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The Coming Baby-Boomer Mobile Home Wave

John Fedro
2 min read

As the baby-boomer generation begins to retire, the need for affordable senior housing may be on the rise.  This coming potential wave of senior housing demand can translate into a fortune for anyone ready to see ahead of the coming market.  Chance favors the prepared mind.

How might you benefit?

Now is the time to begin opening your eyes to the possibility of owning property inside an age restricted mobile home community or park. The biggest hesitation I hear regularly from investors about “Senior Citizen Only” mobile home parks is that they obviously exclude anyone under a certain age from living within their walls.  In the past and still currently (in my experience) this “Seniors Only” mentality effectively eliminates a majority of our buying age demographic. However now that the senior citizen population is on the rise this demand for senior citizen/low income housing should be on a lateral rise as well.

A plan for action:

Do your homework: Begin by looking to see how many vacant pads/lots there are in the entire mobile home park.  *The more empty pads the more motivated the owner/manager may be to make a deal with you. Next look at how many of these mobile homes are currently for sale.  A red flag should be raised if more than 15% of the community has their home up for sale.  Keep current with mobile homes for sale in each park by driving through parks monthly.

Run a Sample Selling Advertisement: Before buying your investment mobile home in a senior park, it is extremely crucial that you prove to yourself that there are senior citizen mobile home buyers willing to pay the prices you will be asking of them. Gauge how many responses you get as a barometer for when you are actually ready to sell your coming investment mobile home. Raise or lower monthly payments or asking prices accordingly.

Aim and Fire: When an appropriate offer presents itself, pull the trigger.  Is there a low FSBO to non-FSBO percentage of mobile homes in the park?  Is there ample demand from the coming baby-boomer generation to warrant you risking holding costs on vacancies? If the answer to both these questions is YES than you may feel comfortable in knowing you will be able to resell this mobile home.

*Be aware of too many vacancies.  If a mobile home park has too many vacancies for too long of a time the park owners may consider selling the property or rezoning the land use.

— John Fedro

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.