Stop Chasing Bad Mobile Home Park Deals

Most mobile home park deals that get blasted around social media or shoved into a buyer’s inbox are not deals at all, they are just listings with wishful pricing. We talk about the frustration behind that, but more importantly, we give you a simple way to stop wasting time on parks that will never pencil. If you have ever heard “it makes $10K a month” and felt tempted to chase it without real numbers, this is your reset. 

We break down a quick mobile home park underwriting process you can run in about 30 seconds: turn monthly gross income into annual gross, apply a rough expense assumption to estimate NOI, then use a basic cap rate check to ballpark value. You will learn why that $10K/month park is not magically worth $2 million, how to explain the math without getting dragged into endless debates, and how better deal screening protects your name with sellers and buyers. 

We also touch negotiation basics and the moment seller financing can change the outcome. When the price is close, “holding paper” and a simple amortization schedule can reveal whether the deal cash flows. And if the owner cannot clearly state income, we show how to build it from pad count, occupancy, and lot rent so you can still underwrite with discipline. 

If you want to get better at mobile home park investing, wholesaling, and deal analysis, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with your biggest underwriting question so we can tackle it next.

Transcript

Why Most “Deals” Aren’t Deals

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Y'all, I get probably five to ten mobile home park deals sent to me let's say weekly at least, right? And none of them are deals or remotely deals. I might have been pretty mean to a guy the other day. Well, not mean, I'm just straightforward if you've ever talked to me. And uh, you know, he sent me this deal and he's like, hey, I got a great deal, right? Great mobile home park deal, cool. How much does it make per month? And I forgot what he said, like 10,000 or something. I'm like, cool, how much do they want? Uh two million. I'm like, bro, what the hell? And he's like, what? I'm like, dude, that's like a $500,000 park or $600,000 park or whatever the numbers were. How do you figure it? And I just sent him a message, I'm like, bro, I don't have time to teach you, right? I'm not like that's not my job. And he's like, okay. And and uh I was like, just do me a favor, I don't mean anything by this, but don't send me any more deals. And the reason I said that is because he doesn't know what he's doing, and a lot of these wholesalers don't, right? They just get so excited. Oh, they want to sell. Fantastic. That doesn't mean it's a deal. Oh, they want to sell, so they put it under contract. That's crazy. Like, think about it. Like, you can sell anything in your house or your car or anything, or put it for sale. That doesn't mean you're selling, like, hey, I want to sell my car for a million dollars. Oh, it's a deal, right? They want to sell for a million dollars. Who's gonna buy it for a damn million dollars? Right? It's the same concept, it drives me bonkers.

Poking And Hoping Versus Mastery

SPEAKER_00 1:35

However, I understand, like on the other foot, I was a young commercial real estate broker once upon a time with no experience, and I was hungry, and I probably looked stupid, and I was chasing these commercial deals, and I was trying to get the listings and sell the listings, I'd get gas station listings, I'd get all this stuff, and I'd get laughed at, right? Because I didn't know what the hell I was doing, what the hell I was talking about. No, I don't think that's the way. No, I shouldn't have done that, I should have learned, right? Somebody should have told my ass. I wish they would have. I tell people these these days they need to just go learn before they start doing this, but I understand because like they need to make a buck, right? And they're trying to make a buck. But here's the difference in making a buck that way is it's just in pool, if you ever shot pool, it's called poking and hoping, right? You just hit the ball and hope the ball goes in, right? But the masters at their craft, the actual pool players, which I played pool all growing up, that's how I made my money growing up, is they know exactly which pocket that ball's going in and where that cue ball is gonna land after they make that one and where the next six are gonna land, or eight, or however many are left on the damn table. You want to do the same thing with real estate, you want to know exactly what you're doing because then you can make win-win situations for everybody, including yourself, a seller, a buyer, you, good name, good reputation. How do you do that? You freaking pay for education, or you go to YouTube university, but I would pay for the education. Don't have the money, take the loan out. I've taken loans out for education. I took $250,000 out one time for a coach, right? Because I'm like, well, they know a lot more than me. If I spend this $250,000 and I learn a billion dollars worth of uh information, then it's probably a good return, right? Like nobody can take that from me. And now I'm that much smarter. That's no-brainer for me. People won't invest in themselves, and I'm not I am knocking it actually. I was

Why Education Pays Off

SPEAKER_00 3:50

gonna say I'm not knocking it, I am knocking it because it's irresponsible, right? And here, let's jump off the soapbox for a minute because I'm gonna give you some game. If you're that wholesaler out there that's just locking stuff up and you don't know what you're doing, but you think you know what you're doing, and you're gonna argue to the end that you know what you're doing, but you don't know what you're doing, and you know you don't know what

