors can find it.

Transcript

Divorce Sparks A New Game Plan

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Yo, when I got divorced years and years ago, people thought I'd go buy another house or an apartment, but my brain went somewhere completely different. I bought a freaking mobile home park. Alright. So get this. I was like, damn, well, I'm gonna need a place to stay, right? Because all that happened, right? Can't live here anymore. And I'm like, well, how can I make money and not spend money on some fluffy mortgage and apartment payments and all this crap? But how can I make money to live? And we all know what house hacking is. Why mobile home park hacked? All right.

Buying A Park In The Hood

SPEAKER_00 0:37

What I did is I started looking for parks at the time because I had to find a place to live, and I found a park. It was downtown San Antonio in the hood. I bought it, which I've talked about in previous episodes on how I bought it with seller financing, took a loan for the down payment, all the stuff. But what I didn't mention was I bought it to live in, right? And it was way too hood, like way too ghetto for me to live in. And I quickly realized that. So then I'm like, I gotta find a nicer park to live in. Not I gotta find a house, an apartment, but I gotta find a nicer park. And I think like entrepreneurs are just wired differently. I don't know what it is, but it's funny when I tell this story. So I found a nicer park, right? Like different class of a park. So I bought it, moved into the cabin, it was like 20 something units. Oh no, it wasn't 20 something units at the time. It was like maybe high teens in units, whatever it was. Because I ended up adding eight units to it. Now it's like, yeah, now it's like 24, 25 units, so maybe 16, 17 units at the time. Anyways, there was a cabin there, still is a cabin there, and I bought the place, which I've talked about how I did it, which was very creative by the way. I I did a lease option and then I assumed some notes on the homes as I went and bought the land and bought the whole park and all sorts of crap, seller financing assumptions, all the stuff. I've broken it down another episode. Won't bore you with the technicality, but this is a story about overcoming uh a somewhat adversity by being creative and using the entrepreneurial spirit, and and how like that one decision changed my life. It changed my trajectory in the course of what I do now. It planted the sea, right? So I, you know, I told you I bought the first park to live in, it was too hood, but it was cash flowing like crazy. Once I got my hands on it, because I already have property management experience, already bought a ton of houses at this point, owned a ton of real estate, owned a motel, owned multifamily. I know what the hell I'm doing. Maybe didn't have a mobile home park, but I applied the same principles. They worked, cash flowed that first one. Damn, I gotta buy another one. Nicer, because I gotta live in it. Moved into this cabin, right?

Living On Site To Learn Fast

SPEAKER_00 3:12

Didn't tell anybody there I owned it. All right, and then like I get to see how all the operations work. You know, I even worked on some of the homes. They thought I was like a handyman, you know, because like I would see like this is not good, this is not good. And what I did while I was living there is I met the tenants and I found like one dude that was a handyman. And I'm like, hey, help me, help me with this project, right? And anyway, like Kat came out the back eventually. I owned the park and I told him, and we like fixed a lot of stuff in the park and got it super valuable.

Refinance Results And The Big Lesson

SPEAKER_00 3:52

I bought the park for $750,000 and I ended up um refinancing it. Well, I refinanced it for $1.1, but it appraised for $2.2 million, and all because I needed a place to live, right? And I didn't want to go the traditional route, so I mobile home park hacked. All right. So I lived in a cabin for free and I collected rents for all the other stuff, you know. And I just I guess I urge people to think a little differently, a little outside the box. I think we get these uh these ideas, these notions, you know, whatever you call them for a reason. Like our ideas come from somewhere, right? And that was like the first first thing. And and I think being an outlier and and like how do I get a return on my time is like a huge question to ask, and and my money and everything that I I do, right? Like to having a having a truck note or a fancy car note or fancy mortgage, like that doesn't excite me. Like none of that stuff's cool to me. Like, if it's somebody's deal, then their cup of tea, great, you know, whatever. But I want cash flow, I want um equity, I want net worth, I want freedom. And like, what does freedom mean to me? Freedom means like being able to control my time, to be able to go do what I want when I want with whoever I want, whenever, whatever, right? That's what freedom means to me. And I think a lot of people it means the same thing to them, but some people it might not. But going back to the story, I had to tell you where I've came from, where I've been, so you know how my brain ticks, right? And and why I make the decisions that I do now.

Why Parks Pay And Aren’t Passive

SPEAKER_00 5:45

So, why mobile home parks? Why am I so into them? Flash forward parks later, right? That I've bought. I've sold parks, I've flipped parks, I've wholesale parks, I own parks, I'm still buying parks because they cash flow like crazy when you take care of them. And no, it's not no matter what you see. I don't believe that it's a passive investment whatsoever because I don't have that experience. My my phone's ringing all the time. I've got stuff to do, like I have to make them better. I have a team too. Like, there's always questions, there's always stuff going on. It's not bad, it's just a business, right? It's not a passive business. I have RV parties too. That's definitely not a passive business. You have transient people in and out all the time, but there's cash flow, there's equity, and you can build your net worth. One of the fastest ways, or the fastest way that I've personally experienced. So I'm sure there's other ways that build net worth like crazy, but this business has built mine tremendously, and I've built met some of the coolest, best people, mentors, partners doing it.

Capital Raise And Mentorship Updates

SPEAKER_00 6:54

So, my name's Travis Wells. This is the Property Profits Podcast. I appreciate you tuning in all the time. Or if this is your first time, you know, let me know what you think. I'd love to hear your comments on previous episodes. This one, if you like the stuff that I'm putting out, if you're learning, refer to a friend, a family member, follow me on socials. I am actually um raising some capital right now, $325,000 for a deal that um it's a $1.8 million deal, but I have the rest of the funds lined up through seller financing and other means. But the gap is $325,000. So if you're interested in that, you can reach out to me too, um, paying interest on on the money there. I can give you more details if you reach out individually. And I've got a park mentorship program that I'm opening up in another four weeks. My last um person I mentored is about to close on their first park with no money out of their pocket. So it's pretty cool stuff, anyways. Thank you so much for hopping on, and until next time, see you then.