juicyness of mobile home market

By now many investor’s have hopped on the mobile home market game. I’m 20 and dabbling in a few areas of real estate. I’ve heard the glory of mobile homes. But I have three major questions:

  1. Say I bought and resold some mobile home and the people I sold it to end up being deadbeats and not paying?

  2. How is the mobile home market RIGHT NOW as far as competition goes? Still fairly untapped? Or pro investors everywhere, all buying cheap homes from desperate sellers.

  3. How is the mobile home market relative to all other markets (for example apartments, condos, and SFH’s). Are mobile homes high in demand? High in demand for rental or for purchase?

thanks for reading

The real money in mobile homes is owning a park. I hung out with a friend last night (tea party) that has made millions from this. He bought a park back in the 90s that was ridden with crime. He has newspaper articles on his wall from shooting he was involved in when cleaning up the park. He has spent half his life turning this park around, and was very successful and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.

do you or anybody know how the mobile home market relates to the SFH market? Are they basically the same, just mobile homes are much cheaper?

Whether MH and RE are similar kind of depends on what type are you talking about. If you are talking about a cheapo “Lonnie Deal” then if anything the market is better - lot of people have to live somewhere now that they can’t afford those mansions they bought. This means that if you can buy cheap and seller finance you should do well.

If you are talking about more expensive MH on land and attached foundations, I’ve heard that it is more difficult, now, but I don’t have the details on that.

As far as your concerns about deadbeats, it is a lot easier to deal with than you would think. If you have to foreclose on a house there are a lot of areas where the process can take 6-24 months or more. On a MH (not attached to a foundation) it is much closer to repossessing a car or kicking a deadbeat tenant out of a rental house, 4-6 weeks normally. It can go longer if you live in an area with tenant-friendly laws such as San Francisco, etc.

Overall, the market is much different, mostly because the people buying the mobiles come from a much poorer socio-economic situation. There are more risks, but there are also great profits.