The 30-Second Park Underwrite

SPEAKER_00 4:10

you're doing. I want to teach you how to underwrite mobile home parks right now, really quick. All right? Here's the sauce. All right, you get a park, it's making ten thousand dollars. All you gotta do, somebody wants to sell their park, it's making ten thousand dollars a month. Or first, hey yeah, I want to sell my park, I'll sell it. What's up? Okay, cool. How much you say how much does it bring in per month? They say, oh, ten thousand dollars. Cool. What does that tell you? Hang on, I gotta drink this. What does that tell you? All right, they make ten thousand dollars a month gross, meaning that's what they bring in before any kind of expenses. People pay that $10,000 a month to live there. Cool. All right, you don't need anything else at that point right now, because you don't want to waste your time. Good acquisitions, people don't waste their damn time until they need to waste their time, and then they're investing their time to make the deal good. $10,000 a month, how many months are in a year? $12. $10,000 a month times 12 months in a year is how much? Ding ding. I just had caffeine by the way. $120,000. This part brings in $120,000 a year. I want you to assume that half of that is gonna be expenses. That's fair, right? And if you don't know, yes, that's fair. All right, so let's recap. They bring in $10,000 a month. There's 12 months in a year, they brought in $120,000 that year. We're gonna assume that they kept half of that. What is half of $120,000? $60,000. So we're going to assume $60,000 is what they keep, aka, also known as NOI, net operating income, net, what they netted from their gross rents. All right. So now you have $60,000 NOI. I want you to divide that by 10%. All right. That is $600,000. All right. So 10% equals $10 cap. All right. You're gonna hear cap rates. You don't need to learn all that crap right now. I would, I'd get a master of my craft, but I'm giving you a quick down and dirty how to not waste your time, how to tell what's a good, viable deal right out the gate, or if you're wasting your damn time. Because if somebody says I'm bringing in $10,000 a month and I want $1.2 million, you say sorry, it's only worth $600,000. How do you figure? I don't got time to tell you or to show you. I listened to Travis's episode, I'm gonna go freaking find something that makes more sense.

Negotiation And Seller Financing Basics

SPEAKER_00 6:50

Now, let's say they're like, all right, we want $800,000. Well, you think $600,000 is a good deal at a 10 cap. Not super far off, right? You can be like, well, now you can explain yourself. Do you think expenses are around 50%? Yeah. Okay, well, I buy at a 10 cap. And at that, it's $600,000. Is there anything we can work out here? Well, I could probably do $700,000. Well, would you hold paper? All right, because now if you're getting closer and closer, you might run an amortization schedule. Google amortization schedule puts $700,000 at 10% interest for 30 years, see what it comes out at, and see if it pencils, if you're cash flowing, if they will hold the paper, right? Meaning they will sell their finance. If you get close enough, sometimes holding the paper, them holding the paper makes sense and it it'll work, right? So that's how you want to want to underwrite underwrite stuff. So say how much are you bringing in per month, right? Well, and if they don't know, it's like, cool. How many pads do you have? Well, I've got a hundred pads, cool. How much are you charging for each one of those hundred pads? Well, I'm charging $500 a month. Are they all full? No, only half of them are full. All right, so you have 50 pads paying $500 a month. So what is that? Like $25,000 a month? Do the same math. Right? What is that? I don't even know what that is, but you're gonna do the same math. I hope that makes sense. I hope I didn't say it too fast. But I am like getting, I don't know. I don't know what the word is. I want to say perturbed at people not knowing what they're doing, right? Because there's so much information out there, there's so many good coaches, there's so much knowledge. Like, you can learn what like you're not gonna go be a freaking welder, right? Without going to a school to teach you or somebody to teach you, like you're you're not gonna go. I'm just referring to like trades because like wholesaling's a trade, real estate's a trade. Like, you need to learn. I I just really encourage you to invest in yourself. Nobody can take knowledge from you. Nobody.

Final Advice And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 9:10

So, my name's Travis Wells. This is the Property Profits Podcast. I appreciate the hell out of you jumping on here. I hope that you learned something today. There's a lot more to what I went over, but I want you to understand the quick down and dirty underwriting that you can do in just 30 seconds so you don't waste your time, and you know if a deal is worth diving into. Because if you lock up a deal like that and then you don't know all the intricacies after that, at least you have a viable deal. And somebody experienced like me or another buyer is like, hey, this is viable, we can work with this, right? They can steer the ship from that point and they don't mind because they have a good deal on deck, right? Hope that makes sense. Follow me on socials, refer this to a friend or family member. In the meantime, appreciate the hell out of you.